By Devon Kinkead

If your 2026 plan still waits for balances to drop before you act, you’re showing up after the goodbye. The winners will spot “why” and “when” long before the money moves—then intervene with the right human + digital touch.

Context: what history taught us

Across the 2008 crisis, the long zero-rate era, and the rate whiplash of 2022–2024, one pattern held: deposits flow to whoever delivers clarity and convenience at the moment of need. Institutions that treated retention as an always-on discipline—proactive outreach, clean journeys, fee fairness—lost less and deepened more. The next cycle won’t be kinder. Customers expect their bank to already know what they need, and your teams must execute without friction.

What’s different now (and why it matters)

1. Hidden pain points are the churn factory. Traditional retention models are reactive. They see the balance drop; they miss the string of frictions that caused it. New research in banking CX highlights how banks overlook broken journeys (e.g., dispute loops, fee surprises) because signals are buried in silos; graph-style analytics can reveal these relational, cross-journey patterns and surface early attrition clusters—before accounts close. The Financial Brand
2. Life events are the deposit moment. The biggest inflows (bonus, inheritance, home sale, business liquidity) are also the riskiest moments for attrition if you don’t engage in time. Micronotes’ “Exceptional Deposits™” approach detects outlier deposits in real time and launches a micro-interview in mobile/online banking to capture intent, route to a banker (when needed), and convert the moment into a stickier relationship. Micronotes+2
3. Execution is a people system problem. Retention programs stall when meetings multiply and teams burn cycles on rework. MIT Sloan’s Leading the Future of Work research shows meeting-free days materially raise autonomy, communication, satisfaction and productivity—peaking around three no-meeting days per week. That’s an operations unlock for any cross-functional retention “tiger team.” 
4. Culture is capacity. Toxic culture is the single strongest predictor of employee attrition—10x more powerful than pay during the Great Resignation—draining service quality right where retention is won or lost. Fixing retention without fixing culture is bailing water with a hole in the boat. 
5. Happy teams perform better. Large-scale evidence finds employees with higher baseline well-being dramatically outperform peers (about 4x more awards in a longitudinal study), a reminder that frontline engagement directly affects customer retention moments. 

The 2026 Micronotes-informed retention system

1) Detect sooner: instrument your “why”

• Adopt relationship/graph analytics to connect customers, products, journeys, fees and service interactions. Look for clusters: e.g., a spike in disputes linked to one ATM or app flow. Use these maps to route proactive outreach to the entire at-risk group, not just the loudest caller. The Financial Brand
• Wire in life-event detection. Enable Exceptional Deposits™ on your digital rails so a statistically unusual deposit triggers a short, conversational interview (not a static banner) to learn intent—saving for a home, paying down debt, moving money to a brokerage—and present the most relevant option (growth CD with partial withdrawal, wealth consult, 529, treasury management). Micronotes+1

2) Act faster: shrink time-to-help

• Automate the “handoff contracts.” For every triggered conversation, define the exact deliverable to the next role (advisor, branch, operations). No email ping-pong. The Micronotes model moves typical cases to auto-fulfillment and only escalates atypical ones to leaders. Micronotes
• Fix the top three journey breaks each quarter. Use your graph findings to quantify loss from each friction (e.g., disputes that generate overdraft fees and callbacks) and repair in order of revenue at risk. The Financial Brand article stresses moving beyond row-and-column analytics to relational issues like network contagion and bank-driven frictions. The Financial Brand

3) Personalize the save

• Event-aware offers beat blanket rates. If a life event is inferred (job change, move, retirement), lead with the adjacent need (mortgage portability, financial plan) and then the deposit wrapper (laddered CDs, HY savings). That positioning boosts relevance and stickiness. The Financial Brand
• Close the Gen Z relevancy gap. Younger customers expect anticipatory, AI-driven guidance and will walk if they feel unseen—so the “interview at the moment of deposit” is not cute UX; it’s table stakes. The Financial Brand

4) Prove it with tighter metrics

• Measure beyond balance. Track retention lift, balance persistence at 30/90/180 days, incremental NIM, cross-sell uptake, complaint rate, and time-to-resolution. Micronotes advocates running a 30-day pilot to baseline these metrics and demonstrate lift quickly. Micronotes

Operating model upgrades (so this actually ships)

• Institutionalize “no-meeting days” for the retention squad (e.g., Tue/Wed/Thu meeting-free). Expect higher productivity, lower stress, and better collaboration scores—conditions that accelerate journey fixes. 
• Make culture a KPI. Report quarterly on micro-cultures in service, fraud, digital and branch teams. Toxic pockets sabotage retention; leaders must detect and detox them with the same rigor used for NIM. 
• Hire and develop for well-being. Treat team well-being as a performance input: happier, more optimistic employees measurably outperform, which shows up in faster, friendlier saves. 

---

What to start next week

1. Stand up a 30-day pilot: feed digital/mobile data to trigger Exceptional Deposits™; measure retention lift, balance persistence, and NIM. Micronotes
2. Map one friction end-to-end (e.g., disputes) using graph analysis; publish a 60-day fix plan with dollar impact. The Financial Brand
3. Protect execution time with two to three no-meeting days for the squad; review outcomes monthly. 

---

The forward look

By 2026, deposit retention won’t be about paying the highest teaser rate. It will be about seeing the moment, asking the one right question, and moving fast—with culture and workflows that make great saves the default. If you can detect life events as they happen, fix the few frictions that matter, and let data guide timely human outreach, you’ll keep the dollars and the relationship.

By Devon Kinkead

The credit union industry enters 2026 facing a paradox. Second-quarter 2025 data from Callahan & Associates reveals operational resilience—net interest margins climbing to 3.32% and return on assets improving—yet member growth has slowed to rates unseen in over a decade. Regional disparities are widening, with Western states thriving while parts of the Midwest and South lose members entirely. As economic uncertainty drives members to save more, credit union leaders must rethink their fundamental approach to leading organizations through complexity.

MIT Sloan Management Review’s research on the future of work offers a compelling framework for navigating these challenges—spanning employee well-being, meeting culture, toxic workplace dynamics, and organizational resilience. Each principle speaks directly to the headwinds credit unions face.

Happiness as a Performance Strategy

Credit unions competing for talent against larger banks and fintechs should take note of striking MIT Sloan research: employee happiness predicts exceptional performance more powerfully than any demographic factor. In a study of nearly one million U.S. Army service members tracked over five years, the happiest employees earned four times as many performance awards as the unhappiest—a finding that held across over 190 job categories and remained significant after controlling for education, experience, and background.

For credit unions watching member growth slow to 2.0% annually, investing in employee well-being isn’t a soft initiative—it’s a competitive necessity. The research identifies three actionable steps: measure happiness in hiring and ongoing assessments using validated tools, develop it through evidence-based exercises like gratitude practices and strengths identification, and retain happy employees who spread positivity throughout the organization. With core members deepening relationships and increasing average balances by $435 over the past year, frontline employee engagement directly shapes whether that momentum continues or stalls.

Reclaiming Time Through Meeting-Free Days

MIT Sloan research across 76 companies reveals a counterintuitive finding: reducing meetings by 60%—equivalent to three meeting-free days per week—increased cooperation by 55% and reduced stress by 57%. Productivity rose 73%, and satisfaction climbed 65%. Perhaps most surprisingly, communication improved rather than deteriorated as employees found better asynchronous ways to connect using project management tools and messaging platforms.

For credit unions navigating the tension between member service and operational efficiency, this offers a practical lever. With indirect lending contracting 1.2% year-over-year as cooperatives redirect resources toward organic member growth, staff need focused time to develop relationships and pursue meaningful work. The research suggests the optimal balance leaves only two days per week for meetings, preserving three for concentrated effort while maintaining essential social connections.

Detoxifying Culture Before It Drives Attrition

MIT Sloan’s analysis of over 1.3 million Glassdoor reviews identified toxic culture as the single best predictor of attrition during the Great Resignation—ten times more predictive than compensation. The researchers pinpointed five attributes that poison culture in employees’ eyes: disrespectful, noninclusive, unethical, cutthroat, and abusive environments. Notably, inclusion emerged as the most powerful predictor of whether employees view their organization as toxic.

The geographic variation in credit union member growth—strong in Utah, Oregon, and California; weak or negative in Ohio, Indiana, and South Carolina—may reflect cultural factors alongside economic ones. Credit unions in struggling markets should examine whether pockets of toxicity exist within their organizations, even if aggregate culture scores appear healthy. The research warns that measuring culture only in averages can obscure experiences that profoundly affect subsets of employees. For an industry built on cooperative values and community trust, ensuring every employee experiences those values daily is strategically essential.

Building Resilience Through Systems, Not Slogans

As members respond to economic anxiety by increasing savings to 4.5%—the highest personal savings rate in a year—credit union employees face their own uncertainties about the future. MIT Sloan researchers caution against simply telling employees to be resilient. Instead, leaders must create environments where resilience becomes easier through shared practices, meaningful one-on-one conversations, and systems that support well-being collectively rather than placing the burden on individuals.

Practical applications include establishing team rituals that provide stability during uncertainty, using one-on-one meetings for genuine support rather than status updates, and creating shared language that makes it safe to acknowledge struggles. Since the pandemic, having a supportive manager has become the largest predictor of workplace happiness—nearly twice as important as purpose—making these leadership behaviors directly consequential for organizational performance.

The Leadership Imperative

The credit union industry’s 2025 performance data reveals organizations that remain operationally sound but face structural challenges requiring adaptive leadership. Net interest margins provide breathing room; declining member growth creates urgency. MIT Sloan’s research suggests that technical strategies alone won’t suffice.

The leaders who will guide their credit unions successfully through 2026 will prioritize employee happiness as a driver of exceptional performance, protect focused work time while maintaining meaningful connection, actively monitor for and address toxic microcultures, and build systems that support resilience rather than simply demanding it. For an industry founded on people helping people, this human-centered leadership framework aligns naturally with credit union identity. The question is whether leaders will embrace it with the intentionality the moment demands.

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?

---

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.

---

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. 

---

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. 

---

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.

---

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. 

---

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. 

---

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. 

---

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. 

---

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. 

---

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.