Digital and Culture with Jim Burson // Cornerstone Hot Takes

I think a lot of us finally got our clients engaged in building out digital account opening, but now we actually have to make that a big piece of our business. I don’t know that we’ve had much success with that. What’s the digital sales strategy?

I think it’s cultural, Tony, at the end of the day. Right now, there’s still this inherent friction between our clients wanting to differentiate based on people, right? What’s unique about me is I have great bankers, I have great people in the branches and I’m trusted.

Right.

And so when we go into digital sales, we lose that sense of connection, or call it intimacy, if you will, in our dialogue. There’s a fear because, as I embrace digital, it says I have to figure out how to scale the human element of relationships, augmented by a great digital origination capability.

So I think culture is the barrier at the end of the day. People are going to have to work really hard at figuring out how to create the appropriate balance of enabling great digital origination while still not losing their secret sauce.