At First Niagara Financial Group, CEO Gary Crosby doesn’t hesitate when discussing the company’s philosophy: Everything about the customer.
Customer engagement is an absolute priority at First Niagara, which has about 390 branches, $39 billion in assets, $28 billion in deposits, and approximately 5,300 employees providing financial services to individuals, families, and businesses across New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
“We are very much committed to keeping our customers at the center of all we do and to continue to enhance our ability to serve them,” Crosby said during the company’s July 24 second-quarter earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “Customer-centricity after all is the heart of our strategy and our culture.”
Crosby said First Niagara remains “prudent and watchful as we underwrite credit in this competitive environment … we will compete on price for the right relationship and customer and we will walk away from deals that don’t need our underwritings standards. And we have a very strong commercial pipeline at the end of the second quarter, which should bode well for loan growth in the third quarter, absent any significant pay down activity. Average core deposits increased over 5% sequentially, driven a 10% increase in interest checking balances.”
What’s more, Crosby said First Niagara has taken major strides to match team members’ personal commitment to a consistently exceptional customer experience with the technology and the organization structure that makes doing business with First Niagara fast, easy, simple, and even more secure.
“This was recently validated by the annual U.S. Bank reputation survey conducted by American Banker and the reputation is that we rank No. 4, moving up from No. 11 last year,” Crosby noted. “And while we’re pleased with this recognition by the customers we serve, it is also a reminder that we operate in a highly competitive industry that demands continuous improvement.”
Digital plays a huge role in First Niagara’s strategic investment plan.
“Our overarching goal is to create an experience that enables customers to seamlessly interact with us in a manner that is as simple and satisfying as an in-person interaction,” Crosby explained. “Our enhanced online account opening quarter continues to generate account opening rates that are two times greater than they were on the previous legacy platform. In our commercial business, we continue to make progress in our new treasury management product suite. This multi-project program once fully implemented will add the capabilities that larger commercial customer’s desire and we'll feature new and expanded services such as business online banking, including mobile banking, commercial card, as well as account and deposit reconciliations.”