Banks and credit unions spend heavily to win new relationships. The next growth opportunity may already be moving through the checking accounts they hold.
For 2026 and beyond, client retention and expansion rank as financial services leaders’ top business priority at 41%, slightly ahead of acquisition at 40%, according to the HubSpot and Mole Street report The State of Financial Services Growth.
The economics support that change, as ProSight Financial Association reports that acquiring a new checking account costs well over $200. In 2025, 43% of financial institutions offered cash incentives for new checking accounts, with an average value of $277.
Transaction history can show where the rest of the relationship lives, creating opportunities to earn more deposits, lending relationships, and investment activity.
Transaction history reveals more than balances
A checking account can offer a view into a customer’s or member’s broader financial life. Repeated transfers to another bank, brokerage, or online savings provider can show where deposits or investments are building. Recurring payments to an outside lender or card issuer can point to debt relationships another institution already owns.
Transaction history can reveal the broader shape of a customer’s or member’s financial relationship. Outbound transfers may point to deposits or investments held elsewhere, while recurring debits can indicate loans, credit cards, mortgages, or installment payments serviced by another institution. Additionally, harnessing payee and payor information from check payments can fill out the missing information from the transaction.
Together, these patterns form a flow-of-funds analysis: where money enters, where it leaves, and which parts of the relationship are being served somewhere else. It will not reveal everything a customer or member owns or owes, but it can show where money is going, how often it moves, and which outside relationships are active. Jim Marous explains this opportunity in “The Best Source of Revenue Is in Your Transaction History”.
The obstacle is connected data and execution
Strong signals may point to a clear opportunity, but many banks and credit unions cannot act on it quickly. The HubSpot and Mole Street report found that 78% of respondents say organizational silos, disconnected systems, and incomplete client data limit their ability to deliver a modern client experience. Retail and commercial banks reported the highest rate of significant limitations at 41%.
That’s because transaction data may be spread across the core, digital banking platform, loan origination system, and CRM. Furthermore, legacy systems and technologies generate data that is not interoperable. The Financial Brand reports that many trigger programs still run in 30-, 60-, or 90-day batches, leaving institutions stuck building segments or lists instead of delivering offers.
A dashboard can show what happened. Data activation helps teams act while the insight still matters. For CMOs, that means connecting data from core and other business systems to marketing automation tools, so teams can proactively identify opportunities and drive engagement with timely, relevant product offers, and report campaign results against real account openings.
Turn behavioral signals into measurable growth
The value of data comes from connecting an observed signal to a relevant action. A recurring auto payment could support a refinance conversation. Transfers to an online savings provider could prompt a discussion about savings products, relationship pricing, or a broader deposit relationship. Payments to an external card issuer could create an opening for a card offer.
This approach addresses a persistent CMO challenge: measuring campaign performance beyond opens and clicks. If a campaign starts with a transaction pattern and ends with an opened account, a deposit relationship, or a funded loan, marketing leaders can connect campaign activity to actual growth.
The Financial Brand describes the same principle through trigger-based marketing. A large deposit, rate-shopping behavior, or a change in spending can prompt a relevant offer. The goal is a useful conversation at the right time, without making someone feel like the institution is reading their statement back to them.
Start with one signal and one outcome
Banks and credit unions do not need a perfect enterprise-wide view of every single account on day one. Start with one segment, such as long-tenured households or members with direct deposit, and review 12 months of ACH, checks, wires, card, and debit activity.
Choose one signal, one product, and one accountable owner. Define the customer or member behavior and channel, then set a refresh schedule the institution can sustain. Use the pre-determined behavioral or transaction signals to make an offer more relevant, while avoiding language that exposes exact amounts, dates, or private details.
The cheapest growth engine may be the customer or member whose transaction history a bank or credit union already holds. The institutions that act on those signals can retain relationships, capture more of the business already flowing elsewhere, and measure growth in outcomes that matter.
If data remains scattered across your core, lending, CRM, and digital banking systems, it’s probably holding your institution back from future growth and deeper relationships.
Take Kinective’s free Data Intelligence Maturity Assessment to calculate your FI’s data maturity score and map out practical next steps to ensure your data drives growth instead of delaying it.
