Engaged
Clients
Our strategy of recruiting and retaining the very best financial professionals is a proven winner. Clients are usually happy to follow their favorite banker to a new firm, especially one with a reputation like Pinnacle's. It's the significant driver of our organic growth model, and in 2023 accounted for around $2.8 billion* of our loan growth.
But working with their favorite banker is only half the equation. The bank must continue to earn their business.
Competing on price would be the easiest answer; it's a reliable way to win business and boost loans and deposits within a quarter. It comes at a cost, though, and not just to margins. Clients easily won with a better interest rate will only be loyal until a better deal comes along.
To earn long-term loyalty, you need something much more meaningful than price. You need to deliver a service experience clients can't get anywhere else and a deep relationship with a trusted partner who will always have their back. Those factors are the difference between winning shallow, transactional business and earning a fully engaged client who sticks with and actively advocates for their favorite bank.
Recruiting and Strategic Expansions Drive Loan Growth
*Strategic Expansion and Recruiting Impact combined for a total $2.8 billion of loan growth in 2023. Strategic expansion volumes include certain loans that are recorded in the various geographies but for illustration purposes are included as Strategic Expansion loans due to the relationships managers assigned to a specialty lending unit.
We've outlined how we're able to recruit and retain the best bankers and excite them in their work so they can pass that energy to clients. Another element at play is the environment that sets them up for success. Eliminating bureaucracy gives associates greater autonomy and pushes decisions to the local level, both increasing the quality of the decision and providing a direct benefit to the client. It makes nearly every process easier, faster and more personal.
Leading the Southeast in Every Category
Among Businesses with Annual Revenues of $1-500 million
Cash
Management
To enhance that level of service, we've invested in technology focused on ease of doing business to create a “high touch and high tech” approach that attempts to meet everyone where they are with a consistent experience.
When you have excited associates creating a joyful banking experience inside of an environment focused on fast, easy and personal service, every client can feel important instead of just being told they are.
That's a perfect example of how we earn business from new clients and additional business from existing ones. We earn their loyalty when we deliver results, helping them and their business grow in ways beyond their own vision. That comes from a deep understanding of each client's needs and goals and a proactive approach to advice that presents a solution before the problem is even on their radar.
Leading the Southeast in Every Category
Among Businesses with Annual Revenues of $1-500 million
Relationship
Manager
Once our work begins to bear fruit, the choice to bank at Pinnacle is rewarded with a deeper, more meaningful relationship that transcends day-to-day business, becoming a real partnership. As that partnership grows, so do loyalty and the benefits enjoyed by both sides of the equation. The client gets more and better solutions for their finances, with service and results as the most important factors—not pricing. That's critical as the rate environment changes, allowing for more give and take in rate discussions, which is one reason why Pinnacle's loan yields are among the highest in our peer group.
Having a banking partner instead of a relationship manager offers consistency and connection in an uncertain world—particularly when compared to tumult of a merger, difficulties of a system conversion and the loss of familiarity that comes from staff consolidation and reduction.
That factor is most important in difficult times, like 2023. When isolated bank failures frightened much of the country into believing we would experience a full-blown crisis, many believed the megabanks and money centers were the only safe places for deposits. And as the threat of a recession loomed and grew throughout the year, clients needed continual reassurance that they and their business were in the right hands.
That's when a bank like Pinnacle can turn loyalty into active advocacy. Our financial advisors reached out to clients with an immediate, proactive response to the news of the day and presented answers to their biggest concerns. Thanks to the foresight of our risk management teams, we had solutions in place to better protect their funds and respond to changing credit and cash flow needs.
The results speak for themselves. Of our largest 200 deposit clients, we didn't lose a single one from March to April 2023. And as the FDIC's market share rankings show, our momentum generally kept up in the months that followed.
As we have experienced throughout our history, deep relationships, proactive and transparent communication and a quick focus on solutions are what clients crave when times look tough. That's where trust is cemented, and lifetime loyalty is given a megaphone to sing our praises.
Market-leading Net Promoter Scores with No Detractors
Source: Coalition Greenwich, 3Q23
Client Surveys Show Deep Trust and Loyalty
My financial advisor...
We believe that kind of advocacy makes our model self-perpetuating, with bankers and clients alike helping draw more people to our way of doing business. It's a golden ticket to sustainable growth over the long term and the reason our shareholders have been rewarded so consistently for their faith in us.