With the addition of a loyalty program, Ally is intent on boosting engagement and primacy with its consumer bank customers.
The digital bank aims to build on the “legacy” established with its high-yield savings offering and grow its relevancy with customers’ everyday spending and investing, said Lindsay Sacknoff, Ally’s president of consumer banking.
The Detroit-based bank announced its Loyally loyalty program launch Tuesday, after piloting it earlier this year and rolling it out to all customers in May. The bank isn’t alone: Bank of America and PNC have also revamped or added rewards programs this year, as lenders bolster their efforts to deepen customer relationships.
Ally’s retail bank had about 3.6 million customers as of the second quarter, up 7% year over year. The bank counts about $144 billion in deposit balances.
Ally has been working to connect its spending, saving and investing offerings, and customers using the bank’s loyalty program today are twice as likely to be both deposits and investing customers, Sacknoff said.
Ally took note of customers’ use of savings buckets for wellness and pet care and added everyday perks with companies such as Calm and Airvet. It also includes experiences, offering customers opportunities to win tickets to sporting events or concerts.
Retail bank customers can access rewards regardless of account balance, and the program doesn’t carry any fees. Some perks are personalized: For example, a spending and saving account customer may be shown a bonus offer to open an Ally investing account.
“The vision of Loyally was an opportunity for us to sort of disrupt the category,” Sacknoff said in an interview. “As we talked to customers, we heard a lot about wanting value, wanting personalization, and then also that seamless accessibility.”
Earlier this year, the $199.7 billion-asset bank also began allowing customers to deposit cash into their accounts through partners such as Walmart.
The bank will “continue to learn engagement, the patterns, and then continue to stay fresh and bring in different offers and rewards experiences as we progress,” she said.
The company declined to share how much it’s investing in the loyalty program. An Ally spokesperson said the initiative is “a long-term commitment to deepening customer relationships.”
About 75% of the bank’s new checking and savings customers are Gen Z and millennials, age groups that have the highest use of the loyalty program, Sacknoff said.
Those groups also “tend to be very values-based,” she said, and Ally’s “do it right” ethos and commitment to equal sponsorship of women’s and men’s sports makes for “a nice connection and value exchange with those cohorts.”
In courting digital natives, Ally has also taken jabs at bigger banks’ branch networks. The digital lender pitches itself as “a fintech that has the security and protection of a fully regulated bank,” Sacknoff said.
In the current regulatory climate, however, a slew of fintechs are pursuing their own charters, either through acquiring a bank or applying for their own charter. Chime, for one, this month proposed acquiring one of its bank partners to obtain a charter.
Sacknoff said Ally is the “original digital disruptor” and remains committed to putting digital bank savings back into higher rates and fee-free services.
The bank seeks to differentiate itself by going beyond offering products, to understanding customers’ financial goals and priorities and helping them reach those goals, she said. About two-thirds of the bank’s customers have an annual income of $75,000 or more.
“Things like our goal-based savings, things like our credit score and then the cash-flow tools, from a spend perspective, we see those as real differentiators to help consumers,” Sacknoff said.
