How American Bank eliminated a recurring monthly burden and gave its business customers seamless access to their statements with HC3

For American Bank in Waco, Texas, exceptional customer service is not a marketing line. It is the operating philosophy that shapes every decision the leadership team makes. So when a gap in the bank's online banking infrastructure began creating real friction for business customers every single month, leadership did not accept it as a tolerable workaround. They found a better way.

That path led them to HC3, and the results have been felt across the digital banking team, the bank’s customer base, and its broader technology strategy.

A Problem that Showed Up Every Month

When American Bank migrated to a new core banking platform, the statement access setup that came with it worked well enough for retail customers but created a recurring problem for business clients. Business accounts with multiple users at varying security levels would inadvertently lock each other out of the system, often without anyone knowing until month-end, when statements were issued and clients could not see or access them.

"Every month, the online banking team would have to pull a listing of everyone who should have access and compare it against everyone who actually did," said Clif Lamar, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at American Bank. "All the ones who got wiped out had to be manually re-enabled before statements dropped. Every single month."

For business customers who owned multiple companies, the problem ran deeper. Without controlled credentials, clients might log in and have no idea which account would appear. "They had multiple logins and no way to tell which was which," Lamar said. "They would just click and see what popped up. It was a mess."

Accepting the system's limitations and putting that burden back on customers was not something American Bank was willing to do. "We would rather put the burden on the bank and make the experience for the customer better," said Rick Dunn, Executive Vice President, CFO and COO. "Not just to make it work for us, but to make it work for the customer first."

The bank needed a partner that could solve the problem at its root — and that search led them to HC3.

Proven Technology, Deep Expertise

Before landing on HC3, American Bank evaluated several vendors, but the others were built around paper statement processing. The bank's priorities pointed in a different direction.

"We were leaning heavily toward e-statements and the connectivity piece," Lamar said. "The other vendors were not set up for that."

The bank had used a similar third-party hosting model before its core conversion, and that experience gave the team a clear picture of what a good solution looked like. When HC3 described the same model — generating the statement files, hosting them, and connecting directly to the bank's online banking platform — it became the clear choice.

"Everyone we interacted with at HC3 was stellar," Lamar added. "They understood the urgency. They understood we needed to get this done as quickly as possible, and they took that and ran with it. That is not something you always see from third parties."

The depth of experience HC3 brought to executing that model made the decision straightforward, but the real test would come during implementation.

Moving Fast without Cutting Corners

The implementation was more complex than a typical deployment. The bank's core system generated statement files in XML format that were sent to HC3 alongside accompanying images, but American Bank's specific configurations, including how it handled paper statement fees, required custom programming before HC3 could process the data correctly. For several months, Lamar and HC3's developers worked through the files together, methodically refining the output until it was right.

"We worked back and forth with HC3's developers for months," Lamar said. "They would send me a file, I would go through it, flag anything that needed attention, and we would work through it. I was never waiting on them, and they were never waiting on me."

Simultaneously, HC3 worked directly with the bank's online banking provider to establish a direct interconnect, so that completed statements could flow to a test environment for parallel validation. The two workstreams ran concurrently, requiring coordination across multiple parties, all of which HC3 managed without creating drag on the project.

The bank's primary project contact at HC3 received particular recognition from both Lamar and Dunn. "She kept everyone on both sides together throughout the entire process," Lamar said. "She was instrumental in how quickly we got this done.”

From Dunn's vantage point, coming into the later stages of the project, what stood out was the quality of the collaboration. "HC3 was saying, ‘We think this is going to work, we are testing it, you are testing it, we all think it is going to work,’" he said. "’But if something does not happen the way we expect, we will fix it and move forward.’ It felt like much more of a collaboration than what we see with a lot of our other vendors."

Seamless for Staff, Better for Customers

For American Bank's business customers, the change was immediate. Their statements were available, their access was reliable, and the frustration of month-end lockouts was behind them. For the digital banking team, the monthly re-enablement cycle that had consumed hours of staff time simply stopped.

The bank could also now customize the look and feel of statements, moving away from a fixed stock format to something that reflects the institution's identity. Completed statements are imported directly into the bank's imaging system, giving staff a more accessible archive than the prior interface allowed.

American Bank also beta tested HC3's email notification system, which provides real-time status updates throughout the statement processing cycle from initiation through postal pickup. “When there is a problem, we know about it and we get a response in five to ten minutes.” Lamar said. “That kind of responsiveness is reassuring.”

A Foundation for Growth

The improvements to statement processing solved an immediate problem, but the value of the partnership has extended well beyond it. With a strong commercial focus and growing ambitions in small business, American Bank sees its new e-statement infrastructure as a foundation to serve that segment well. Looking ahead, the bank expects to extend the HC3 partnership to include notices processing.

As the bank's technology needs evolve, leadership also sees the HC3 relationship as one built to grow with them. "The relationship we have with HC3 gives us comfort that whatever we encounter, we have a partner we can count on," Dunn said.

For Lamar, the partnership reflects what excellent vendor relationships are built on. "HC3 has truly been a valued partner, even before we signed the contract," he said. "They never made promises they did not feel confident they could keep. They were not selling vaporware. That is exactly what you need when you are trying to solve a real problem for your customers."