Bancography Provides Guidance on Cross-selling, Plus Branch Management and Networks

By Roy Urrico

Finopotamus aims to highlight white papers, surveys, blogs and reports that provide a glimpse as to what is taking place and/or impacting credit unions and other organizations in the financial services industry.

In July 2025, Bancography, the Birmingham, Ala.-based financial services consulting firm, released the summer version of its Bancology journal, which included sections on how activity-based models can lead to more effective cross-selling; how accruing low cost of funds yields more efficient branch networks; and how applying hub and spoke to branch management helps realize financial gains.

Bancography President and Co-Founder Steven Reider.

“The hub-and-spoke article is especially interesting, in that bankers typically frame discussions of that topic in the context of cost savings, of building some branches smaller than the institution’s typical template and thus at lesser cost,” Bancography President and Co-Founder Steven Reider told Finopotamus.

Reider continued, “However, the more important long-term benefits may lie in adopting a hub-and-spoke management model. By granting the most effective branch managers dominion over multiple branches, hub-and-spoke operations leverage the skills of the institution’s strongest salespeople, allow those officers to teach their skills to a broader base of service representatives, and provide a career path for those officers, fostering retention of our most critical frontline personnel, our top salespeople.”

A Deeper Level of Cross-Sell

“Cross-selling, the process of converting initial bank account openings into broader, multi-product relationships, is an imperative practice for banks and credit unions; not only because it creates more immediate revenue upon the sale of that next product, but also because it locks down relationships for a longer period,” said Bancology. The journal also maintained cross-sell represents a guarantor of retention, or, inversely, a guardian against attrition.

Bancology wrote, “Consider that the median tenure of a single account household is only 18 months.” That is, if a financial institution added 100 new clients (each with only one account), then within 18 months, 50 of those will have left. “But adding a second product moves the median tenure of a household to nearly four years. And for households with three products, median tenure approaches six years, at which time the relationship becomes nearly an annuity to the institution.”

In sum, the journal continued, “cross-selling does more than create additional revenue immediately; it locks down the client’s revenue from all products for years thereafter.” Toward that end, credit unions and banks should strive to improve cross-sell levels. The simplest and most common format is a product needs-based model, wherein the institution offers a next-most-likely product based upon the initial product the client obtains, along with some demographic information.” For example, a 70-year-old client whose initial relationship is a checking account may receive offers for a CD.

The Sweet Spot: High Deposits, Low Cost of Funds

“We can learn more about which competitors are truly most efficient by folding in a measure of cost of funds, to see not only how effective each network is at raising funds, but how cost effective the network is,” maintained Bancology.

In its journal, Bancography suggested it is easy to gain deposits if financial institutions are willing to pay any price, “but gathering deposits in a more disciplined, fiscally responsible manner is challenging.” Consequently, when evaluating the competitive environment in a market, comparing average deposits per branch does not necessarily convey the relative efficiency of one branch network versus another. “If Bank A holds $500 million in deposits in 10 branches and Bank B $300 million in deposits in four branches, then the average deposits –   $75 million per branch for Bank B versus $50 million for Bank A – would seem to indicate the former as more efficient.”

Source:Bancology.

Bancology also charted “the Top-20” deposit-holding banks in the Philadelphia metropolitan statistical area. (The list includes banks only, because credit unions are not required to report deposits at the branch level.) If we restrict corporate and municipal deposits by capping any individual branch deposits at $250 million (i.e., assuming balances beyond that level are neither retail nor small business), we can then rank the 20 banks by adjusted deposits per branch, for a rudimentary look at branch-network efficiency.”

Hub and Spoke Branch Models

The journal added: “Bankers often speak of hub and spoke branching models in the context of physical branch models – and that is one part of hub and spoke operations. But at its core, hub and spoke represents a personnel-driven operating model, from which different branch sizes are a beneficial consequence.”

Bancology defines hub and spoke branching as an operating model where not all functions are offered by all branches with on-site personnel. Rather, while some branches (the hubs) continue to encompass the complete range of officer functions on site, others (the spokes) rely on nearby branches to deliver more complex services, such as mortgage origination, business lending and wealth management.

“Combining branches into clusters of geographically close branches allows only a single branch in the cluster to require an on-site officer for certain functions, with that officer serving all branches in the cluster,” explained Bancology. “This then enables the spokes in the cluster to use smaller footprints.”