The Questions About Bank Branches That No One Is Answering
What impact do branch openings and closings have on revenue growth and overall bank profitability? Ron Shevlin explores it in this piece.
Old-School Banking: There’s No Going Back
In an American Banker editorial titled A Return to Old-School Banking (part of a series the publication calls What Bank Customers Want), the author writes: “I prefer the old-fashioned banking model. I don’t care for mobile banking. I don’t own an iPhone. I like my BlackBerry and I’m fine banking in a physical branch. I […]
11 Rules For Becoming A Better Blogger
Published my first blog post seven years ago this week. Nearly 900 blog posts later, I think I know a thing or two about blogging (we all deceive ourselves in one way or another). If you want to become a better blogger: 1. Keep it short. When I first started blogging, somebody I know told […]
The Real Reason Why There Are Too Many Banks
When I read Matt Yglesias’ article in Slate on America’s Microbank Problem, it took me a minute, but I realized what it really was: A hack piece of journalism, written simply to call attention to the author and publication. Yglesia’s case to support his contentions was poorly argued. American Banker easily tore through the arguments […]
Is Bank Customer Service Really THAT Bad?
Carlisle & Gallagher published research looking into consumers’ experiences, attitudes, and perceptions regarding banks’ customer service capabilities. Overall, an excellent study with solid data and sound conclusions. The deck prepared by C&G is titled Are Two Calls Too Many in the Eyes of the Customer? reflecting the firm’s conclusion that first-call resolution is critical to […]
Debunking Financial Literacy Myths
The CFPB says that FIs spend US$17 billion on marketing and that just US$671 million, or about US$2 per person, is spent on financial education. And like uncritical, brain-dead slugs, many of you don’t just believe this, but tweet it, implying that the spending is out-of-whack. My take: Comparisons of financial education spending to FI marketing […]
Are Customer Satisfaction Scores Measuring Satisfaction Or Sentiment?
Every year, ACSI breaks down banking customer satisfaction. However, it appears to reflect customer sentiment more than confidence.
Banks Need Leaders Who Get It (Done)
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: “For at least the remainder of the current decade, bank managers will have to develop survival strategies to steer their banks through […]
Coin And The TechCrunch Effect
By now, you’ve heard of Coin, a programmable mag strip card that holds up to eight card details at a time, accessible via a button and miniature LED screen on the card. For anybody who has heard Dynamics present at the last 37 Finovate conferences, the concept isn’t anything new. And for anybody involved in […]
Redefining Financial Inclusion
This is going to sound cold and heartless…but I’m tired of hearing about “financial inclusion.” As it pertains to the US, that is. Two reasons for my insouciance: 1) perspective, and 2) definition. ————— According to McKinsey, 8% of adults in high-income OECD countries are financially “excluded,” meaning that they don’t use “formal or semi-formal” financial services. […]
It’s Time To Kill The Net Promoter Score
Management ideas come and go. Unless we’re talking about the net promoter score, which has come, but hasn’t left. It’s the cockroach of management metrics. For the life of me, I can’t understand the continued interest in this metric, or as some delusional people call it, a system. Intention to do anything — let alone […]
The Problem With Banking Experiences And Transformations
If you don’t know who Joe Pine is, shame on you. He wrote two of the best management books ever published, Mass Customization and The Experience Economy. Along with my praise, however, comes a little critique. He recently published a white paper titled Beyond Products and Services in Banking, in which he writes: “No industry […]
The Fed’s Mickey Mouse Market Research
If the title of this post is in any way demeaning or disparaging, I apologize. Mickey Mouse is way too important a cultural icon to be disrespected. The Federal Reserve, on the other hand, I’m not too sure about. It recently launched an effort to elicit feedback on how to improve the payments system, organized […]
Lessons For Banks From A Walmart CEO
At this year’s BAI Retail Delivery Conference, I had the opportunity to moderate a closed roundtable discussion of the Marketing Leaders Circle (thank you Deluxe!), and as an added bonus, got to interview Lee Scott, the former CEO of Walmart. As the session was a closed session for senior marketing execs from large FIs, it […]
Big Idea: Activity-Based Financial Marketing
Most traditional forms of marketing — TV, radio, print, direct mail — are outbound forms of marketing. I call it push-and-pray marketing: Marketers push out a bunch messages, and pray for a good response rate. More recently, a different form of marketing has become popular: Inbound marketing. This type of marketing waits for a customer […]
Four FinTech Vendor Blogs Worth Reading
For the record: No one is paying me to say to nice things about their blog. Hell, at least one of these vendors isn’t even a client (but, hell yeah, they should be). This isn’t a ranking. These aren’t necessarily the three “best” fintech vendor blogs (although they might be). Your fintech company might have […]
Credit Unions And Their Average Age Of Member Obsession
For a few years now, credit unions have been obsessed (not too strong a word) with lowering the average age of their member base. The rationale goes something like this: Younger consumers represent the future of credit unions, therefore we have to attract more Gen Yers and reduce the average age of our members. My […]
Bigadatabytes (And Why Bankers Should Care)
At the recent Consumer Insights and Analytics in Banking conference (which was very good, BTW), no fewer than 5 speakers made it a point to tell the audience: “<Fill-in-a-number> of <fill-in-a-data-measurement-metric> are created every <fill-in-a-time-period>.” Needless to say, there was no consistency in the metric. Two petabyes a day, five terabytes a week, the numbers […]
What Engagement Banking Needs Is REAL Engagement
Jeanine Skowronski at American Banker penned an interesting article recently titled What Engagement Banking Needs Is Less Engagement. In it, she wrote: “I can’t help thinking the money management moment has passed and that, moving forward, engagement banking – a future model for the industry that PFM is a big part of – would benefit […]
Banks Are Losing The Online Bill Pay Game
A recent Financial Brand article cites a research study which claims: “There are 29 million consumers [in the US] that banks and credit unions could easily convert to online bill pay. [The study] identified a segment of nearly 11 million consumers who bank online and use mobile banking but do not pay bills at their bank. […]
Neochecking: Not For Neobanks Only
In a blog post titled NeoChecking Accounts I wrote: “GoBank represents a new type of product in the market, which, for lack of a better name, I’ll call NeoChecking Accounts. [But] it isn’t just the new type of “bank” that firms [like GoBank, Moven, and Simple] have to educate consumers on, it’s a new type of […]
Finovate Fall 2013: Snarketing's Best-In-Show Awards
Another Finovate conference is in the bag, once again demonstrating why it’s the premier conference in banking for technology innovation. And again, Finovate attendees have spoken, bestowing Best-In-Show awards to six very deserving companies (who, of course, will be sure to let us know that they won this award every damn day for the next […]
