Most Powerful Women in Banking: No. 13, Kate Danella, Regions Bank

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The Regions Bank website has many of the financial education features consumers have come to expect from banks: information about banking, saving for college and saving for retirement.

When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, Kate Danella felt the time was ripe for the bank to do more — this time in the form of education about managing medical debt. "During the pandemic, breadwinners might be down with COVID and have no paid leave or be without medical insurance," she said. Without work or insurance coverage, COVID sufferers could run up new medical debt and strain to make payments on old balances. 

Danella didn't see other banks talking about the topic, so Regions partnered with EverFi, its educational platform provider, and sponsored research and content creation. Now users can take on-demand courses on  how to negotiate medical bills, manage out-of-pocket health care costs, obtain debt relief or prevent bankruptcy in the face of unmanageable medical bills. At the end of September, Regions was to make the content available to other banks. "This is not just a Regions customer problem," Danella said. "We want other financial institutions to be able to make this material available to their customers."

Regions also contributed $50,000 to RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit that buys and retires unpaid medical debt. Because the debt typically sells for pennies on the dollar, Regions's contribution wiped out nearly $12 million in medical debt for 12,000 low- and middle-income earners in Texas, Georgia and Florida. 

Danella had other accomplishments last year as well. Regions enhanced its mobile banking offerings, adding chat and the ability for customers to see their statements, check and deposit images, and FICO scores. As a result, its app store ratings for IOS- and Android-based mobile banking platforms went from the low 3s to 4.8 out of a possible 5.

Regions saw customer approval increase in other ways too, charting a 7% growth in active digital users and a 12 %increase in mobile users. It booked 36% more deposit accounts and loans through digital channels and increased Zelle payments originating through digital banking by 65%. The bank also expanded its cross-channel sales capabilities, so now bankers and customers can begin an application in person or online, then complete the application in another channel.