What Banks and Credit Unions Should Prioritize in 2027

Rates are rising again, customers keep money at more institutions than ever, and most banks and credit unions still lose the majority of people who start a digital application. Eight priorities for the 2027 marketing plan, and what to do about each.

Banks and credit unions have called onboarding a priority for about 25 years, since the first online account-opening forms went live, and the 2026 benchmarks say most of them still haven’t fixed it. The 2026 Digital Banking Performance Metrics report from Cornerstone Advisors, commissioned by Alkami and drawn from 89 institutions on the retail side, found that digital channels produced 27% of new checking accounts while 3.36 applications were abandoned for every one completed (Vertifi summary). By our math, that means roughly 77% of the people who start a digital application leave without an account. Every one of them is a prospect your institution already paid to reach through search, social or direct mail, then lost on its own website. For most marketing teams, that makes the 2027 acquisition problem a conversion problem first, because more media spend just pushes more people into the same leaking funnel.

That problem lands in an unfriendly planning season. The Fed raised rates on September 16 for the first time since 2023, customers are spreading deposits across more institutions, impersonation fraud keeps climbing, and a growing share of consumers ask an AI assistant about money before they ever visit your website. The priorities below are ordered by how directly they touch funded accounts and deposits, the two numbers your board actually reads, and several connect to reporting we’ve published over the past month.

1Fix the Front Door Before You Buy More Traffic

The abandonment ratio in Cornerstone’s study has barely improved year over year, according to eMarketer’s write-up of the report, and the blind spot behind it is old. Years ago the Digital Banking Report found that more than half of institutions couldn’t say how many applicants abandoned online account opening, either because they didn’t measure it or simply didn’t know (The Financial Brand). Plenty of marketing teams are still there, reporting application starts from GA4 because the account-opening vendor’s funnel data never makes it into the monthly deck.

Acquisition costs make the leak expensive. Curinos puts the average cost to acquire a checking customer at $559 in 2025, roughly double the 2018 level, as we reported this week. That means every completion point you recover is worth more than it was a few years ago, and every point you lose costs more.

The institutions that have fixed this cut steps out of the process itself. Financial Plus Credit Union described cutting a 100-step in-branch opening process to 15 steps and dropping opening time from 30 minutes to four, in a session at Alkami’s Co:lab conference (Alkami). Credit Union of America reports cutting in-branch opening from 35–40 minutes to about 10 and reducing digital abandonment by more than half (Clutch case study). The direction is consistent: fewer form fields, instant decisions for clean applicants, funding inside the same session, identity checks that run in the background, and no instruction to finish at a branch.

Two fixes belong to marketing even when the platform belongs to someone else. Existing customers and members should get a shorter path than strangers; if your current checking customer has to re-enter an address and Social Security number to open a savings account, you’re adding friction to your cheapest acquisition. And the marketing team should own the funnel report from start to funded, including how many applications went to manual review and how long they sat there. An applicant who waits two days for a decision may already have opened an account somewhere else by the time you approve them.

2An Opened Account Isn’t a Customer Until It’s Funded and Used

An opened account is a cost until it becomes somebody’s primary relationship, and fewer accounts get there than they used to. J.D. Power’s 2026 U.S. Retail Banking Satisfaction Study, based on 107,059 customers of the largest banks, found the average checking customer now keeps deposit accounts at three different institutions. Twenty percent moved money away from their primary bank in the past three months, up from 17% a year earlier, and the share ran highest among customers under 40 (23%) and affluent customers (25%) (Business Wire release).

Curinos data point the same way. Half of primary checking switchers held four or more checking relationships in 2024, compared with 7% in 2019, and balance churn in 2026 runs about 25% higher than in 2019 (Curinos). Curinos has also found that digitally opened accounts hold lower balances than branch-opened ones and show retention more than 40% lower after 18 months on the books (Curinos). Put those together and a digital acquisition campaign can hit its account target while adding very little to deposits a year later.

That changes what belongs in the board deck. “New accounts opened” rewards the campaign that fills the funnel with people who park $25 and leave. At most institutions the first 90 days after opening get a welcome email and a debit card mailer. Build an onboarding sequence triggered by what the new customer has and hasn’t done yet, and report results by monthly cohort.

3Rates Are Rising Again, and Your Cheapest Deposits Are the Most Exposed

The Federal Open Market Committee voted 12–0 on September 16 to raise the federal funds target range a quarter point to 3.75%–4.00%, its first increase since July 2023 (Federal Reserve). The median projection has the rate ending 2026 at 4.1% with no change in 2027 (J.P. Morgan Asset Management). Plan 2027 deposit marketing for rates that hold or rise, and expect competitors to price accordingly.

That keeps the gap between what most institutions pay and what savers can get elsewhere wide. The national average savings rate was 0.37% in September per FDIC data, while top online accounts pay close to 4%, as we noted in our Q1 2027 consumer signals report. Curinos estimates more than $1 trillion in checking deposits could be at risk as customer inertia erodes, potentially costing about 50 basis points of margin as portfolios shift to pricier, less stable funding (Curinos). The tools that make moving money effortless are also arriving: Meta’s Muse agent, which can link to financial accounts and act for the user, pushed bank stocks down in the week it launched, as we covered.

The reflex response is a CD special, and it’s usually the wrong one. Curinos data show only about 25% of deposit promotion balances bring in new money (Curinos), which means a broadly advertised rate mostly reprices money you already had and raises your cost of funds without growing the balance sheet. The better 2027 play is targeted. Find customers with large balances in low-rate accounts, offer them a competitive savings or money market option before an online bank does, and make an internal sweep easy to set up.

4Stablecoins and Open Banking Belong on the Watch List, Not in the 2027 Budget

Two regulatory stories will generate headlines next year, and your board will ask about both. Neither should move 2027 marketing dollars yet.

Banks have argued the GENIUS Act leaves a loophole for interest-like rewards paid through affiliates or third parties, and the CRS summary cites Citigroup research estimating stablecoins could displace $182 billion to $908 billion in bank deposits by 2030. Most community institutions aren’t acting yet: Cornerstone found only 8% of credit unions expect to pursue stablecoins in 2026, even though 63% have discussed them at the board or executive level (CU Today).

On open banking, no federal deadline will force easier account portability in 2027, but that doesn’t make switching harder; the J.D. Power numbers above show customers moving money without any rule’s help. Marketing’s part is a one-page, compliance-reviewed explainer that frontline staff and the social team can use when customers or members ask whether stablecoins are safe or insured. The FDIC’s proposal is a useful anchor: it says deposits held as reserves backing a stablecoin would not be insured on a pass-through basis to the people holding the coin.

5Your Best Gen Z Channel Is Already in Your Checking Base

Community institutions’ share of Gen Z primary relationships fell from 19% in 2023 to 9% in 2025, according to ProSight research reported by The Financial Brand and summarized in our Gen Z playbook. Chasing that generation with fintech-style awareness campaigns is expensive, and so far most community institutions have lost that fight. The cheaper route runs through the parents who already bank with you. Rivel Research found 92% of parents open a child’s account at their own primary institution, and a 2026 Wells Fargo study found 64% of parents of Gen Z adults say their kids still rely on them financially.

That makes the Gen X household a distribution channel you already own. Segment your CRM for households with recurring transfers to other individuals, tuition payments or past youth accounts, then market family products to the parent: linked accounts with shared visibility, allowance and savings tools, and a planned handoff when the young adult goes independent. Measure it as products per household rather than per individual, and track how many youth accounts are still active 12 months after they convert to adult status. The same households sit at the front of the Great Wealth Transfer, so serving the parent well protects assets at both ends of the family.

6A 2027 Budget Defended With Last-Click Reports Will Lose the Argument

Every priority above needs proof, and most institutions can’t produce it. In a Cornerstone Advisors survey of 126 senior executives, 31% said they credit the wrong channel more than a quarter of the time, another 26% didn’t know whether they do, and nearly 60% said their CRM or core system limits their ability to track marketing ROI (Cornerstone Advisors). Cornerstone’s separate data-quality assessment scored community institutions at 241 out of 500, with sales and marketing data ranked weakest of all (CU Today).

In practice, that means paid search takes credit in GA4 for demand that email, direct mail and branch conversations created, while the account-opening platform and the core each report a different conversion number. The same Cornerstone research found paid search gets the biggest share of budget while email delivers the strongest ROI, a mismatch that only shows up when you measure all the way to funded accounts. When leadership sees three conversion numbers, it trusts none of them, and the marketing budget becomes the easiest line to cut.

Our measurement white paper lays out a 90-day plan. The first steps are to agree with finance that funded accounts, deposit dollars and households added are the primary KPIs, import funding outcomes into GA4 as key events, and bring leadership one number by the end of Q1: cost per funded account by channel. While you’re in GA4, set up the hostname Include filter Google added on September 21 so spam and staging traffic stop polluting the property (our coverage).

7AI Answers Are Becoming the First Impression, and Almost Nobody Measures Them

In a J.D. Power survey of 4,000 consumers, 51% said they use AI to get financial advice or information, and ChatGPT was the tool most of them used (American Banker). Conductor’s 2026 benchmarks found a Google AI Overview on 26.2% of banking search queries, yet AI referrals produced just 0.16% of banking website visits, the lowest share in financial services, as reported by The Financial Brand and summarized in our measurement paper. People are getting answers about your products without clicking through to your site, so whatever the AI says about your rates and fees is doing the job your landing page used to do.

AI tools cite pages they can read and trust: a plain HTML rate page, a clear fee schedule, direct answers to specific questions such as whether a CD or a high-yield savings account fits a given goal. A rate buried in a PDF or behind a “call for rates” button won’t make the comparison, and that matters more as AI agents start comparing yields on a customer’s behalf. One vendor analysis of more than 14,000 AI answers found credit unions receive about 60% of consumer banking recommendations in ChatGPT (New Media Advisors). It’s a vendor study, so treat the exact share cautiously, but it suggests local institutions can win these answers when the content exists.

8Scammers Buy the Same Ads You Do, and Your Brand Takes the Damage

Consumers reported losing $3.5 billion to impersonation scams in 2025, nearly triple the 2020 figure, and among business impersonators, bank impersonators produced the highest reported losses (FTC). On September 24, the FTC issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking asking whether search engines, social platforms and other ad sellers should have to vet advertisers and remove ads that impersonate businesses and government agencies (FTC). Nearly 30% of consumers who lost money to scammers in 2025 said the first contact came on social media, with $2.1 billion in reported losses. Comments are due 60 days after the notice appears in the Federal Register.

Fraud usually gets filed under operations, but in 2027 it’s a marketing problem too. Trust is the first of the seven dimensions J.D. Power uses to measure retail banking satisfaction, and a customer who loses savings to someone using your name and logo blames your institution, not the platform that sold the ad. Cornerstone found 72% of credit union executives expect fraud losses to rise again in 2026, and nearly three-quarters plan bigger fraud-prevention budgets (CU Today).

What Goes in the 2027 Plan, Who Owns It, and When

Most of this work costs staff time rather than new software, and the order matters. You can’t fund the onboarding fix until you can show what the leak costs, and you can’t show that until the funnel is measured all the way to funded accounts.

The Scorecard That Replaces “Accounts Opened”

Report these monthly, by cohort where it applies, in the same meeting where “accounts opened” used to go. If completion and funding rates rise while cost per funded account falls, the onboarding work is paying for itself, and you have the evidence to ask for the next round of fixes.