From loans booked to loyalty earned: How Citizens is reimagining student banking

The student banking journey has long followed a predictable and limited arc. A teenager heads to college, applies for a loan, and eventually drifts away from the bank that helped fund their education. For many institutions, that’s the entire story: a single, high-stakes transaction, not a relationship.

For many young adults and their families, the journey doesn’t start with a loan offer or end with a cap and gown. Escalating tuition, deepening debt, and piecemeal financial guidance have transformed a rite of passage into a financial labyrinth.

“The entire process of searching, selecting, and affording college is wrought with confusion and anxiety for many families,” says Chris Ebeling, EVP & Head of Student Lending at Citizens. “While this isn’t new, it is likely exacerbated with changes to federal loan programs. Families are seeking advice that they can trust, but a gap exists in trying to put it all together from planning and saving to borrowing and managing repayment.”

That gap – the unclaimed “white space” between planning for college and managing post-graduation finances – is where Citizens sees a fundamentally different opportunity. That’s also because the bank sees its student customer base as a key differentiator.

From transactions to lifecycles

In the traditional student lending model, students aren’t customers; they are borrowers. Citizens identified how that narrow view failed to address students’ broader financial needs.

The bank had already been building toward this vision, through its College Bound Citizens resource and its partnership with College Raptor, to support students throughout their entire lifecycle:

• Internal content library: College Bound is Citizens’ resource hub focused on guiding practical financial planning for college.
• The ecosystem play: College Raptor is a platform that helps the younger generation and their families identify financially- and academically-compatible schools. Citizens’ partnership with College Raptor provides credibility and reach, while also generating data insights that inform Citizens’ personalized offerings. It’s a marriage of content, data, and banking utility.

Now, the bank is deepening that strategy with its new Student Hub.

“The opportunity wasn’t about adding more products; it was about connecting what we already offer into a cohesive, advice-led experience that supports families at every stage of the journey,” says Ebeling.

Citizen’s Student Hub: Connecting the missing dots

Citizens’ new Student Hub is a digital experience that merges college discovery tools with financial education and personalized banking. It’s part of a broader strategy to move from transactional lending to long-term financial guidance for younger people.

“It provides a single, connected experience that integrates advice, tools, and financial products to support each stage — whether that’s planning for college, saving, borrowing, or managing money,” Ebeling explains.

More than convenience, it’s about continuity. The Hub weaves together traditionally fragmented experiences, reflecting a broader shift: if the bank can step in earlier and stay longer, it can transform the customer relationship entirely by building trust through consistency rather than campaigns. Especially for a generation entering adulthood with complex financial choices, being a guide instead of just a lender of record could open the door to deeper engagement.

“We’ve really shifted from a ‘moment-of-need’ mindset, where the focus was solely on funding college, or providing a deposit account, to a holistic, life-stage engagement strategy that supports students from their first school search through early adulthood,” says Ebeling.

Beyond traditional banks, some fintechs are also reimagining how to show up for Gen Z at pivotal moments in their financial lives. Intuit’s Credit Karma, for example, is reworking its entire product experience – blending intuitive UX, AI-driven personalization, and culturally fluent marketing – to meet young users where their financial story begins.

“Our Gen Z members, who are often just stepping into adulthood and facing a maze of financial decisions, are turning to us for step-by-step guidance to make meaningful progress toward their goals,” Credit Karma’s Head of Marketing, Natasha Madan, recently said.

Citizens Student Hub acts as both a discovery engine and a financial coach.

For the college discovery tools, the Hub taps into College Raptor’s college-matching capabilities, bringing personalized academic and financial fit insights directly into the banking experience.

That integration was intentional. 

“College Raptor already had a strong reputation for helping families make smarter college choices through personalized academic, financial, and cultural fit. By embedding those tools directly into the Citizens Student Hub, we created a seamless bridge between exploring college options and making informed financial decisions,” says Ebeling.

“More broadly, we see this as a key step for moving from transactional product marketing to relationship-driven ecosystems,” he adds.

Building around students, not systems

The evolution of the student banking experience was informed by how young adults actually behave with financial tools. The bank found that simplicity and accessibility were often the deciding factors between whether someone engages or clicks away.

“We’ve learned that simplicity and accessibility matter more than anything else,” Ebeling says. “We want it to be easy; students shouldn’t have to hunt for information or click through multiple pages to find what they need.”

That insight led to a “needs-based” design organized around life stages: high school, nearing college, in college, or beyond, scholarship tools. Instead of pushing products or generic financial education, the platform surfaces what’s most relevant, whether that’s understanding aid, opening an account, or learning how to build credit.

The content also reflects real questions students ask. “For example, students told us they know how to find internships but needed help landing them, so we added content on interview prep,” Ebeling notes. 

By building around real behavior instead of institutional structures, Citizens can earn something most banks struggle with in this segment: sustained attention.

What Citizens hopes its student strategy will build over time

Five years from now, Citizens envisions a student banking strategy that delivers both deeper customer relationships and meaningful business growth.

“Success will mean we’ve built lasting relationships that extend far beyond a student’s first loan or checking account,” notes Ebeling. 

In other words, the bank is shifting its measure of success from loans booked to loyalty earned.

The bank’s objective is to shift toward a relationship-led growth model, delivering greater value for both the customer and the bank. It also speaks to a deeper evolution in how banks can build relationships with the generation now entering the financial mainstream.