Digital Banking
Liberty Bank embraces tech for 200th anniversary
As it approaches its 200th anniversary, Liberty Bank is embracing major technological changes and investigating others.
July 16, 2024 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator
When it comes to old institutions, banks have some of the longest histories. In many cases, banks in the U.S. have been around for hundreds of years, as is the case for Liberty Bank, first founded in 1825 in Connecticut.
As it approaches its 200th anniversary, Liberty Bank is also embracing major technological changes and investigating others. For example, it recently partnered with fintech Amount to make a major overhaul of its digital banking platform and is currently looking at AI for future banking innovations.
To learn more about Liberty's history and how it has utilized technology over the years, ATM Marketplace spoke with Matthew Cammarota, SVP and head of retail lending at Liberty Bank and Adam Hughes, CEO of Amount.
Q: I see that Liberty Bank was founded in 1800s. Can you tell me a little bit about the history of Liberty Bank?
Cammarota: Liberty Bank was founded in 1825 in Middletown, Connecticut – we are still headquartered in Middletown. We will be celebrating our 200th Anniversary on May 4, 2025. We are a mutual bank, meaning we are owned by our customers, not shareholders. At $8 billion in assets, we are the oldest and largest independent mutual bank in the country with over 800 teammates covering 56 banking offices throughout our footprint that covers Connecticut and Western Massachusetts. We've also been named a Top Workplace every year since 2012 and a Fobes Best in State Bank from 2021 to 2023.
Q: Can you give me a brief overview of some of Liberty Bank's biggest leaps in tech over the years?
Cammarota: In 2023, Liberty Bank conducted a complete and seamless transformation of our entire digital banking platform, successfully converting over 140,000 consumer customers to our new digital banking. A month later, Liberty Bank launched Owners Bank, a division of Liberty Bank. Owners Bank is a digital bank tailored to the unique needs of small business owners by bringing a high-tech, high-touch approach to small business banking through a suite of digital apps and banking services. In 2022, Liberty Bank also replaced its entire fleet of ATMs with faster and more modern banking machines that have dramatically improved our customers' banking experience.
Q: What led to the decision to partner with Amount?
Cammarota: Amount's digital origination and decisions SaaS platform offered a comprehensive and fully white-labeled solution for Liberty Bank, helping us modernize our technology infrastructure to originate personal loans organically.
Q: How will it improve backend operations or reduce costs/staff load?
Cammarota: The platform is automated and leverages dozens of API connections to third-party verification providers. As a result, Liberty Bank is able to process and originate thousands of applications with little to no back-office support. Since our launch in Q1, Liberty has surpassed personal loan growth expectations and demonstrated the effectiveness of Amount's technology.
Q: How will it improve the customer experience?
Cammarota: The platform offers a superior end-to-end digital experience, reducing friction and improving overall pull-through. Customers are able to apply in minutes and obtain access to funds as soon as the next day.
Q: What features attracted you to Amount vs other fintechs?
Cammarota:Amount is not an originator, meaning they are not a competitor. Their solution was created for bank partners to offer a superior experience, but under the umbrella of Liberty Bank.
Q: Looking ahead, is AI integration anywhere on the horizon for Liberty Bank?
Cammarota:Liberty Bank has assembled an internal team comprised of teammates representing various parts of the organization to take a deep dive into the role of AI in banking, the benefits of it, future policy needs and how we would leverage it in the most effective and responsible way inside the bank.
Q: What are the primary features of your platform?
Hughes: Amount's platform allows our clients to drive high-velocity account origination. With Amount, clients can be up and running in less than 90 days, achieving rapid time to value. As a single platform for all products, Amount makes it easy to bring new lending products to market.
With the Amount platform, clients are able to:
- Reduce application processing
- Automate source data collection, decisions, and verifications.
- Optimize task management with efficient queue routing.
- Increase bankers' productivity by enabling them to focus on higher-value tasks.
- Boost funnel conversion and customer satisfaction.
- Enhance overall funnel conversion, resulting in happier customers! Our automated, simple, digital-first customer experience (CX) enables banks to maximize ROI on marketing spend. By prioritizing a customer-led approach, we ensure a seamless and efficient process.
- Enhancing risk decisions with Amount.
Amount leverages a curated selection of third-party data sources, encompassing everything from contracting to integrations and orchestration. Our optimized, turnkey configurations seamlessly adapt to customer needs. By handling the heavy lifting and continuous learning, Amount empowers clients to make superior risk decisions effortlessly. Additionally, create custom policies with our highly configurable policy engine and see all adjustments reflected in real-time for users.
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