Digital Onboarding, an SaaS company based in Boston, helping more than 100 financial institutions deepen their customer relationships, announced it closed a $58 million growth investment from Boston-based growth equity firm Volition Capital.

The investment follows rapid secular growth for Digital Onboarding as banks and credit unions increasingly seek out digital solutions to drive customer engagement and additional product adoption.

According to the 2023 Future of Finance Report, 64% of customers do not have positive digital experiences in banking, and 39% say poorly integrated customer service tools are the primary cause of frustration. As a result, 25-40% of new checking accounts are closed within the first year. With increased competition from megabanks and fintechs and rising customer acquisition costs, banks and credit unions are focused on improving mid-funnel customer relationships through digital channels but have struggled to do so at scale.

Banks and credit unions rely on analog onboarding processes, including paper welcome kits, phone calls, generic mailers, and emails. Enrollment friction prevents new customers from adopting critical account-related services like direct deposit, digital banking, and automatic card payments, which drive member profitability. While the marketing automation ecosystem is mature, solutions focus on top-of-the-funnel, broad-consumer customer acquisition versus post-account, journey-based engagement that is purpose-built for financial institutions.

Digital Onboarding addresses this problem and differentiates itself with a digital engagement platform built specifically for banks and credit unions to grow and service existing customer relationships. The company’s platform enables financial institutions to engage with customers via targeted, journey-based communication and action-oriented microsites to drive account primacy. The platform includes a library of campaigns along with proprietary and third-party widgets that can easily be added to its microsites, on bank landing pages, and within third-party digital banking applications.

“Banks and credit unions are pushing further into digital maturity, with many providing online banking and developing robust campaigns for customer acquisition. However, digital transformation often stalls at the onboarding stage of the new customer or member lifecycle,”

said Ted Brown, CEO of Digital Onboarding.

“Financial institutions have a significant opportunity to make enrolling in and setting up deposit, payment, and other services simple and seamless. Making these as accessible and easy to complete as possible has a measurable positive impact on customer retention and loyalty.”

The $58 million growth investment from Volition Capital will support Digital Onboarding’s goals to accelerate its product roadmap, improve support for existing customers, and drive awareness amongst target prospects. Digital Onboarding plans to leverage the investment to propel its platform with additional segmentation and profile management, marketing attribution, machine learning, and embedded fintech functionality. The company also plans to grow the team with an objective to nearly double the headcount by the end of 2024.

“Banks and credit unions must prioritize user experience and simplicity across every stage of the customer journey to maximize the quality of their relationships and reduce churn–especially with an ever-growing number of primary banking choices,”

said Sean Cantwell, Volition Capital Managing Partner.

“This is because customers value experience and ease of use much more than any amount of digital banking features. We see Digital Onboarding’s leadership position being further strengthened as financial institutions embrace solutions to engage with new customers in ways that drive organic growth.”

The company was co-founded by Ted Brown and Jonathan Crossman in 2015, originally as SalesBrief, a SaaS business focused on simplifying and accelerating complex B2B sales cycles to produce better outcomes. In 2017, the company pivoted after entering the Fintech Accelerator of DCU, one of the country’s largest credit unions. The team launched as a successful pilot with the DCU in the second half of 2017 and began selling the platform to other institutions in January of 2018.

Featured image credit: Ted Brown, CEO of Digital Onboarding