The digital age of commercial banking is well underway, and Professional Bank is leveraging its in-house tech lab to stand out in a competitive crowd of fintechs and legacy financial institutions.
The Coral Gables-based community bank launched its Digital Innovation Center in 2018 with Ryan Gorney and Chris Rice at the helm. Located in Cleveland, the lab has about half of its team members, including cloud engineers and developers, based in Miami and throughout southeast Florida. Since then, the bank has opened operations throughout the state, including most recently in the Jacksonville area.
The center is tasked with creating solutions to help keep Professional Bank ahead of the curve on technology trends to streamline client experience. For example, in October its team rolled out a feature that enables bank customers to open a personal checking account online in about three minutes with just a mobile device, a driver’s license and a minimum of $25.
The online account opening sought to accelerate a banking process that used to require paperwork and a trip to your local branch.
“We saw an opportunity to disrupt [the industry] and get an account opening that partnered with the type of service that our clients expect,” said Gorney, who serves as executive VP, chief information officer and chief digital officer of the Digital Innovation Center. “While we’re very proud of the speed at which it does things, we’ve also taken identity and access management to the next level. We use biometrics, dark web scanning, artificial intelligence, and government databases to make sure that [users] are who they say they are.”
When it came to creating Professional Bank’s approach to digital development, executives determined years ago that it would build an in-house operation, rather than bring in a third-party firm to lead the initiative.
experts to lead its charge. Gorney joined the lab from his previous role as an executive director at Ernst & Young’s financial services digital practice. Rice, senior VP and head of digital banking at Professional Bank, previously spent more than 20 years at Cleveland-based KeyBank.
“Banks our size don’t typically have a true digital team.”
Professional Bank is ramping up its digital strategy in conjunction with its statewide expansion. This year, it opened loan production offices in Tampa Bay and Jacksonville, marking its first Florida expansion outside of Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Banking veteran Darren Lydting was tapped as executive VP/regional market executive to oversee the growth.
When expanding into Pinellas, Hillsborough and Duval counties, the bank used its digital services as a tool to help in-person associates introduce its offerings to a new client base, Chairman and CEO Daniel R. Sheehan says.
“Tampa and Jacksonville are locations we think are important to have a physical presence in,” Sheehan said. “As far as the rest of the state and out of state, we’re equipped to handle digital accounts with or without someone sitting in the ZIP code.”
The banking industry’s years-long shift toward digital services accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic due to social distancing guidelines and temporary branch closures.
A series of studies published in June by market research company J.D. Power found that a record 67% of U.S. retail customers used their bank’s mobile app during the past year, and 41% of bank customers are now classified as digital-only.
In South Florida, banking leaders are preparing for the industry’s digital-first future by investing in multichannel services and modernizing the traditional branch-based banking model. But while some banks and credit unions opt to shutter certain branches as they embrace a digital-first approach, Professional Bank has no plans to eliminate in-person locations, Sheehan says.
“There’s a handful of internet-only banks, and there are a lot of branches that are sticking to the old model. The bank that will be in the best position to capture the most market share in the future is going to be able to do both well,” he said. “Many of our current clients have developed relationships with our front-office staff, and we think it would be awfully damaging, from a reputation standpoint, to cut that off.”
The past two years have brought significant changes for Professional Bank and its employees. Its parent company, Professional Holding Corp. (Nasdaq: PFHD), went public in February 2020 after raising nearly $60 million through an initial public offering. Shortly after, it added three branches and $527 million in deposits to its portfolio upon completing an acquisition of Coral Gables-based Marquis Bank.
Professional Bank has nine branch locations in South Florida, as well as LPOs in Tampa Bay, Jacksonville, and Bedford, New Hampshire. It reported $2.6 billion in total assets in the third quarter, posting a 27.4% increase from Q3 in 2020. As of Sept. 30, it held $2.4 billion in total deposits.
