Working with financial institutions, one belief has stayed with us the whole time: technology should bring people closer together, not create more distance between them. That’s the argument IC CEO Rob Nikkel makes in his latest article, featured in Canadian SME Small Business Magazine, “Why Connection is the Competitive Advantage for Small to Midsize Financial Institutions.”
As digital banking, AI tools, and mobile apps make financial services faster and more convenient, we think there’s one thing worth protecting in all of it: human connection. For small and midsize financial institutions especially, we’d argue that connection isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a genuine competitive advantage, and one that larger national brands can’t easily replicate.
Rob points to research showing that customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand stay loyal because they truly prefer it, not simply because it’s convenient, and that emotional attachment can account for a significant share of a brand’s overall value. For financial institutions, where customers are trusting an organization with something as personal as their financial well-being, that connection is what turns a transaction into a relationship.
The part of the piece we care most about, though, looks inward. Customer experience doesn’t start with the customer. It starts behind the scenes, with whether employees have what they need to do their jobs well: the right information, the right context, the right support. When they do, that confidence shows up in every interaction. When they don’t, it shows up too: a longer conversation, an employee stuck searching for an answer that should have been easy to find. Small gaps. But multiply them across hundreds of employees and thousands of customer interactions, and those gaps stop being small. They start to define how an entire organization feels from the outside.
Here’s where we land, and it’s something we believe deeply: the answer isn’t to resist technology, including AI. It’s to make sure we’re using it to strengthen connection, not replace it. The institutions that come out ahead won’t be the ones with the most technology. They’ll be the ones that use it with intention, in service of the relationships that actually matter.
We’re grateful to Canadian SME for the chance to share this. Technology will keep evolving, one way or another. The organizations that do well by it will be the ones that never lose sight of why connection matters in the first place.
