This week on the Common Cents podcast: Heather Deneault, Assistant Vice President at Denison State Bank, tells the story of how DSB moved from a static, cumbersome eSignature product that fell out of use to Kinective SignPlus, leveraging its advanced functionality to drive remarkable growth and efficiency, by meeting their customers where they are. She also gives some valuable advice to other financial institutions facing similar challenges and looking for an eSignature solution.
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Read the full transcript below:
Ben Halbrooks:
Welcome in to the Common Cents Podcast by Kinective, where we connect you to the future of banking. Join us as we dive into the latest news and trends in banking and fintech, learn from leaders in the space, and make the complex simple. It’s Common Cents!
I’m your host, Ben Halbrooks, and in this episode, you’ll hear a fascinating discussion I recently had with Heather Deneault, Assistant Vice President of Deposit Operations at Denison State Bank. DSB is a community bank with branches across northeast Kansas, over 18,000 customers, and $450 million in assets.
In our interview, Heather tells the story of how Denison State Bank moved from a static, cumbersome eSignature product that fell out of use to Kinective SignPlus, leveraging its advanced functionality to drive remarkable growth and efficiency, by meeting their customers where they are. She also gives some valuable advice to other FIs facing similar challenges and looking for an eSignature solution. Anyway, here’s that conversation.
Well, I’ve got Heather Deneault here from Denison State Bank. She is the assistant vice president of deposit operations. Heather, thank you so much for joining me.
Heather Deneault:
Absolutely. Thank you.
Ben Halbrooks:
Well, I want to jump straight into Denison State Bank. I want you to give us just a little bit of a background of, what you guys are doing there at the bank, where you’re located, and then when you first decided to partner with Kinective.
Heather Deneault:
Absolutely. We are located in Holton, Kansas, which is just north of Topeka. We have five branches in three counties here in Northeast Kansas. So we’re about a 440 million asset bank with 66 full time employees. So, we are very much in the rural community, I would say very much big into “the AG,” as I would say, is our primary or Ag lending, with all the farmers here. But with being so close to Topeka, we also really strive to keep up with technology and to not necessarily be on the cutting edge, but very close to that. So, we actually saw Kinective in Chicago in 2019 when they debuted with our core vendor, CSI. I saw Michael give a presentation on and knew immediately that it was a product that that DSB needed to have here and utilize.
Ben Halbrooks:
Excellent. I want to dive into that a little bit more. What business challenge did the DSB need to solve that you heard and said, “That’s a great fit for us.”
Heather Deneault:
Yes. We actually had been using electronic signatures on our deposit side since around 2014, but it was a very static product, not user friendly, not intuitive, just very black and white and really cumbersome to use. to the point that by 2019, our deposit staff wasn’t really using the product anymore. And we were converting back to paper all of a sudden, because it was just too hard for our frontline staff to use. And so, when I saw Michael’s presentation in Chicago, how intuitive it was, the remote feature, the possibility of a workflow, which we eventually went to, I knew this was a product that we needed. And we were also waiting for that product that we could use on the loan side. Our loan side had not been using electronic signatures yet, and we were looking for a product that we could use bank-wide, and not have all these different products trying to sync it all together and work with our core and work with our imaging system. This was a bank-wide fix for us, and we knew we wanted to use it right away.
Ben Halbrooks:
Yeah, I could see that would be a big barrier to scale. So your wheels were turning, and you thought, “This is what we need.” So you mentioned this about workflows: you guys began with Kinective Sign, and then you made the switch to SignPlus. Why did you guys decide to migrate?
Heather Deneault:
Yes. We originally started with Sign, and we kind of were hitting it right in the height of the pandemic is when we got with Sign, and lobbies were closed. And so we weren’t seeing the customers, you know, face to face. And so a lot of stuff was going out remotely. And we realized with all that stuff coming in remotely, it was almost kind of getting lost in the process. People were kind of running around and saying, you know, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got that document set back, can you do this and can you do this?” And, we realized pretty much within 90 days of launching Sign, we needed a workflow, in order to make this really efficient for our staff. And so, within 90 days, I contacted our rep and said, sign us up for SignPlus. And we had that going by the Fall of 2020.
Ben Halbrooks:
Great. What was the implementation process like?
Heather Deneault:
It was great. I mean, like I said, just with Sign at first it was during that pandemic phase, so I think everything was a little bit slower everywhere to kind of get done. But really the move from Sign to SignPlus was a non-event for us. I mean, we were so ready for that with the workflow and our training staff with Kinective made it super easy to help us design those workflows and really understand what we were needing for those to be able to work for us. And they’re super customizable. So, it was so easy for us to set and implement, and it worked great.
Ben Halbrooks:
Great. Well, you’ve already touched on this, but what are the benefits? There’s two groups here. What are the benefits to one, your customers, and then two, your employees.
Heather Deneault:
For our customers, they’re just able to receive those documents so much quicker, and we can meet them where they are. If they want to come into the branch, absolutely come into the branch and see us. We’re more than happy to have you. But, you know, with us being in a rural community, a lot of our customers are out in the field. It’s not always possible for them to come and see us. They’re not going to get home until 7 or 8:00 that night after they’ve worked cattle or or put up hay for the evening. And that’s when they have time to sit down and review documents.
Ben Halbrooks:
Right.
Heather Deneault:
So we’re able to deliver those when our customers want and when it’s good for them. I always tell the story about our customers who travel three hours away to buy a car, and they only had about an hour to do it, and we were able to send the docs from the loan, and they were able to drive off on a car in about 45 minutes with SignPlus. So that’s been great.
And for our employees, kind of the same results our customers get, our employees get. It’s faster, it’s quicker, it’s more efficient. It keeps us compliant. As far as what for? You know, we’re checking to make sure the right forms were done, and we’re checking to make sure the signatures were there. That whole process is faster for us.
Ben Halbrooks:
Excellent. I love to hear when it’s a win-win.
Heather Deneault:
Yeah.
Ben Halbrooks:
On both sides there.
Heather Deneault:
Yeah.
Ben Halbrooks:
What results do you expect to see or have you seen? I mean, you’ve already you’ve already mentioned these things, but what do you expect to see more of?
Heather Deneault:
We just want to continue to be able to meet our customers where they are and however they want to receive the services from us, and SignPlus has really done that. We’re just now kind of getting into web forms as well with Kinective. Having those forms available to our customers on our website and then getting those into the workflow.
So our staff can get those done instead of requiring them to come in to the branch and visit us. So I think we’re just looking for that, and we’re looking to really get this out into all of the departments bank-wide. You know, what other departments can benefit from this? Even if it’s just gathering internal signatures, not so much maybe even with our customers – but does other staff need signatures from other staff to make those work. So I think we’re really just kind of expanding our case usage for this.
Ben Halbrooks:
Excellent. I love you talking about that paradigm shift from kind of the traditional way of expecting the customer to come in to the branch. And you guys are recognizing, look, that’s that’s just not how, that’s that’s not where the need is. The need is, we need to essentially go to them or be available for them whenever, wherever they are. And you guys have leveraged the technology to be able to do that. So that’s pretty neat.
Heather Deneault:
Yeah.
Ben Halbrooks:
What advice would you give, as someone who’s gone through this process and you’ve come out on the other side? I mean, you continue to innovate, but you’re seeing real results like you’ve mentioned. What advice would you give someone looking for an eSignature solution?
Heather Deneault:
I think they need to make sure they’re looking for a solution that makes their work easier and more efficient and not harder. Really make sure that your staff isn’t having to push more buttons or to, no matter what it is – collecting the signatures or on the backend, when they’re trying to image those document sets – really looking at the whole process from start to finish. Is it going to make this easier and more efficient for everybody and your customers as well?
Compliance is huge, obviously with banks, who are very regulated. And that was a big thing for us as well, was the compliance side. And of course, there’s an audit trail with every single document set that we send out with SignPlus. That is huge. You know, we supply those to examiners or auditors if they want to see. Well, how are you making sure your customers are receiving the proper documents? Well, here’s the audit trail. Here’s where it went from point A all the way to point Z to the very end.
And also make sure that you pick something that fits what you’re doing. Not every bank is going to have quite the same processes. And I think that’s what SignPlus has really given us. The ability is to customize those workflows so that they work for us. We keep our workflows very simple, but I’ve seen financial institutions who have very complex workflows, because that’s what works for them. And, that’s what’s so great about this tool. It’s customizable and it works.
Ben Halbrooks:
I appreciate that. My final question is about Denison State Bank. How do you guys, kind of looking to the future, how does DSB plan to leverage technology in the future to advance your transformation and modernization?
Heather Deneault:
We again are still trying to figure out how we can – and I know I’ve said this previously – making sure we’re meeting our customers where they are. Making sure that we’re available to them in whichever way they want to communicate with us. We are so fortunate that we have a core that partners with companies like Kinective that are giving us those opportunities. Whether that’s with SignPlus or with, you know, accepting loan payments with credit cards and debit cards through our websites or push provisioning with the mobile wallets. We’re always looking for how can we make sure that our customers are receiving top notch service, yet still being very available to them if they want to call us or come visit us. So, we’re very fortunate that we have great partnerships that are allowing us to do that in whichever way we choose to do that. So, I think we definitely are moving toward that. As we all know, it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with technology, but we hope that we can continue these partnerships like this to make our customers lives better.
Ben Halbrooks:
Well, we very much appreciate your partnership. And I love to hear how it’s working so well for you guys. And I think others really benefit hearing how FIs like DSB are leveraging that functionality to drive business growth and operational efficiencies. And you guys have done that. So yes – pretty neat! Thank you for sharing, Heather. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your partnership. And more power to you guys.
I love hearing how it’s working so well, and I can hear the passion coming through from you really wanting to provide the services that your customers need to do what they need to do and handle their finances well. So, I hope there’s many more successes for DSB coming up in the future.
Heather Deneault:
All right. Thank you so much, Ben.
Ben Halbrooks:
Thanks!
Again, big thanks to Heather for that conversation. And if you want to know more about Denison State Bank, you can visit them at dsbks.com.
And as always, Common Cents is brought to you by Kinective, the leading provider of connectivity, workflow, and analytics software for the banking sector. Check us out at kinective.io and connect to the future of banking. Until then, we’ll catch you on the next episode – it’s Common Cents!
