Associated Bank takes a “needs-based” approach to growth.

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Associated Bank has customer tools added in recent months and a change in its approach to sales conversations to increase the amount of business the bank handles for its customers.

The Green Bay, Wis.-based lender launched a product this year that allows checking account customers to access their direct deposit payment. two days beforein addition to credit monitoring function for some of its customer checking accounts, said Steven Zandpour, the bank’s director of consumer and corporate banking. These follow a service launched last year that doesn’t charge customers if they overdraw their checking accounts by up to $50.

“What we’ve tried to develop, from a consumer perspective, is this holistic view of helping and shaping transaction flows for the customer,” said Zandpour, who joined the bank in January after working at BMO and Fifth Third Bank.

The associated asset of $42 billion, serving approx 100 communities in Wisconsin, Illinois and Minnesota: it aims to lean on “that advice and guidance aspect” to deepen its relationships with clients, he added.

Almost a year ago, Associated announced that it did cut jobs and closing more than a dozen branchesin addition to selling approx $2 billion in mortgages and investment securities and hiring relationship managers to strengthen deposit collection and lending.

As Associated has sought to deepen its customer relationships, the bank’s sales team has been retrained to have “more holistic conversations,” uncovering opportunities through needs-based questions, to drive customers to think about retirement or what’s next for their family, Zandpour said.

Zandpour said the bank settled on the advance payment and credit monitoring products after taking note of current market offerings that appeal to consumers, as well as input and testing with its own customers. Early access to wages, in particular, has become an increasingly popular service offered by fintechs and lenders.

“We iterated with customers along the way,” Zandpour said. Some of the feedback about the bank’s credit monitoring feature is opening the door to more opportunities for the bank as customers have asked how they can interpret the data, he said.

That has led Associated to consider how bankers can “track and be able to connect the dots for customers,” Zandpour said. A customer checking their credit score might be thinking about a mortgage, for example.

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Employees try to approach these conversations with customers with less product focus and more consideration of what’s important to the customer and how the bank can help them get there, Zandpour said.

“These products help people see it and start discovering it, too,” he said, leading to more customer-driven conversations with bankers.

Although it’s early days, the bank is starting to see the fruits of those efforts, he said. “Because you have these product improvements, that helps cross-sell,” he said. The bank did not immediately respond to a request for figures on customer uptake of credit monitoring or prepayment products.

Now, Zandpour is looking to increase customer awareness of the tools that have been introduced, to drive more customer adoption, he said. “You deploy credit monitoring, but your entire customer base doesn’t use it on day one,” he noted.

Looking ahead next year, Associated plans to digitize more experiences on the business banking side that will provide faster access to visibility of funds and money movement, Zandpour said.

The lender launched a new digital banking platform in 2022 and continues to make improvements aimed at facilitating ease of use and access to more online banking services. Zandpour said Associated’s right size allows it to maintain small banking relationships with customers and communities while offering tools and services similar to big banks.

With increased adoption of online banking and less branch traffic, Associated has been pruning its branch network in recent years as it rethinks that strategy, similar to other lenders. The bank will open its first Missouri branch next spring, but it will have a smaller footprint than older branches and will be less driven by teller transactions, Zandpour said.

The bank has no plans for additional branches in the St. Louis, where it already has a presence on the Illinois side, but is always evaluating potential opportunities, Zandpour said.

Zandpour declined to comment on whether the bank is considering expanding its branch network to other Midwestern states.

“What we want to continue to do is grow our existing footprint, in our existing locations,” he said.

Associated has too loan production offices in Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio and Texas.