Growing new banking customer acquisition through digital checking accounts required the best combined efforts of a super-regional bank’s product and digital channel teams, with internal marketing and its agency partners invested heavily in attracting target prospects. Robust marketing drove prospects to a digital checking account application, but a high abandonment rate perplexed the bank. To justify the front-end marketing spending as well as the new resources required for a process redesign meant that these strategists needed an iron-clad case. They could pitch reformulated questions and how a smoother process might look. But more importantly, they needed real evidence to quantify the projected improvement in the volume of new accounts and higher average balances with those new openings. That’s where the granularity and analysis that peer benchmarking delivers made a difference. Supplied with benchmarking that gave a clear snapshot of their digital peers and bolstered by the quality of prospects that were trickling through, the bank focused on the account application process and cross-referenced internal data that identified two, specific Know Your Customer (KYC) and credit-check access questions of the application. It was here that several prospects went cold. That is, there was a noticeable drop-off in data input on applications right at that spot. Some applicants paused for a considerable time and were still willing to push through; many abandoned all together. Importantly, benchmarking doesn’t provide the entire solution. KYC and credit questions, for instance, are valuable must-ask application points from a risk perspective. These lines of inquiry would need to remain in the process. The fixable portion turned out to be a form design that made fulfilling those questions too cumbersome and analog for many applicants who were already thinking digital-first. After all, these future customers were on their way to signing up for digital checking. Still, given the quality of applicants and the ability to pinpoint the problem, the fresh resource allocation could be justified. Using the benchmarking analysis, the team was able to build a solid business case to support the application redesign. They were able to more accurately model both the upside in terms of new checking accounts as well as new balances. The resulting growth and profits were substantially higher than the cost of the application re-design project. And the team had more confidence in the business case because of the strength of the benchmarking analysis. Think of benchmarking as a robust strategy tool that can be used to confirm (or refute) assumptions and working hypotheses. This enables bank and credit union leaders to start from a data-driven mindset and engage in committed feedback exchanges with colleagues. These leaders must keep an open mind for results that may confirm or challenge expectations to make smarter, fact-based decisions that typically result in better business results.