I'm not talking about the Unexpected Bank (which comes to mind when reading this headline), a campaign I was briefly involved in with the amazing creative leadership of Miles Bingham (and my now wife Jessica in account leadership). In this ad campaign merely getting decent customer service is highlighted as differentiator, which in fact it sadly still is in banking. What I am talking about in this article is related though; it's about the fact that we really haven't moved on very far at all from my initial days (early 2000's) in digitising banking, with the likes of Dave Wallace, Paul Loberman, Jeff Scott, Matt Webb to name a few.
When we started making new banking services back in 2000 we had just moved on from the buzz of entering a new millennium, excitement and optimism ruled, and then all of the internet build out activity started struggling following the dotcom bubble bursting - showering us all in misinformed direction. And we defaulted to some really bad behaviour, which made a bad situation even worse. We were already heading the wrong way with a lot of the services that we were putting online, because we were trying to merely make what we did offline work online. And until I convinced my colleagues at the then Abbey National to invest in a thing called User Centred Design (UCD), which may as well have been called Space Chickens or Deep Sea Bagels back then, we really had no idea how we could make it work. And we had no permission to do it differently either - no evidence to support a new direction. When all the excitement went with a loud bang (along with a load of investor capital) the era of the "negative business case" kicked in. Where we merely justified an "online" thing by being cheaper than the offline equivalent - call / foot fall reduction etc. A bit like the failing of email (since it's conception in 1976), because it was just sold as cheaper then a letter or DM, which meant we still aren't even properly using this capability even now. It should have been a relationship channel, like all of them should have become.
I often tell this story about when I was building these digital services and I went into my bank to get car loan (my Uni mates Nick and Dan had got themselves "cool" cars). I ended up sitting in the branch in my home town with the Bank Manager (remember those). He started by saying "Are you Robert Yates' son?", I answered "Yes, why?". He said, "I spoke to your Father only two days ago. And I understand you're doing well out of Uni?". I was a bit surprised at this line of questioning tbh, but I replied "I'm doing okay, thanks". He then went on to say he didn't want to give me the loan, he could and it would even make his sales targets for the month, but he didn't think it was the best thing for me to do. He advised me to continue to earn money and progress for a bit longer, he believed more debt on top of my student loan wouldn't be a good idea at this stage. Some months later he was proved correct, and I am grateful he took this stance with me. And this is the point, we didn't ask what the relationship was between the bank and its different customers. We simply looked at volume (negative business cases) to justify a new channel. Which was statements, money movement, payments etc. All useful, but unfortunately this missed an opportunity. If I applied for a loan today, I would go online and get one, but how much of my real circumstance would it take into consideration? From those early days I see little progress, the services are still very transactional, and the relationship with the now abstract concept of money (or for most of us debt) and financial services businesses still seems to be missing.
When all the excitement went with a loud bang (along with a load of investor capital) the era of the "negative business case" kicked in.
Even the start-ups around now show few examples of really shifting the dial. They are just banks built slightly better for digital, with a few notable exceptions - but those largely focus on making something that was very complex and frankly like jumping into the abyss extraordinarily simple e.g. Transferwise. What is now happening is that our financial lives are fragmenting. The ecosystem has opened up. And trust in the larger incumbent banks remains low (dropping significantly in 2008), with a lot of studies suggesting the people still don't feel that banks act in their or societies best interests. So surely the step forward now is to finally re-imagine banks around relationships. A larger knowledge of customers (which banks are uniquely placed to have) coupled with an equal ability to act on that knowledge, but with services delivered in an ecosystem driver or modular producer business model. One which embraces open banking (properly), but extends this into many other aspects of our daily lives.
When I think of a banks original purpose, I think of keeping my most valued possessions safe, then I think of keeping my money and financial future safe. Today our most valuable asset for much of us is arguably our data. Our data binds us to the digital ecosystem, and as a result of the 2.0 era we give it away far too much. We have traded our time to be endlessly entertained whilst socialising with large numbers of people, and we give the likes of Amazon our data for convenience - we just click and it appears. I believe we are now entering a new era where security, trust and our personal data are back in focus. Evidenced by things like the Contract for the web (principle 5 in particular), and the fact that it's obviously very important to people. Banks could play a huge role in this and at the same time form deep meaningful relationships with their customers and between their customers and their most valuable assets.
We seem to be caught in a trap. And I think that mindset and clear vision remains the issue. I also think that the true enterprise design strategy for banks in transformations to date has never been clearly defined. Merely making bets on which part of banking to play more in is not enough of a strategy to move forward effectively. We need to reimagine what a banks role is, what the relationships with its customers could be, and move iteratively and fast towards this. A lot of examples only point at marginal CX improvement, we have loads to go at here, and the competitive benefits of doings this are significant. I've been harping on about this for a long time, along with many of my industry friends, but I finally see a real opportunity to make this happen - do you?
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