Introducing Bank Retailing

Whereas in the past, banks have competed on the strength of their financial management, today leadership increasingly comes from being the better retailer – providing the best service to customers with maximum efficiency. A bank retailer knows that:

• Their customers will tell other people how their bank always has helpful staff on hand when needed
• Their staff are guided to sell the right products to the right people in the right way and at the right time
• Their systems ensure that customer engagements are run as fully automated workflows bringing the efficiency of straight-through-retailing into a traditionally manual banking world
• Their customers have easy access to all their financial details from any appropriate channel, consistently
• Their managers have ready access to detailed profitability figures
• Their marketing staff can develop and deliver targeted marketing campaigns from their desktops - and measure their success at any point in time
• Servicing costs are proportionate to the profile of every customer

Competitive Advantage

Traditionally, banks could rely on innovative products to guarantee leadership for long periods, but today competitors can copy financial products in weeks, if not days.  The one differentiator that is almost impossible to copy is customer service leadership. Meanwhile, low cost providers are using tight cost containment to offer products and services at ever lower margins. To compete you need streamlined operations where redundant steps are removed and inefficient processes are reconfigured.

Market leaders excel at both approaches, developing strategies to increase customer intimacy while using their economies of scale to drive down costs. They generate higher profits, have fatter margins and out perform their competitors.