Partner vs. Vendor: How Wealth Access Partners with Banks for Lasting Success

The traditional bank-vendor relationship is primarily transactional. In it, a bank needs a particular set of features, so they find a vendor that can provide that set of features and they sign up. 

Done deal. 

The vendor won the bank’s business (for now), and it will provide the services it was contracted to provide – no more, no less.

A partnership is different. At Wealth Access, we sit down at the table with the client to discuss their needs before, during and after the deal is done. 

Our approach is grounded in the culture of our company, which is summarized in our three core values. Today, we want to talk about how those values inform our role as a technology partner, rather than a provider, for the financial institutions we serve.

1. Listen, Learn, then Lead

The word customization is not always ideal, particularly for larger banks. Enterprise banks typically want configuration. They want a plan. They want an implementation like our Catalyst program to get to market. 

Traditional tech vendors typically remain at a safe, “outsourced-third-party-provider” distance.

Our partnerships go deeper, with Wealth Access serving as an extension of their brand. We quite literally become the technology they use to communicate with their clients – and we don’t take that job lightly.

So when we sit down to ask questions, you can bet we’re going to dig deep. We are looking to understand who they are and how they want to communicate with clients. 

And at some point in that conversation, we start to take the initiative to lead, talking about custom options versus configuration and making sure we’re going to provide the support they need to communicate with their clients exactly the way they want.

2. Focus on the Person

Every experience we create has real people making real financial decisions on the other side, and we want to make sure that there’s mutual success. In a partnership, it’s not just about the transaction, but about people achieving their long-term goals.

Sure, the end user may not ever hear the name “Wealth Access” or know what phrases like transaction enrichment even mean – and that doesn’t matter to us. What matters is that the banks we serve are able to do their job well, thus enabling customers to live their best lives. 

3. Delight in Collaboration

Our team loves the collaboration process. We plug into our clients’ teams, helping them look at problems from different perspectives. 

One of our favorite things is unlocking the collaborative potential at the banks we work with. We firmly believe that when banks (no matter how big or small) figure out how to collaborate successfully, they can not only capture additional assets, deposits, liabilities and wealth from other financial institutions, but they can also exponentially grow their business.

The Value of an Ongoing Relationship

The value a tech partner can provide goes far beyond increased revenue – that’s the ground floor for any partnership that will continue for any length of time. 

We want to ensure that a bank’s return on investment is more than just transactional. The right tech can open doors for smaller banks to compete within the big bank space by continuously innovating their customer experience – without spending billions of dollars. To that end, the ability to meet clients where they are though an omni-channel experience is priceless. 

And to keep that innovative process moving over time, we’re always working with our partners to ask the big questions: how can your bank engage more clients? How can you deliver better advice to those same clients? We believe the key to long-lasting and effective tech is in unifying customer data to scale their bank for exponential growth.

Connect with Wealth Access

Ready to see how a tech partner can take your banking to the next level? Request a demo of Wealth Access today.