Stories

Our consumer digital leader is hiring customer-obsessed colleagues to shape the U.S. Bank Mobile App and more.

As chief digital officer of consumer banking at U.S. Bank, Ankit Bhatt leads a growing team of architects behind the features used by millions of customers every day in our award-winning U.S. Bank Mobile App – from voice assistance to check deposit to video chat.  

“It’s an awesome responsibility,” says Bhatt, “because we know that at the other side of those features are our customers’ goals. That’s what really matters because our underlying mission is to power human potential.”

That mission is a big part of what attracted him to U.S. Bank. Admittedly, the New York City-based Bhatt wasn’t particularly familiar with our company before he decided to come on board. When asked whether he’d be interested in a role at U.S. Bank, he instinctively asked, “Which U.S. bank?” 

I tell that story a lot, Bhatt laughs. Before joining U.S. Bank, he’d emerged as a top young digital leader in the financial services industry, shaping mobile strategy at firms like E*TRADE, JPMorgan Chase and American Express.  

Now at U.S. Bank, Bhatt leads a team of digital leaders located from coast to coast, some of whom are down the street from U.S. Bank Stadium in our Minneapolis headquarters and others who are hundreds of miles away from the nearest U.S. Bank branch. Familiarity with U.S. Bank is not a prerequisite to join his team.

Similarly, our customers are increasingly spread out geographically, thanks in part our digital-first, branch-light expansion to new markets like Charlotte and alliances with national partners like State Farm. These strategic growth efforts will work, Bhatt says, because our leadership team is committed to digital transformation.  

“Our leaders at U.S. Bank aspire to create great digital experiences for our customers,” said Bhatt, who is 41. “To do that, we’re looking well beyond banking. We want to provide the personalization of Apple Music or Noom, the real-time and autonomous insights of Fitbit or Tesla, the seamlessness of Grubhub or Zoom, and so forth.”  

We’re not all the way there yet, he says, but we’ve built a strong foundation since rebuilding the U.S. Bank Mobile App from scratch in 2019. Since then, it’s been rated No. 1 for customer service by Business Insider Intelligence and it’s landed more than 1 million five-star reviews from customers in the app stores. 

Bhatt pays most attention to the one-star reviews, however. In a profile story accompanying American Banker naming Bhatt its 2019 Digital Banker of the Year, he talked about that exact type of customer feedback that revealed mobile check deposit amount limits being a major pain point for customers – so, in short order, we raised them. And that was never more important than over the past year, as customers deposited stimulus checks, birthday gifts and more; the feature was used at record levels.

Looking ahead, Bhatt sees the future of the U.S. Bank Mobile App as increasingly consultative in nature, with an emphasis on helping customers understand their full financial picture and its implications for their life goals.   

We currently have hundreds of digital product teams using Agile development to explore different customer journeys. Bhatt says our ability to move fast to design end-to-end experiences is part of what differentiates our company versus more encumbered megabanks and more niche fintechs – as well as being able to tap into our people (you know, those on a mission to power human potential) in the moments that matter most.

This ambitious DIY-meets-DIT vision requires – above all else, Bhatt says – great talent. We’re currently hiring for hundreds of digital and technology roles, from software engineers to product managers to UX architects. 

“When we started this journey, we presented the mobile strategy to our executive team,” he said. “We told them that none of this is rocket science, and that all we really need is awesome people and teamwork.”