Brett King - bestselling author and the founder of the world’s first direct mobile-only bank Movenbank.
There’s a long held premise that branches are great channels for advice, that this is the one differentiation that bank branches provide that the Internets could never compete with. There are three problems with this assertion that should rightly challenge the superiority of the branch channel in bank operations today: Customers rarely get advice in [...]
I guess with a title like Branch Today, Gone Tomorrow it’s no surprise that a lot of people think I’m anti-branch. I’m not anti-branch, I just don’t drink from the branch kool-aid fountain that goes something like “if only we could find the right formula we’d reverse this trend of not visiting the branch and [...]
In the UK and Australia, account keeping fees are nothing new. In the US, however, since the introduction of the Durbin amendment, many US banks have been moving to monthly fees on checking accounts (we call them current accounts generally outside of the US) for the first time. These moves have resulted in often massive [...]
The new iPad just launched to the usual hype, anticipation and fanfare. Every time a new Apple product comes off the assembly line, it gets put under the biggest magnifying glass imaginable as crowds of onlookers parse the announcement with scholarly intensity, hoping to piece together a picture of what might emerge and what the implications [...]
As we detach ourselves from physical artifacts associated with traditional businesses, traditional distribution models rapidly fail. The fact that you own or participate in a network or virtual monopoly that supports an outmoded distribution model is of no benefit when that network is surpassed by a generational leap in technology delivery at the front end [...]
The Widening Gap between Behavior and Capability In 1980 the average bank in the developed world would receive a visit from a customer once or twice a month, making an average of 20-25 times a year. As ATM machines started to emerge, by the end of the 80s average branch visits per customer were already [...]
Recently when I posted on reforming customer journeys in the banking space I got some push-back for using Apple as an example of best practice. Surely there are banks I could have used as an example of best practice??? Well… not really. There’s no bank, and believe me I’m looking everyday, that has the whole [...]
The future of the branch is about engagement. The old thinking that was based on getting customers into a branch to do a transaction and cross-selling them is no longer a viable model, because the branch provides no value-add for a transaction. Thus, if the branch is about an excellent, high-quality face-to-face interaction, we need to build for that. Open up the branches, hire new staff and put new systems in place designed to support the conversation with the customer. The high-counter old teller stations and staff who are versed in transactional banking, won’t work in the BANK 2.0 world…
The reality today is that it’s increasingly hard for customers to understand why they should exchange their time for a lengthy, time-costly visit to the branch, when the value returned is poor. Having the ability to cash a cheque, apply for a loan or pay a bill is not a sufficient reason to give up my time at a branch, especially if I have to ‘wait’ in a queue. The reality is, that I can do those same things outside of the branch, which results in a much more efficient value exchange.
So if you’re running a branch network these days – where is the value for your customers?
