Personal Banking Back to life back to reality
October 25th, 2010
Usually define the scope “personal banking” segment of financial services customers located between the rich and the Private Banking and Investment Companies and ordinary mortals of retail banking. Middle class and upper-middle, with good jobs, good incomes and at least some financial assets.
From the point of view of institutions, have personal banking customers has become absolutely crucial. Its importance has grown exponentially in relation to other segments highly profitable during the bubble, which now denies, as “hipotecones” or immigrants, which provided easy money that was little justification for businesses to dedicate efforts to the most demanding in knowledge and human capital.
Of course, now that all entities are aware of their need to attract and retain those customers, and it goes: first, that few are prepared to serve that segment, and second, that with the crisis-everything the very bloody complicated, “personal banking will be becoming a little less than” the incredible shrinking target. ” As with most shortages, higher relative value of this customer, the battle of the bodies to stay in this client has more interesting than ever.
So, despite the crisis, or rather because of it, to entities that may still have no choice but to raise their level of service and advice for a segment that has shifted from strategic to almost ornamental. One type of client, many times, has evolved very differently to staff of the institutions themselves and requires a different content than we’re used to.
That applies not only to change his approach to product placement to another distribution or open architecture, etc., or do a test MiFID to deduce the ideal portfolio for the client and stuff. All this of course is fine and necessary, but I’m thinking it should be a stage before that, it should be the root of advice and that few entities exist.
A new approach in which customers recommendations arising as a natural response, explainable and understandable to the vital needs of the client and the objectives of their household economies at different stages of his life, taking into account their current family balance and their estimates of revenue and expenses, which can respond to questions such as reasoned if I want to cancel debt or buying a house or should we do to ensure a comfortable retirement or a good education for my children, now we know they will not be provided by the State. Have a regular monitoring and which of course depends in the eyes of the customers of our successes or failures to predict what will make the market.
What do you have serious doubts that the bank and customer that you know will one day run as well, to have this kind of conversation or this type of customer focus? Well, you know? I do not I have little doubt that at least some entities will work well, and sooner rather than later. This has only just begun to walk, and paradoxically, through the crisis. In the projects we develop from Openfinance finally financial planning starts to come into our day to day.
The most common model of counseling for middle class requires a radical change, strategic (“what is radical is not strategic”) to respond to real customer needs. Counseling, as everything in the post-crisis, the financial need to re-squared to reality to fill it and not vice versa. As one very bad song of my youth, back to life, back to reality.