banking

Two recent tweets caught my attention:

@Chris_Skinner: It’s not Branch versus Digital, but digitizing all channels including branch

@gschmeltzer There is no head of digital at Amazon or Zappos – they ARE digital. Banks need to be, too.

Ed O’Leary penned an interesting piece, published on the ABA Banking Journal site, titled Banks Need Leaders Who “Get It”. It deserves a full read, but the gist of the post is this:

Quick two-question survey:

1. Do you think that banks and credit unions should continue to increase their investment in the mobile channel? (Y/N)
2. Do you think the “voice of the customer” is important for bank and credit unions to pay attention to? (Y/N)
   

I’m a big advocate for better understanding customer needs, particularly in the jobs-to-be-done form. Companies should spend more time on this, instead of the all-too-common approach of implementing someone’s vision in a near vacuum. Although I admit it isn’t easy to do. Focus groups are a start, but are both logistically and financially hard to scale, and fraught with their own issues. So the state of getting customer insights is still fairly immature.

The ability to interrogate and make decisions based on consumer data from social media is a key 2013 priority for European bankers according to a survey from the European Financial Management Association (Efma) and the Fair Isaac Corporation (Fico). The survey of credit risk professionals from 27 European countries found that analysing these data to better understand consumer needs was a priority for 54% of respondents.

Fascinating new RSA Animate featuring Dan Ariely talking about his new book The Truth About Dishonesty. Lots of nuggets in here including a really interesting thought on how tiny is the proportion of 'big cheaters' in society and how the magnitude of dishonesty we see is instead down to good people who think they are doing good but in fact are cheating just a little bit.

Guest Post by: Ed Thompson

Following last week’s post exploring social media fears and opportunities for financial services brands, this blog post suggests three  ways that retail banks could make real, innovative use of social media to differentiate their products.

New innovations in mobile banking are making it possible to transfer the entire payment experience from the plastic credit card to your mobile device. New upstarts with funny names that sound nothing like typical financial names - like Dwolla, Venmo and Square - are going far beyond just enabling you to use your mobile devices to check balances on-the-go: they are transforming mobile devices into payment mechanisms at point-of-sale destinations around the nation.

Way back in 2003, I worked on an Experience Audit for Chase Manhattan bank in partnership with Bulldog Drummond NYC. We had some great ideas in that presentation and actually opened the presentation with "Chase a Better Experience," which was part of our thematic throughout the entire presentation which we called "Chase Me."

With government regulation coming next month, lenders are scrambling to find ways to make up the money they used to charge credit card customers. This comes on top of a year in which: