Newtek Bank saw a 121% increase in deposits since December after partnering with fintech Apiture’s digital banking platform, according to a company announcement.

Newtek One Inc. acquired the National Bank of New York City in January and renamed it Newtek Bank. Following the transaction, the lender rolled out its digital account-opening solution with Apiture, a Wilmington, North Carolina-based firm, and began promoting digital banking in March.

Of the $170 million in client deposits the bank gathered from March through April, more than $115 million came from the digital platform, Barry Sloane, Newtek’s president, chairman and CEO said in a statement.

The bank is already in the payment processing, payroll solutions and insurance agency

business. It also manages people's hardware and software and makes loan payments, according to the executive.

“We are going to be working with Apiture to create front-end interfaces that make it a lot more user-friendly for the customer without the use of branches, bankers, brokers and [banking development officers],” Sloane said.

Sloane noted that financial institutions need to understand that hundreds of bankers are not needed to raise deposits. Fintechs like Apiture can help in the process, he said. 

Apiture’s embedded banking components, which take application programming interfaces from its solutions and embed them within Newtek’s dashboard portal, helped the lender use the fintech’s core servicing products. This also helped expose those APIs through Newtek’s portal offering, which gave the bank the flexibility to offer services in a way it wants, Chris Babcock, Apiture’s CEO, said.

Babcock said a financial institution’s data can drive insights into a bank’s marketing campaign and help it better understand customers. The challenging high interest rate environment can be a good time for banks to enhance their digital services, which in turn is beneficial for fintechs, he said.

“Sometimes, a challenging macro environment can actually create opportunity, and we think this is this is one of those times,” Babcock noted.

Last month, Apiture launched Business Insights, a new cash flow forecasting feature with the integration of the Monit platform, and also entered into a partnership with Neural Payments, a peer-to-peer payments service for banks and customers.

Managing partnerships

“I think that we clearly understand the challenges of banking and technology because they really don't go together. Well, you have got a regulatory aspect. You have got legacy people in these organizations that make the battle uphill. They are resistant to change,” Sloane noted.

Many fintechs provide software without acknowledging that there is an operational process behind it for the client experience, Sloane said. 

Babcock noted that for smaller institutions, it is not always the technology challenge that becomes the hurdle. Instead, it is the challenge of managing all the relationships involving the different fintechs — a space where Apiture steps in to help, he said.

“We have the relationships with the fintechs integrated into our product and then give that overall solution to the institution,” Babcock said. “So, that positions us really well to be able to continue to grow, and we continue to see a lot of activity in the market. Even though the macro conditions are challenging for some of these banks, that actually creates a need for upgrading their digital solution.”