Led by a three-person team in Spokane, Coastal Community Bank has launched a virtual 3D platform, dubbed Coastal World, that is poised to expand accessibility to underbanked communities, and add revenue and customers for the Everett, Washington-based financial institution.

Jason Miller, vice president digital banking manager at Coastal Community Bank, leads the team that launched Coastal World in June.

Coastal World is designed to educate visitors about digital banking services and companies that offer products tailored to fit specific lifestyles, values, or financial circumstances in an engaging and gamified environment, he says.

“We want customers to become comfortable and understand that there are banking services available to them,” Miller says. “It’s really about making banking accessible and easier to use for the underbanked.”

CoastalWorld.com takes visitors on a virtual journey to four islands on the platform, where users control bean-shaped characters that move about the environment interacting with other characters that represent different digital banking providers. Similar to a video game, there are tasks to complete, treasures to locate, and mini games to play that earn points and unlock items to customize a user’s character.

Benji Wade, digital experience manager at Coastal Community Bank, says, “Our destination that we’re after is that (users) become minimally familiar with our partners and their products and services, but hopefully become a customer.”

Wade says Coastal World has a low barrier to entry for users, meaning that the website doesn’t require visitors to download anything or sign up to access content, which improves customer accessibility.

“We didn’t want anybody to have to download something or create an account unnecessarily,” explains Wade. “We wanted them to be able to just use a browser on any device, phone, tablet, or desktop.”

Last June, Coastal Community Bank activated the website to enable the bank to showcase and explain its new concept to perspective partners.

Since then, there have been over 100,000 site visitors with an average of about 600 visits a day, Miller says.

Wade says Coastal World’s target audience includes people who adapt quickly to new technologies, services, and software.

“The people who sign on to those types of services very early on … that’s who we wanted to build this for,” says Wade.

Miller says, since the website launched, the largest demographic of users have been women between 24 and 35 years old.

“The most impressive stat is that they’re staying nearly nine minutes every time they come,” he says.

Overall, it takes about 45 minutes to explore the entire virtual world, Miller adds.

The website has been recognized by three design agencies including CSS Design, in Nashville, Tennessee; Favorite Website Awards, in England; and Awwwards, of Valencia, Spain, which have honored Coastal World with awards for Website of the Day, Website of the Month, and Website of the Year.

Wade says, “We exceeded our own expectations by a wide margin. We would have been prepared to settle for less than what it ended up being.”

The project development team for Coastal World ended up in Spokane through Miller’s connection to Coastal Community Bank’s CEO Eric Sprink.

Miller previously worked as marketing director at Spokane-based Inland Northwest Bank when acquisition talks brought Coastal Community Bank to the table as a potential candidate. INB eventually was acquired by First Interstate Bank, of Billings, Montana, in 2018, and after that transaction was completed, Sprink offered Miller a job, which was declined because at the time, it required relocating to Western Washington, he says.

A few years later, Miller was working as a commercial banker for U.S. Bank when the pandemic opened up remote-work opportunities that were previously unavailable at Coastal Community Bank. Sprink offered Miller another job involving the development of a new platform that would serve Coastal’s banking-as-a-service division, CCBX, and the financial technology companies with which it partners. Miller joined Coastal Community Bank in the fall of 2020.

Miller says Sprink even referenced Mead-based Cyan Worlds Inc., which developed the Myst series of video games that were first released in 1993 as an example of what he envisioned from Miller.

“He said, ‘The metaverse is getting popular, gamification is getting really popular. Can you take these trends and build us what we call a virtual world?’” says Miller. “We did a ton of research. I brought on Benji and Nick (Barr). Benji has a creative background and was a principal at Treatment, which is a successful advertising agency here in town ... and we needed somebody with a game design background, so Nick Barr is a local game designer we brought into the team.”

They selected Paris-based design agency Merci Michel to build the digital environment of Coastal World.

Coastal Community Bank offers traditional banking services for individuals and businesses in addition to providing banking as a service for financial technology companies and brokers. Banking as a service means that Coastal Community Bank provides the banking infrastructure, compliance oversight, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. coverage for those partners offering digital banking services.

As of June 30, Coastal Financial Corp., the holding company of Coastal Community Bank, held $3.5 billion in assets, according to its second-quarter results. The 26-year-old bank operates 14 branches in Snohomish, Island, and King counties and has 540 employees. 

Coastal Community Bank has five employees in Eastern Washington, including Miller, Wade, and Barr, who work out of the Holmes Block Building, at 628 N. Monroe, in Spokane.

Miller says the bank partners with 14 fintech companies that, “go out there and solve very specific problems to very specific types of people.”

For example, Atlanta-based financial technology company Greenwood supports Black and Latino American communities through its mobile banking platform. Marina Del Rey, California-based Aspiration supports climate solutions in a variety of ways such as by planting a tree with each use of its bank card. Redwood City, California-based fintech company Bluevine focuses on business banking services and helping small business owners grow their companies.

Miller says that customers of each fintech company it partners with are actually the customers of Coastal Community Bank, “because we’re the regulated agency behind all of the fintechs,” which is how the bank earns revenue from the platform.

Miller gives credit to Sprink for the vision to begin offering banking as a service to fintechs years ago.

“We’ve been through a couple of recessions. It’s kind of a volatile market, it’s up, it’s down, and in order for smaller banks to be viable, they have to either sell, partner, or be super creative,” he says. “It was about six years ago our CEO said he want to start offering up ... our banking infrastructure to the tech industry.”

Miller explains that current economic conditions have many banks struggling for deposits, however, the deposits made with bank service providers are technically part of Coastal Community Bank’s balance sheet and can be used for lending purposes.

Half of Coastal Community Bank’s assets are derived from bank activities at its 14 locations in western Washington state, says Miller.

“The other half is through our banking as a service division,” Miller says, adding that $1.5 billion in assets are assigned to the division.

Fintech companies must meet certain requirements set by the bank to be partners, such as the ability to raise three to five years’ worth of capital and great leadership, says Miller.

Miller says that future iterations of Coastal World will include a financial literacy element. Additional versions will follow popular industry trends, such as artificial intelligence aspects and multiplayer functionality.

Miller says, “Right now (Coastal World) is atop of the funnel marketing 3D experience to get consumers comfortable and aware of digital banking products, but we have every intention to grow that into something that’s even more immersive.”