Citizens Bank of Edmond plans to launch a digital bank with a national reach by the end of the year, a platform that will target an underserved affinity group, CEO Jill Castilla said.
Castilla said the Oklahoma-based bank will be ready to share more details about the platform’s target audience in the next 60 days.
For the new venture, the bank is partnering with Moven’s financial wellness platform, which is powered by Q2’s CorePro core processing technology, the result of last year’s tie-up between the New York-based fintech and the Austin, Texas-based digital banking software company.
The partnership with Citizens Bank of Edmond is one of Moven’s first deals with a community bank since founder Brett King announced in March 2020 that he was closing the challenger bank side of Moven's business to pivot from a direct-to-consumer finance model to a business-to-business (B2B) one.
The fintech had planned to spin off its digital bank last year, but the coronavirus pandemic put a dent in the project's funding. Through its partnership with Q2, the fintech is turning its focus to growing its enterprise software business, Moven Enterprise.
The $350 million-asset Citizens has never targeted an affinity group with a banking service — the bank has plenty of liquidity, a limited capital base and its focus has always been on organic and not necessarily exponential growth, Castilla said.
But when she heard what Moven and Q2 were building with the involvement of King and Moven's chief revenue officer, Bryan Clagett, she said she was intrigued by the proposition to partner.
"You want to listen whenever they're coming to the table with something," she said.
The digital bank will target an underserved community that Castilla said is "near and dear" to her heart.
"Our team's passion and experience and then through the partnership with Q2 and Moven, we really felt like we could change the world for a segment of our population that isn’t currently served well," she said. "It's something that is both near to us from a geography standpoint, but then has reach around the nation."
Moven and Q2's collaboration offers a solution for banks that are losing market share to a growing number of challenger banks, Clagett told Banking Dive last year.
Castilla said she hopes her bank’s partnership with Moven can serve as a blueprint for other small community banks that want to launch their own digital banks.
"We feel that it’s a duty that we have to lead and pave the way, in some cases, for other community banks, so that our whole industry can remain relevant and is able to prosper for decades to come," she said.
