Citizens Bank thrives against national banking giants by embracing hyperlocal strategies and personalizing customer relationships. Lamont Young , Head of Digital says, “If you look at what we’ve done in New York City over the last couple of years, New York City is a microcosm of that hyperlocal strategy. There are a number of people who, a couple of years ago, thought we were insane for trying to be a regional bank in the New York market. However, to your point, we treat New York like we do all our markets. We wanted to ensure that we became part of the communities we actually serve. We hired folks who were from those communities. We treated Brooklyn differently as a borough than we treated the Bronx. We treated the Bronx differently as a borough than we treated Queens. And that hyper-local strategy has enabled us to establish a strong foothold in New York and build a robust brand presence in the world’s toughest market. We’ve invested heavily over the last couple of years in data and analytics. Being able to gather publicly available information on our clients without being intrusive is one way we’ve made experiences feel that much better for our users. Passive churn is a real sort of thing across all financial institutions, large and small. The challenge for institutions is to recognize the triggers that initiate the process of passive churn. Most institutions would have told you, “Hey, if we can get customers in this sort of sticky products, if I can get you into a checking account and I can get you a direct deposit, if I can get you into bill pay,” these are all sticky services. Candidly, they’re really too difficult for customers to switch. Today, I can switch my direct deposit in seconds and pay my bills in minutes. Those things that you would consider traditional, sticky, just aren’t there. We use some internal, complex algorithms to examine the propensity models of people who are likely to attrit.”