The call for customized financial service solutions has never been louder, particularly in the B2B2C space. But how do we deliver personalized experiences at scale without drowning in a sea of custom code?

Rising Customer Expectations in a Lopsided Market

Two well-documented forces are influencing customer expectations of financial service experiences and disrupting incumbents who have historically been able to service large markets with singular, multi-tenant solutions. The first, of course, is the experience bar continually raised and reset by “big tech.” The second feeds off the first, with disruptive innovators in the form of startup fintechs targeting underserved market segments with bespoke solutions, gaining share, and expanding upstream.

The impact of these forces is profound. Financial institutions that historically only customized applications for their largest clients are now facing a mass exodus from broad swaths of clients if they do not upgrade and/or customize their mass-market solutions. In most instances, the teams maintaining legacy, scaled solutions lack the resources to understand and meet client needs. In turn, under-resourced teams become order takers rather than product shapers. What they manage to deliver, often delayed, misses needs and further erodes the trust they hold with longtime customers. To make matters worse, many times the multi-tenant solution becomes many instances of single-tenant solutions, draining resources in an unsustainable, unscalable cycle.

There is one more reality straining this challenge: the growing lopsidedness of markets. The largest financial institutions have seemingly unlimited resources. For instance, JP Morgan Chase recently announced a $7 billion investment in technology for the coming year. Contrast that with your local credit union, which might afford an off-the-shelf mobile banking solution that only offers balance checking.

Customers are drawn to institutions that provide customizable, value-added services and seamless digital experiences. Smaller players who can’t afford to keep up risk losing longtime customers — and their bottom line.

Financial institutions’ internal operations also rely on these digital solutions. If off-the-shelf applications don’t meet operational needs, small- to mid-size institutions face a tough choice: modify their operations to fit technology or lose customers’ interest.

As a financial service provider, you exist so financial institutions don’t have to make that choice. By partnering with you, they keep customers happy and keep their tellers, salespeople, and customer service reps working efficiently.

Building a Scalable Multi-Tenant Solution

So, how do you break this cycle? How do you build solutions that satisfy your clients’ stakeholders without draining your own resources?

Follow these steps:

1. Clarify Your Strategy

Clarify exactly which market segment you’re targeting. The needs of a community bank are vastly different from those of a super-regional institution.

Trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for disaster. As the old saying goes, “Speaking to everyone is speaking to no one.”

2. Understand Your Market

Once you’ve identified your target segment, learn about their needs and competitive landscape. Don’t just collect a wish list from your loudest customers. Conduct thorough market research to validate user needs and identify emerging trends.

With this knowledge, you can develop features that truly matter rather than chase every request that comes your way. Furthermore, you will be able to share knowledge about end customer needs with your clients, reestablishing your institution’s position of knowledge and trust.

3. Embrace Flexible Architecture

The key to a scalable, multi-tenant solution lies in your technical approach.

Instead of maintaining separate code lines for each client, consider these strategies:

• Separation of Deployments from Releases: Develop a single code base where features can be first tested and eventually turned on or off based on client needs or subscription levels via feature toggles or other mechanisms.
• Identify and Enable Client Customizations via Integration Capabilities: Provide environments and tools, such as SDKs, that allow institutions to build custom features that are linked to the core code line, but inaccessible by other clients.
• Robust Test Environments: Maintain a unified testing framework that ensures upgrades and new features don’t break existing customizations.

This approach allows you to efficiently maintain and seamlessly upgrade clients to your platform’s latest, most secure version while offering them options to configure for their unique business needs.

4. Bridge the B2B2C Gap

In financial services, you often deal with a two-sided market. You need to understand:

• Your direct clients’ needs (the financial institutions)
• Their customers’ needs (the financial services’ end-users)

By considering both perspectives, you develop solutions that not only meet your clients’ operational needs but also help them deliver better customer experiences.

5. Master Change Management

Implementing new features or upgrades is a technical challenge for you and an operational challenge for your clients. A seemingly small change, like modifying how checks are deposited, can cause chaos across hundreds of branches if not communicated beforehand.

Develop a robust change management process that includes:

• Early socialization of your product roadmap
• Clear communication about upcoming changes and their potential impacts
• Collaboration with clients to prepare their teams and processes for updates

The Path Forward

Building truly scalable multi-tenant solutions for financial services is no small feat. It requires a delicate balance of standardization, flexibility, deep market insights, and strong client relationships.

But the rewards are great. By getting this right, you help small- and mid-sized financial institutions compete with the big dogs. You enable them to offer the personalized, feature-rich experiences their customers demand while maintaining operational efficiency. Most importantly, you will defend and expand your market share.

This way, you’re not just a product builder. You’re a partner in your clients’ success.