By Devon Kinkead

When Nelson Repenning, my former professor at MITSloan, business partner, and friend and Don Kieffer tell the Standard Chartered story in their new book, There’s Got to Be a Better Way, the headline isn’t “more meetings fixed everything.” It’s that good work design turned a 120-day approval slog into a 20-day flow, unlocking >$250M/year in otherwise foregone revenue. They did it by (1) connecting the human chain—putting all 16 risk owners and project leads in a single weekly huddle guided by a rank-ordered “common backlog”—and (2) regulating the flow so the top one or two items got finished every week before starting more. 

That one design change eliminated the asynchronous back-and-forth (conflicting asks from separate risk functions, local reprioritization, task-switching) that was burning calendar and cash. And because work flowed in a shared lane, problems surfaced immediately and were handled in a separate weekly “improvement hour.” 

There’s a second lesson embedded earlier in the book: start small, let results travel. At Standard Chartered, thousands of bite-size problem-solving projects compounded to $150M impact in <2 years and 10,000 colleagues using the method. 

Now, what does that imply for loan growth using automated prescreen marketing?

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Prescreen has the same failure modes—and the same fixes

Automated prescreen lives at the intersection of lending (underwriting, rates), marketing (creatives, cadence), risk/compliance (FCRA), data (Experian ADS), and channels (email, direct mail, digital banking, SMS). The work crosses functions, so static, serial handoffs create the exact gridlock, task-switching, and local prioritization that slowed Standard Chartered’s approvals. 

Micronotes Prescreen is built to automate the mechanics—eligibility, offer generation, file exchange with Experian, compliant creatives, launch and reporting—but organizational flow decisions still determine your cycle time from “market signal” to “offer in-hand.” 

Here’s how to apply Standard Chartered’s moves to prescreen—verbatim, this quarter.

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1) Create a single, rank-ordered Prescreen Backlog (the “common backlog”)

• Make one list of the top 3 prescreen “slices” (e.g., Auto Refi for existing customers, HELOC consolidation within geo X, Personal Consolidation to attriters). Order by NPV per calendar day so every day of delay is visible cost—just as Standard Chartered priced each day of approval slip. Then, finish the top 1–2 slices every week. 
• Tie each slice to concrete inputs Micronotes Prescreen needs: underwriting criteria, rate/fee sheets, campaign settings. Don’t start the slice until those inputs are “clean.”
• If you don’t have the data to start building a Prescreen Backlog, get a free near-branch loan growth opportunity analysis here.  

Why this works: a common backlog kills local reprioritization (“my campaign first”) and channels everyone to the system’s critical path—exactly what drove the 120→20-day drop at Standard Chartered. 

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2) Run a weekly Prescreen Huddle plus a separate Improvement Hour

• Huddle (45–60 min): CLO, CMO, Compliance, Risk/CRO, IT/Data, and Campaign Ops meet once, live. Review the top of the backlog: Did last week’s slices ship? What’s blocking the next two? No status theater; demo the actual deliverable (selection file generated, creatives FCRA-checked, Experian file returned, comms in the queue). Micronotes enable this process through a weekly campaign update email as shown below in figure 1.  

Figure 1

• Improvement Hour (30–60 min): Pick one change you can make this week to remove the biggest blocker (e.g., rate-sheet version control; faster compliance template path, faster responses on creative updates). This mirrors Standard Chartered’s second weekly ritual. 

Why this works: separating delivery from improvement keeps flow moving while also increasing capacity week-over-week. 

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3) Visualize the work with a simple wall/board tied to the tool’s artifacts

Map the end-to-end Micronotes Prescreen flow for each slice and move a single card left-to-right only when the real artifact exists:

1. Inputs locked (underwriting, rates/fees, campaign settings) → 2) Selection file generated & sent → 3) Prescreen file received (PII) → 4) Compliant creatives approved → 5) Channel queued → 6) Launched → 7) Results posted (opens/CTR/response, booked loans/HELOCs, NPV).

This keeps everyone aligned to the actual mechanics of the platform—Experian ADS, selection/prescreen file exchange, FCRA-checked creatives, and deployment/reporting—so you’re visualizing truth, not opinions.  Micronotes facilitates this process with a Monday.com work board.

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4) Limit WIP: fewer slices in process → faster cycle times

If the board “goes pink” (everything is late), you’ve overloaded the system. Cancel or pause slices until work moves. Don’t confuse busy people with a productive system—a misconception Standard Chartered had to dismantle. 

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5) Start small and scale

Pilot with one campaign (e.g., ALR to existing members via email). Prove cycle-time and revenue gains, then replicate. That’s how impact spread inside Standard Chartered—thousands of small wins rolling up to nine-figure value. 

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A 90-day prescreen playbook (field-tested)

Weeks 1–2: Design for flow

• Stand up the single backlog (top 20 slices ranked by NPV/day).
• Establish the weekly huddle + improvement hour; publish attendance and rules of engagement.
• Finalize the wall/board mapping the Micronotes Prescreen stages to visible artifacts. 

Weeks 3–6: Ship two slices

• Lock underwriting criteria + rate/fee sheets for slice #1 and #2.
• Generate Selection File → send to Experian → receive Prescreen File (PII); stage compliant creatives; launch. 

Weeks 7–10: Raise the ceiling

• Use Improvement Hour to remove the biggest blocker (e.g., rate-sheet freshness, compliance templates).
• Review post campaign analytics and determine what’s winning market share and what isn’t.

Weeks 11–13: Scale what works

• Keep backlog strictly ordered; finish the top 1–2 every quarter.
• Publish results: cycle time (days from slice start→launch), booked balance/loans, NPV/day freed by faster flow. Tie back to objectives: marketing share, wallet share, conversion, compliance, reporting. 

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What to measure (and why finance will love it)

• Cycle time per slice (days): Your version of Standard Chartered’s “120→20.”
• $ per calendar day: NPV of incremental bookings divided by elapsed days, so the backlog is ordered by value of speed (not politics).
• Right-first-time rate: % of slices that launch without rework (proxy for clean inputs & compliance).
• Throughput: slices shipped per week.
• FCRA compliance adherence via templated creatives & approvals in the tool. 

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Bottom line

Standard Chartered’s results didn’t come from heroics—they came from designing the work to flow across functions: a single backlog, one weekly lane to finish work, and a habit of fixing the system every week. Automated prescreen has the same cross-functional anatomy and benefits from the same operating system. Wire these principles on top of Micronotes Automated Prescreen—clean inputs → selection → Experian → PII → compliant creatives → launch → learn—and you’ll reduce time-to-offer, raise conversion, and create space for discovery instead of firefighting. 

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Source: Repenning & Kieffer, There’s Got to Be a Better Way (Standard Chartered approvals flow, common backlog, improvement hour, and quantified impact). 

By Devon Kinkead

Introduction

Banking futurists keep announcing the death of the branch. Yet, real data tells a more complicated story.

Micronotes’ post-campaign analytics revealed that home equity loan conversions increased sharply the closer members lived to a branch. Members within one mile of a branch converted at five times the rate of those more than five miles away — and beyond 15 miles, conversions nearly vanished.

That finding seems to contradict Brett King’s provocative thesis in Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow, summarized in The Financial Brand, which argues that branches have become functionally irrelevant in the digital age.

So which is true? Are branches still essential, or are they obsolete?

The Data: Distance Still Drives Conversions

Distance Range (mi)	Conversion Rate
0–1	0.5 %
1–5	0.1 %
5–10	0.1 %
10–15	0.2 %
15+	0 %

Micronotes Analysis, Feb 2025 — new customer HELOC Firm Offer of Credit

Why This Happens: It’s Not About Transactions — It’s About Trust

The conversion lift near branches isn’t a relic of paper processes — it’s a psychological signal. Physical proximity reinforces trust, familiarity, and confidence in a brand’s permanence.

When the product is high-stakes — like pledging home equity — prospects want the reassurance that someone nearby can help. A branch’s mere existence reduces perceived risk, even if the borrower never walks through the door.

In short: branches still move people, even if they no longer move paper.

Behavioral Mechanisms Behind the Branch Effect

1. Trust & Reassurance
   Proximity communicates stability — “If I need help, I know where to go.”
2. Hybrid Journeys
   Digital buyers still toggle between screens and conversations. A nearby branch lowers friction when they need a human step.
3. Local Brand Exposure
   Branch presence amplifies marketing awareness via signage, sponsorships, and community footprint.
4. Engaged Member Cohorts
   Households near branches often have stronger engagement or relationship tenure, which compounds conversion probability.

Reconciling Brett King’s Argument

Brett King is right about one thing: the traditional, transaction-centric branch has reached the end of its useful life.
Routine banking is mobile-native. Consumers want instant, 24/7 access and invisible infrastructure.

But our data show that for high-trust, high-involvement decisions, branches still exert measurable influence.
They no longer define banking — they reinforce belief in the institution behind it.

In that sense, King’s thesis and the Micronotes findings are two sides of the same coin.
Branches aren’t obsolete; they’re evolving from utility to symbol.

The New Model: Branch-Light, Trust-Heavy

1. Digital-First, Branch-Smart
   Design campaigns digitally — but leverage branch proximity as a conversion multiplier for complex products.
2. Geo-Weighted Marketing
   Use distance from branch as a predictive variable. Increase bids or offer value inside a 15-mile “trust radius.”
3. Redefine the Branch Footprint
   Shrink physical square footage, but expand reach through micro-hubs, co-locations, and advisory centers.
4. Equalize Digital Trust for Distant Members
   Provide virtual consults, video closings, and live-chat concierge services to neutralize the distance penalty.

The Takeaway

The data and the futurists are both right — just about different things.
Yes, digital dominates transactions. But trust — the invisible currency of banking — still benefits from physical proximity – particularly when the stakes are high.

Branches may be fewer and smaller in the future, but they’ll remain powerful conversion amplifiers in markets where emotion, risk, and reassurance intersect.

The smartest banks won’t be branch-heavy or branch-free. They’ll be branch-light — and trust-rich.

By Devon Kinkead

The shift in American retirement investing over the past two decades offers crucial strategic insights for community financial institutions. According to Parker et al.’s forthcoming Journal of Finance study, middle-class Americans now invest 71% of their retirement wealth in equities—a dramatic increase from the 58% documented by Ameriks and Zeldes (2004) in the 1990s—largely driven by Target Date Funds (TDFs) becoming default investment options after the 2006 Pension Protection Act (PPA).

Understanding Target Date Funds

Before diving into the implications, it’s worth explaining what made TDFs so transformative. A Target Date Fund is essentially a “one-stop shop” retirement investment that automatically adjusts its mix of stocks and bonds as you age. Think of it like cruise control for your retirement savings. If you’re 30 years old and plan to retire around 2060, you’d choose a “2060 Fund.” According to Parker et al.’s research, “A typical TDF maintains 90% of its assets in equity funds until roughly 20 years before retirement date, and then decreases this share as employees age to 40-50 percent in equity at target retirement date.” The genius is that this rebalancing happens automatically. You don’t need to remember to make changes, understand market timing, or even know what percentage of stocks versus bonds is appropriate for your age. The fund does all of this for you, solving a problem that had plagued retirement savers for decades: most people either took too much risk near retirement or too little risk when young.

The Power of Smart Defaults

The most striking finding is how effectively default options shape financial behavior. Parker et al. document that when employers switched to TDFs, “younger new enrollees (those aged 25-35 when they enroll) [invested] 5% more of their financial wealth in the stock market” (specifically 5.5% as shown in Table IV). Meanwhile, older workers reduced equity exposure—both moves aligned with optimal lifecycle investing theory. Remarkably, even workers who weren’t defaulted into TDFs eventually adopted similar strategies, with the researchers noting this “convergence” effect over time.

For community banks and credit unions, this demonstrates the enormous responsibility and opportunity in product design. When we talk about “defaults,” in this context, we mean the pre-selected options that automatically apply unless a customer actively chooses something different—like the standard overdraft protection settings on a checking account or the automatic minimum payment on a credit card. Every default setting—from savings account auto-transfers to loan payment structures—shapes member financial health at scale.

Income Disparities Demand Targeted Solutions

The research reveals stark differences by income level. According to Table IV, lower-income workers benefited most from TDF defaults, with their equity allocation increasing by 5.99% compared to just 1.86% for workers in the highest income tercile. This suggests automated, well-designed financial products can help close wealth-building gaps.

Community financial institutions, which often serve more diverse income populations than large banks, should prioritize developing simplified, automated products that guide less financially sophisticated members toward better outcomes without requiring active management.

The Persistence Problem in Savings

While portfolio allocation improved dramatically, contribution rates barely budged. The study finds that “average retirement saving rates across all birth cohorts average 4.5% at age 25 and 8.5% at 65 years of age.” The Pension Protection Act’s savings-focused provisions actually correlated with decreased contribution rates initially. As shown in Table VI, “those aged 25-35 [had] -0.43% of income [lower contributions] for those age 25-35, and [this] becomes increasingly negative with age, reaching -1.2% for those age 55-65.”

This highlights a critical challenge: changing savings behavior is far harder than changing allocation behavior. Community institutions need to recognize that simply offering better savings products isn’t enough—they need comprehensive strategies addressing the psychological and structural barriers to saving.

Strategic Imperatives for Community Institutions

1. Embrace Behavioral Architecture Design products with optimal pre-set features based on member demographics and lifecycle stages. A 25-year-old opening their first checking account should have different automatic settings (like default savings transfers or overdraft preferences) than a 55-year-old consolidating retirement accounts.

2. Automate Complexity Away TDFs succeeded by making sophisticated rebalancing automatic—growing from “less than $8 billion in 2000 to managing almost $6 trillion in 2021” according to the paper. Community institutions should similarly embed financial expertise into product structures, offering “set-it-and-forget-it” options for debt payment optimization, emergency fund building, and long-term savings.

3. Deploy Continuous Automated Prescreening Following the model described by services like Micronotes, community institutions should implement continuous automated prescreening to identify when members qualify for better rates or products. This proactive approach can automatically alert members when they’re eligible for lower-cost loans or better account features, reducing borrowing costs without requiring members to constantly shop around. Just as TDFs automatically rebalance portfolios, automated prescreening can continuously optimize members’ financial products.

4. Focus on the Underserved The dramatic benefits for lower-income workers suggest community institutions can create significant value by designing products specifically for financially vulnerable populations, potentially partnering with employers to integrate these into workplace benefits.

5. Rethink Financial Education The TDF revolution succeeded not through education but through structural change. While financial literacy remains important, community institutions should prioritize making good financial decisions automatic rather than relying solely on member education.

6. Leverage Regulatory Tailwinds The Pension Protection Act shows how regulatory changes can catalyze massive behavioral shifts. Community institutions should actively engage with regulators and policymakers to advocate for frameworks that enable better default options in banking products.

The Long Game

Perhaps most importantly, the research shows these changes took time. As Parker et al. note [in Table V], the effects persisted but declined over five years—for young workers, the equity share difference between treated and control groups went from 3.63% in year two to 2.57% in year five. Community institutions must commit to long-term strategies, measuring success not just by immediate adoption but by sustained behavioral change across their member base.

The transformation of American retirement investing proves that thoughtfully designed defaults can overcome decades of suboptimal financial behavior. For community banks and credit unions committed to member financial wellness, the lesson is clear: the architecture of financial products matters as much as their availability. By embedding expertise into product design and making optimal choices automatic, community institutions can drive profound improvements in financial outcomes—particularly for those who need it most.

Source: Parker, J.A., Schoar, A., Cole, A., & Simester, D. (forthcoming). Household Portfolios and Retirement Saving over the Life Cycle. Journal of Finance.