The Hidden $2 Trillion Opportunity KeyBank Discovered In Its Existing Customer Base
Inside one regional bank’s contrarian move to serve the customers other banks forgot
While America’s banking powerhouses compete to court billionaires, they’ve left a stunning $2 trillion on the table, an insight KeyBank has turned into the centerpiece of their strategy.
This isn't just another banking story – it's a masterclass in using strategy to identify value where others don't—and designing a strategy that’s allowed Key to uniquely serve a forgotten market with a huge upside.
This is how Cleveland-based KeyBank has spotted a market opportunity that was hiding in plain sight under the leadership of Chairman and CEO Chris Gorman.
From “Average” to The Goldilocks Zone of Banking
Gorman leads the 19th-largest bank in the United States with assets of nearly $200 billion.
How has he positioned Key to succeed in a world where their competitors were either massive global institutions or small local players?
For many banks, trying to play “the middle” and appeal to everyone would spell a recipe for disaster, leading to commoditization of their services, shrinking margins, and inevitable irrelevance.
Gorman’s breakthrough lies in not pretending Key was bigger or smaller than it is, instead coming up with a third way, using the best of both elements to its advantage.
But success required a bold bet on trying something other banks hadn’t yet attempted.
Discovering a New Where & How to Win
This is how Gorman explained Key’s simple “targeted scale” approach during a recent appearance on CNBC's "Mad Money" with Jim Cramer:
“…we're a $200 billion bank. We compete with people that are much bigger, and there's also many banks that are much smaller. And our whole approach, Jim, is to be really relevant to the people that we're focused on. So knowing how we win, where we win, why we win.“
Gorman went further to talk about Key’s specific “Where to Play” and “How to Win” choices:
“So, for example, in our commercial business, we're focused on seven industry verticals, and we're focused on companies in the middle market.”
The “middle market” includes companies doing anywhere from $10 million to $10 billion in yearly revenue. They’re too big to be small businesses but not quite big enough to be a major company in their industry. More importantly, middle market companies are considered a foundation of the economy.
And to provide value to those markets, Key has invested in the essential “Must-Have Capabilities” Gorman describes below that set them up for success:
“So while there are 4,400 banks, for someone to compete with us, they'd have to have a balance sheet, be focused, have an integrated corporate and investment bank, and be focused on the same industries that we are.”
This is KeyBank’s "targeted scale" strategy, and it’s already showing results.
Innovating to Create New Ways to Compete in Banking
CEO Gorman on addressing the unmet need:
“There's no question that there's a lot of companies that are focused on the biggest companies, but there's a real unmet need for these middle market companies that need to get strategic advice, need to be able to raise capital.”
In an industry where conventional wisdom suggested regional banks couldn't compete in investment banking, KeyBank raised $90 billion for their customers in the past year alone.
For a $200 billion bank ranked 19th in the U.S., that’s a remarkable achievement
The Overlooked Million-Customer Opportunity
The big breakthrough began when CEO Gorman’s team dug deeper to better understand Key’s existing customers.
What they found was startling…
Chris Gorman’s team discovered that within its 3.5 million customer base, there were one million customers with between $250,000 and $2 million to invest.
Even more surprising? Key was only doing business with 10% of them, which meant an enormous opportunity to serve longtime, loyal customers better:
“…our average customer has been with us for 20 years. So they know us, they trust us, they like us, and they have this money to invest.”
Many larger institutions dismissed these customers as too small to matter.
Other banks of Key’s size would like to compete against them for these customers’ business. But other banks simply haven’t invested in integrating their corporate and investment banking capabilities as Key has.
Key has specifically built out a sophisticated set of product and service capabilities to support these customers’ unique needs.
Sound Strategy + Good Timing = A Perfect Opportunity
Key’s timing seems poised to make the most of this opportunity, as Gorman revealed a stunning statistic:
"In 2009, the household wealth in this country was $60 trillion. Today, 15 years later, it's $160 trillion."
That's not just growth – it’s a fundamental reshaping of American wealth distribution, creating an entirely new class of investors who need sophisticated financial services but have been outside the radar of established wealth management firms.
And until now, no other bank has had the awareness to care about these customers’ unique needs:
“They were basically ignored by a lot of the market. Ignored because we were not supposed to be able to make money off them.”
Building the Bridge
KeyBank's long-term approach has helped it identify an underserved market while steadily building the capabilities necessary to serve it properly.
And by specifically focusing on just seven industry verticals in its commercial business, Key has upskilled and hired to lead with deep industry expertise instead of broad generalization.
It's a strategy that’s allowing Key to punch far above its weight class in specialized markets while maintaining the local and personal touch that has created deep brand affinity and loyalty.
But Key’s strategy goes far deeper than just identifying an underserved customer group.
Targeted focus: Mergers and Acquisitions
Key’s targeted customers have successfully navigated multiple challenging markets to accumulate and sustain their wealth over 10 years of zero interest rates.
And Gorman sees another area to cater to these users’ specific needs:
“And so now a lot of these people are seeking liquidity, I think there's going to be a big, big surge in M&A.”
With Mergers and Acquisitions (“M&A”) pipelines "as big as they've ever been," KeyBank is repositioning not just to serve their target customers better but to continue reshaping what it means to be a regional bank.
It’s a strategy that’s recently been strengthened through a major investment.
The ScotiaBank investment & Key’s future
ScotiaBank’s 2024 $2.8 billion investment in Key has provided additional firepower, allowing Key to reposition its balance sheet and further invest in its strategic capabilities.
KeyBank's strategy offers a compelling lesson as the financial services industry continues to evolve. Sometimes, the most significant opportunities aren't in chasing more and bigger customers, but in seeing value in customers other financial institutions have overlooked.
In the process, Key is doing far more than just filling a market gap – they're redefining at a fundamental level what it means to be a regional bank in the modern era.
The Power of Choosing Your Own Path
Key’s contrarian approach goes beyond challenging traditional banking wisdom to reveal three powerful strategy insights:
Strategic Focus Always Beats Scale: Success in banking isn't just about size – it's about choosing specific customers and verticals (“Where to Play”) and serving their unique needs exceptionally well in differentiated, hard-to-copy ways (“How to Win”)
Market Evolution & the Coming Wave of Mergers & Acquisitions: The growth in household wealth has created new opportunities for banks willing to evolve their service models. Unfavorable policy has led to a pent-up equity reserve looking for liquidity and opportunity.
The Overlooked Value of Trust Equity: Sometimes, the best future opportunities aren't in finding new customers but in deepening relationships with existing ones (like KeyBank's 20-year average customer tenure). Branches, seen by other banks as a drag on profitability and a relic of the past, play a crucial role in creating local trust and deepening relationships.
These three focus areas are setting up Key for longer-term strength with their chosen customers.