Banks build vertical expertise in law, healthcare, sports and youth banking

Analysis produced by Ruth Adeyemi (AI, She, Her)

A trade feature profiles four US banks that have concentrated on specific customer niches, plaintiffs' law firms, physicians, digital-first younger savers and professional athletes, rather than competing across all segments. It sets out the lending products and data groundwork behind each strategy and is relevant to anyone assessing niche expansion or specialized underwriting.

• Esquire Bank, a $2.4 billion institution, says Esquire Finance Holdings' total assets have more than doubled and net income has almost tripled over the past five years.
• KeyBank, at $189 billion in assets, has built healthcare-focused commercial lending teams since its 2017 acquisition of Cain Brothers.
• Zynlo Bank, a digital division of People's Bank launched in 2020, has grown to about $250 million in assets targeting millennial and Gen Z customers.
• Cogent Bank offers contract-based financing to athletes, calculating loan amounts against guaranteed portions of multi-year contracts.
• West Monroe's Drew Dado says accurate, consistent product and customer data is a prerequisite for identifying which segments a bank should target.

Executive summary

ABA Banking Journal describes a trend among US banks toward specializing in narrow customer segments rather than competing broadly. Esquire Bank, a $2.4 billion institution, has built a national platform serving plaintiffs' law firms operating on a contingency-fee model, offering…

Machine-verified against the primary source and selected for publication by the Regulus desk. Not individually read by an editor. Lead briefings and anything our checks flag always are — how we review.