CIT - Company of the Year - Banking

Company: CIT, New York, NY
Company Description: CIT is a leading national bank focused on empowering businesses and personal savers with the financial agility to navigate their goals. CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) is a financial holding company with over a century of experience and operates a principal bank subsidiary, CIT Bank, N.A. (Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender).
Nomination Category: Company / Organization Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Company of the Year - Banking - Large

Nomination Title: Strengthening CAB client relationships through virtual engagement

CIT's Community Association Banking business is a national leader in homeowners association banking services, including certificates of deposit, money market accounts, and a variety of digital payments solutions, supported by the expertise of CIT's Treasury and Payment Services business.

CIT is a leading national bank focused on empowering businesses and personal savers with the financial agility to navigate their goals. CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) is a financial holding company with over a century of experience and operates a principal bank subsidiary, CIT Bank, N.A. (Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender). The company's commercial banking segment includes commercial financing, community association banking, middle market banking, equipment and vendor financing, factoring, railcar financing, treasury and payments services, and capital markets and asset management. CIT's consumer banking segment includes a national direct bank and regional branch network.

Before the pandemic, the CIT CAB team mostly engaged with clients in-person at regional events. With in-person meetings no longer an option, the team radically reset its customer engagement strategy and focused on supporting and caring for clients in an ever-evolving environment. What started out as virtual coffee chats grew into larger engagement events such as training webinars and virtual activities like painting.

We first launched “Coffee & Conversation”, a new program to check in with clients via phone and discuss their business needs. For the “coffee” portion of the program, participating clients received a Starbucks gift card.

Clients were also invited via email to learn more about CIT and receive a sweet surprise—a cookie gift that reinforced CIT’s brand and messaging.

Recognizing that the holidays were different this year, we continued the tasty treats. To thank clients and extend holiday wishes, the CAB team sent premium brownie tins to more than 400 clients.

We then expanded our virtual engagement efforts to hold webinars to educate existing and prospective clients on how CIT could help them best serve their customers through topics like automating processes and CAB’s Premium Reserve Account solutions.

As online banking capabilities became even more crucial in the context of the pandemic, the team also presented in-depth demos of the online banking platform and how to best leverage features to meet unique business needs.

Additionally, we took typically offline activities online, engaging with clients through virtual events such as wine tasting and a painting party.

On Jan. 1, 2020, CIT acquired Mutual of Omaha Bank and its Community Association Banking business. While navigating this massive change, in addition to uncharted waters with COVID-19, we were able to successfully serve our clients while continuing to highlight CIT’s individualized service, customized technology, smart savings solutions and operational efficiency for community association management companies.

The achievements of our virtual engagement efforts helped to further strengthen CIT’s position as a leader in the community association banking industry. By the end of 2020, CIT’s financial results showed that we further grew lower-cost HOA deposits, which reached almost $5.9 billion at year-end, representing a growth rate of over 20% since acquisition.

Our efforts went a long way to positively impact client relationships. Clients appreciated the various tasty treats and the actions CIT took to show care during a difficult time. For example, we took extra steps to thoughtfully select the holiday gift, with the brownie tins from Greyston Bakery, a B Corp certified company that shares CIT’s commitment to invest in local communities.

With the pivot to virtual training, clients were able to easily attend and receive the information they needed. Attendees shared anecdotal feedback that they were informative and helpful. As a result of the webinars, the CAB team closed three new client deals.

By connecting with clients through innovative ways, the CIT CAB team saw high engagement and strong performance, ultimately enabling clients to manage their financial needs and customer demands in a more dynamic and digitized environment.

-CIT Community Association Banking homepage (link) https://www.cit.com/CAB
-CIT Community Association Banking video (link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04FYgRhqchQ&;feature=emb_logo

-Understanding reserves Email (attachment)
-Reserve Products Webinar Presentation (attachment)
-Sweet Treat Email (attachment)
-Harvest Coffee and Conversation Email (attachment)
-Commercial Online Banking Email (attachment)