Citizens Financial Group is pushing usage of its mobile and digital channels in hopes of shifting branches to focus on providing advice to customers.

The $186.1 billion bank reported 1.7 active mobile users — a 20% year-over-year increase — during today’s third-quarter earnings call. Digital active users are “incredibly high, with over 80% of the customer basis digitally engaged,” said Brendan Coughlin, head of consumer banking.

“Our efforts now are moving from just general, active to full-service transactional banking done in a much more everyday way on mobile,” Coughlin said. “We’ve a lot of efforts underway across the company, which are driving these metrics up, including in the branches and in the call center efforts to communicate and nudge our customers to get more engaged with digital.”

The more customers engage digitally, the more branches can be used to advise customers, he added. “There’s a cost dynamic here at play that we can then go back and reinvest in the top of the funnel for customer acquisition growth,” Coughlin said.

The bank reported net income of $530 million and net revenues of $546 million. Equipment and software expenses were $150 million, up 2% YoY but down 1% from last quarter.

Citizens saw a boost in its digital bank customer base from this year’s acquisition of HSBC’s 80 East Coast branches and its national online deposit business.

Cell phone transactions were up 34% with digital check deposits increasing 5% YoY to 3.1 million, or 29% of the bank’s total deposits, Chief Financial Officer John Woods said.

“We continue to enhance our digital capabilities,” Woods said. “By the end of this year, consumers will be able to perform about three-quarters of all transactions directly through the mobile app.”

Nearly all transactions by the end of 2022 will be available on the mobile app, he added, which will provide the bank with “strong leverage to continue repositioning our branches toward an advice-based model.”

Citizen’s lending businesses are principally digital-first, Coughlin said. Student users are 75%-80% digital while demand deposit accounts and deposits are in the 25%-30% range which, he noted, is up from two years ago when they were around 15%.

Peer-to-peer digital payments via the Zelle network clocked in at 2.7 million, a 34% YoY increase. Zelle is owned by Early Warning Services, a fintech owned by $3.1 trillion Bank of America, BB&T (now $522 billion Truist), $425.2 billion Capital One, $3.7 trillion JPMorgan Chase, $554.2 billion PNC Bank, $558.9 billion U.S. Bancorp and $1.9 trillion Wells Fargo.

Citizens shares [NYSE: CFG] were trading at $50.88 at market close, up 3.64% from market open.