New Cornerstone Advisors Research, Commissioned by Swaystack, Examines the Bottom-Line Impact of Customer Engagement
Banks and credit unions have invested heavily in digital account opening, onboarding, CRM, marketing automation and digital banking. What many still cannot do is connect those investments to stronger account utilization, deposit growth and deeper primary relationships.
These are the findings in Engage to Grow: Designing the Behaviors That Build Better Banking Relationships, new research from Cornerstone Advisors that examines the bottom-line impact of customer engagement and the operating model required to measure it. Swaystack commissioned the report.
The study’s conclusions point to a substantial difference between simply acquiring an account and earning a larger share of the relationship. Cornerstone found that 42% of highly engaged consumers hold six or more products with their primary financial institution, compared with just 3% of unengaged consumers. At the same time, only 4% of consumers who identify a community bank or credit union as their primary institution qualify as highly engaged, versus 13% of megabank customers.
“You don’t have an engagement problem. You have a measurement problem,” said Ron Shevlin, Chief Research Officer at Cornerstone Advisors, who authored the report in collaboration with Abbie Jones and Elizabeth Gujral. “The industry has spent years confusing activity with progress. Logins go up, campaigns get clicks, direct deposit gets counted, and everyone declares engagement. But unless the relationship is getting deeper, none of that tells you much. The institutions that can prove which behaviors create value will know where to invest. The rest will keep funding activity and calling it strategy.”
The study challenges the industry's reliance on direct deposit as the default measure of primacy. Only 47% of consumers cite direct deposit as a reason they consider an account primary, falling to 35% among Gen Z. The research suggests institutions may need to pay closer attention to recurring behaviors such as debit card usage, bill payment, money movement, and financial management activity to understand where customers are consolidating their financial lives.
“For years, financial institutions have been asked to accept vendor claims about engagement without enough independent research to validate them,” said Har Rai Khalsa, CEO and Co-Founder of Swaystack. “That is becoming harder to justify as banks and credit unions scrutinize technology spend and expect more from existing relationships. We commissioned this research to give financial institution leaders a clearer view of what is working, where value is being created, and which assumptions need to be reconsidered.”
Based on interviews with senior executives at banks and credit unions ranging from under $500 million to $4 billion in assets, Cornerstone evaluated outcomes across account utilization, digital channel usage, cross-sell, product depth, retention, cost savings, and revenue impact. The strongest evidence emerged where institutions could tie a specific action directly to a completed customer action.
The broader implication is a shift in how financial institutions think about engagement technology. Digital banking enables transactions, CRM records interactions, and marketing automation distributes communications. An engagement platform is designed to identify the next high-value action, present it in the channel the customer already uses, and measure whether it was completed. That distinction matters as financial institutions reassess which parts of their technology stack simply support activity and which can influence behavior.
Download the report here.
About Swaystack
Banks and credit unions turn new accounts into active, primary relationships with Swaystack, a digital onboarding and engagement platform. Using gamified journeys inside digital banking and across email and SMS, financial institutions leverage Swaystack to guide new account holders to take the actions that matter most, like funding, switching direct deposit, and adopting new products.
Founded by fintech veterans Har Rai Khalsa and Simran Singh, Swaystack builds on a proven track record of helping banks and credit unions compete with modern digital experiences. Har Rai previously co-founded MK Decision, acquired by Alkami in 2021, while Simran co-founded Zogo, where he helped more than 250 financial institutions gamify financial education for over 1.1 million users.
About Cornerstone Advisors
For over 20 years, Cornerstone Advisors has delivered gritty insights, bold strategies, and data-driven solutions to build smarter banks, credit unions, and fintechs. From technology system selection and implementation to contract negotiations, vendor management, performance improvement programs, strategic planning, merger integration, and enterprise program management, Cornerstone combines its expertise with proprietary data and research to help financial institutions thrive in today’s challenging environment.