E-business opportunities in financial services

Over many years, technological developments have enabled financial services products to be sold and administered via remote distribution channels. E-business is the latest channel whose potential is being explored by both traditional financial services players and new entrants alike. But, in their haste to ‘go online’, are organisations, new and old, falling into the ‘technology trap’ and ignoring the fundamentals underpinning financial services retailing and, perhaps, undermining some of their ‘segment-of-one’ strategies? This paper concludes that the key to successful e-financial services retailing is to take the nuances, attributes, techniques and skills that have accompanied financial services products in the physical world and reinvent them in an e-environment. Only by following this approach will e-business avoid being labelled as a solution looking for a problem. UK high street banks are continuing to extend the choice of channel through which customers can manage their money, eg e-banking. But it is suggested that channels such as e-banking potentially reduce the level of personal contact between bank and customer to the extent that a ‘virtual’ relationship develops. This paper concludes that, given the tendency towards ‘virtualisation’, it is inconceivable that bank–customer relationships will become any more intimate in the future. Indeed, a greater degree of personalisation in customer communication may be the very best that banks are able to offer.     

Reflections on bank–customer interactions in the new millennium

Having relatively recently embraced the concept of marketing, banks approach the new millennium operating in an increasingly competitive and fragmented marketplace with financially literate consumers. This competition combined with the prevailing low interest rate environment means that traditional banks with extensive branch networks are having their profitability margins squeezed. New technology presents opportunities for banks to become both more efficient (in terms of cost reduction) and more effective (in terms of customer profiling and informed targeted selling). As many groups of customers become more content with interacting with their bank through remote technological channels (eg phone, Internet) the implications for bank–customer relationships are important. Recent research shows that new ‘electronic banking’ channels, while being keenly embraced throughout the industry, are being pursued more for their cost-based advantages than for their business development or relationship management capabilities. Given that the key power of the Internet arguably rests in its interactive capabilities, and that relationships are predicated upon interactively, it seems appropriate to conclude with some key issues for future electronic banking strategy with particular emphasis on staff–customer relationships.     

Customers’ dissatisfaction with banking channels and their intention to leave banks: The moderating effect of trust and trusting beliefs

Banks have the challenging task of managing customer experience across many traditional and technological channels in today’s financial services world. Recent studies and anecdotal evidence suggest that many customers are dissatisfied with their experiences across channels that are supposed to provide a seamless experience. This customer dissatisfaction potentially diminishes a financial service organization’s customer base, and requires the firm to rely on a more fickle customer mix and erodes its reputation. This paper investigates the relationship between individuals’ dissatisfaction with their primary bank channel and their intention to leave their bank in the future. The first study examines individuals’ overall trust in their bank as a potential moderator in the relationship that reduces customers’ likelihood to leave the bank even though they are dissatisfied with a particular banking channel. The second study goes one step further and examines the effect of three trusting beliefs about the bank potentially held by the customer: competence, integrity, and benevolence beliefs. Findings indicate that when customers have a high level of trust in their banks, they are less likely to leave their banks even though they are dissatisfied with their primary banking channel. Furthermore, while competence and benevolence beliefs about the bank have a similar moderating effect, integrity beliefs do not.     

Establishing bank–corporate relationships and building competitive advantages

This article investigates how banks build competitive advantage through relationship banking. Using a grounded theory approach, 29 interviews were conducted with relationship managers and corporate banking directors in 21 case banks from 2004 to 2008. Grounded theory models were developed to illustrate the value creation process in relationship banking. It was found that long-term bank–corporate relationships were established through trust-based personal communications. In the case, banks customer information and knowledge advantages were created. Risk-adjusted returns on assets were used to measure customer relationship performance, and relationship managers were rewarded accordingly. The interviewees thought that bank performance could be improved by managing customer credit risk and identifying cross-selling opportunities. This study starts to open up the ‘black box’ of how banks create shareholder value through relationship banking, provides a picture of relationship banking as a social phenomenon, and supplies some theoretical and managerial implications. The article also links the literature relevant to relationship banking from different disciplines. This is a new way of looking at the relationship banking phenomenon and relevant literature in an integrated manner.     

Share of wallet's role in customer profitability

Understanding the financial contribution customers make to their organisations is an initial step in customer relationship management. Set in the banking industry, this paper examines the strength of ‘share of wallet’ as a proxy variable for measuring customer profitability. Data from a study of 1,100 personal retail banking customers of a New Zealand regional bank were used in combination with the bank's own customer contribution data for each of those respondents. Results indicate that although share of wallet might be used as a proxy for customer contribution at a macro level of customer classification, details of specific financial relationships customers have with their main bank are still necessary. Nevertheless, share of wallet ought to become a standard entry in a bank's customer database.     

Price satisfaction and personnel efficiency as antecedents of overall satisfaction from consumer credit products and positive word of mouth

The paper aims to explore the potential impact of ‘bank personnel efficiency’ and ‘price satisfaction’ on overall customer satisfaction of consumer credit products and positive word of mouth (WOM). Furthermore it aims to provide bank managers with useful insights into the development of high quality relationships with customers. ‘Personnel efficiency’, is related to the human factor of service quality, while ‘price satisfaction’ refers to the customers’ subjective view of the bank's pricing policy. The research involved a review of the available literature on service quality dimensions and their effect on satisfaction and WOM. For the collection of data, a survey was designed and conducted in the greater area of Athens, Greece. The research questionnaire was administered by means of personal interviews to 750 bank customers. Data analysis, using structural equation modelling, suggests that ‘personnel efficiency’ and ‘price satisfaction’ are antecedents of overall ‘customer satisfaction’, which is a prerequisite for positive ‘word of mouth’.     

Effects of commitment on intentional loyalty at the person-to-person and person-to-firm levels

This study explores how customers’ affective commitment and calculative commitment to the personal adviser and bank, respectively, affect their intentional loyalty to the personal adviser and bank. Data were collected using a web survey of mass affluent customers of a major Swedish bank. Responses were measured and analysed using factor, correlation, and regression analyses. The results reveal that the person-to-person and person-to-firm loyalty categories are influenced by affective and calculative commitment to the personal advisor and by affective commitment to the bank, but not by calculative commitment to the bank. Moreover, there is a strong relationship between customer loyalty to the personal adviser and to the bank. It can be concluded that affective commitment has a stronger overall impact on customer loyalty than does calculative commitment, indicating the importance of creating affective ties with customers, and that personal advisers are central to bank – customer relationships. The importance of financial issues to mass affluent customers implies that both affective commitment and calculative commitment to the personal adviser are important in building customer loyalty to a bank or brand.     

Banks,customer relationship management and barriers to the segment of one

Technological advances are changing the nature of marketing channels and altering how consumers shop. The same changes are improving marketers' ability to capture and manipulate data, leading to an enhanced understanding of customers. Financial institutions are using these technological capabilities to target the individual needs of customers. As the benefits of customer relationship management (CRM) are brought to the fore, this focus on the ‘segment of one’ has become a feature of the service offered by some banks and financial services institutions. This paper reviews case study evidence of progress towards the segment of one and identifies the barriers that are impeding progress.     

Earnings performance of major customers and bank loan contracting with suppliers

Using a sample of 3725 loan facility–years for supplier firms that have financial data on their major customers during the period 1995–2011, this study investigates whether the earnings performance of major customers has effect on the price and nonprice terms of loans to the supplier firms. We find that various contracting terms are more favorable for loans to supplier firms whose major customers have higher return on assets (ROA). More importantly, we find that the effect of major customers’ earning performance on loan contracting terms is weaker for the borrowers with prior loan relationships with banks, while it is stronger for the borrowers that are highly dependent on their major customers. Our results suggest that banks take into account major customers’ earnings performance when contracting with their supplier firms, and the informativeness of customer earnings varies with the nature and strength of the customer–supplier relationships.     

Customer concentration and loan contract terms

We study pricing and non-pricing features of loan contracts to gauge how the credit market evaluates a firm’s customer-base profile and supply-chain relations. Higher customer concentration increases interest rate spreads and the number of restrictive covenants featured in newly initiated as well as renegotiated bank loans. Customer concentration also abbreviates the maturity of those loans as well as the relationship between firms and their banks. These effects are intensified by customers’ financial distress, the level of relationship-specific investments, and the use of trade credit in customer–supplier relations. Our evidence shows that a deeper exposure to a small set of large customers bears negative consequences for a firm’s relations with its creditors, revealing limits to integration along the supply chain.     

Personal acquaintances and salespeople in financial services: Differences between customers and friends

The existence, benefit and management of customer–salesperson relationships in the marketing of financial services are topics of increasing interest. Much of the sales and marketing literature implies that because of time spent together, salespeople and some of their customers develop close relationships that are akin to friendships. Evidence from social psychology confirms that strong relationships are founded in deep knowledge of others gained over long periods after sharing personal information. This paper reports on the results of a study of salespeople's assessments of their personal acquaintance with customers and friends in a financial services setting. The results indicate that salespeople do not classify customers as friends on all the dimensions of personal acquaintance. Furthermore, the nature of personal acquaintance differs between ‘good’ customers (those salespeople enjoy serving), and ‘bad’ (those they do not), with the exception of the personal acquaintance dimensions of interaction frequency and personal disclosure. We discuss the implications for practice and make recommendations for future research.     

Customer account relationships and e-retail banking usage<Superscript>1</Superscript>

Financial institutions are actively developing new electronic banking products for their retail customers. To date, the market leaders have drawn a disproportionably higher share of e-retail banking customers. In response, smaller institutions have become quite active in exploring ways to participate profitably in online banking. A major influence is from a customer relationship management (CRM) perspective, where institutions try to limit the outflow of current customers and direct high-value customers to potential products from a multi-product service offering array. These efforts can succeed only if retail bank marketers focus the promotion of the new products and services that can utilise this channel toward those customers who are most likely to find them attractive. The first aim of this study was to examine the role that online and electronic banking play in defining the customer's primary financial relationship. The analysis of 701 retail customers of a financial institution presented in this study suggests that banks and other institutions are highly vulnerable to loss of customers to rivals with extensive online services. A second aim was to examine to what extent information on banking relationships is able to extend CRM analysis beyond that offered by typical demographic and income data. Current customer account relationships are found to be highly predictive of use of electronic services use in general. And, interest in the use of specific online services is related to differing customer relationships in addition to ordinary demographic and balance information. These findings can be useful for retail banking in identifying potential high-value users from a customer relationship management perspective.     

Online relationship marketing and affective customer commitment – The mediating role of trust

The pervasive use of information technology has implications for consumer relationship management among financial services organisations. There is a need for increased understanding of how digital channels might influence the development and maintenance of firm–customer relationships and in particular the role of the Internet upon commitment and trust outcomes. Thus, this research aims to determine the relationship between online relationship marketing practices and affective customer commitment, and how this relationship is mediated by online channel trust. Data were collected from 200 online retail bank customers and Structural Equation Modelling was used to test the impact of five key online relationship marketing practices on affective commitment, and how trust mediates these relationships. We found that advocacy and collaboration have a direct relationship with affective commitment, while trust mediates the influence of engagement and personalisation on affective commitment. The article highlights the significance of trust in technology when using online channels to build customer relationships.     

Segmenting retail banking customers

The desire to treat all customers equally, irrespective of their value to the organisation reflects the laudable but uneconomic service mantras of the past. New Zealand banks, using modern database management tools in conjunction with individual customer information, are migrating customers to cheaper delivery systems and adjusting their customer service levels (customer support, privileges, fee waivers, discounts, etc) according to customer profitability. The essence of this database management is still customer segmentation. Using a retail bank's proprietary customer contribution data in combination with survey-based customer data, this paper presents a quantitative eight segment ‘extension’ of Reinartz and Kumar's (2002) behavioural segmentation solution. Potential profitability in the customer-bank relationship is drawn from incorporation of share of wallet into the segmentation solution, providing insight into the management of each segment's customers, especially the ‘barnacles’ (loyal, loss-making customers) and the ‘butterflies’ (short-term, profitable customers).     

商业银行财富客户金融消费行为的统计与分析

本文分析了客户金融消费行为的影响因素和行为特征、商业银行提升高端客户拓展能力的要点.在对某分行进行调查的基础上,通过统计数据分析,发现财富客户具有以下行为特征:风险偏好多数为平衡型;稳定的客户持有基金、理财、保险、债券的比例较高;通过柜台和网银进行转账交易的比例较高;有客户经理维护时的客户稳定性高于无维护时,这些客户买...     

What types of banks profit most from fees charged? A cross-country examination of bank-specific and country-level determinants

The perception that banks are exploiting customers through their fee-charging practices in a bid to maximize profits, has fuelled widespread public interest in identifying the banks that profit most heavily from fees. Using hierarchical cross-country regression analyses, this paper seeks to answer the question – what types of banks profit most from fees charged? It also highlights the country level factors that influence banks’ ability to profit from fees charged. The factors at the country level distinguish between those that relate specifically to the financial services industry and broader macroeconomic indicators. The paper also identifies three channels through which national culture impacts banks’ ability to make high profits from fees. This paper uses the most comprehensive set of explanatory variables in studies of this nature. It has also extended the spatial scope of previous studies on bank fees by including data on banks from 46 developed and developing countries. In light of swelling public pressure on governments to do ‘something’ about bank fees, ill-advised measures are highlighted.     

Online customer relationships in the European financial services sector: A cross-country investigation

Reportedly, over the past 30 years there has been a general sense of willingness, on behalf of suppliers and customers alike, to develop increasingly close ‘emotional’ relationships based on trust. While buyers reward suppliers with brand loyalty, suppliers in turn develop strategies continually to energise this ‘connective’ relationship. As customers and suppliers increasingly become physically connected to one another via computer networks an important emergent issue is whether the nature of their relationship is changing as a result of transactions taking place across these networks. This paper discusses part of an exploratory research project designed to question the extent to which computer-based technologies that previously enabled the building of emotionally connective relationships through the analysis of customer data are instead facilitating anonymous transactional relationships. The project focuses on organisations in three European countriescolon; France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The broad aims are to explore whether consumer segments are emerging, that actually prefer the minimal personal interaction afforded by sophisticated new computer technology, and to examine the extent to which financial service organisations are responding to the demands of such segments. The paper includes an outline of the contextual background, followed by the research methodology and a discussion of the findings. Conclusions are drawn about the implications of these findings for both industry practitioners and academic researchers.     

借鉴国外成功经验制定工商银行个人金融发展战略

在现代商业银行发展中,无论是目前公认的全球最大的花旗银行还是以零售业务为主的英国劳埃德银行,其主要业务收入来源均为个人金融业务.随着我国个人收入的迅猛增长、金融意识的增强及金融资产总量的增加与结构的变化,既对我国商业银行个人金融业务提出了新的需求,也为其提供了广阔的发展空间.工商银行应在突出大行特征、全面服务优良大客户的同时,充分发挥自己具有"社区"小银行功能的优势,通过建立"大个金"的全新理念、建设个人客户系统平台、健全营销机制、加大创新力度、加大流程化管理及调整客户战略等途径,不断做大做强个人金融业务,进而确立中国最佳零售银行的地位.     

Bank image in the UAE: Comparing Islamic and conventional banks

This study investigates how bank customers in the UAE view Islamic banks versus conventional banks and whether this image affects customer loyalties or selection of a bank. We distributed a questionnaire to a convenient sample of UAE bank customers that focused on five areas: bank image, bank products, service quality, cultural aspects and religious factors, in addition to demographic attributes of the sample. The main findings of this study are: first, most UAE bank customers prefer banking with Islamic banks, although they are not satisfied with the quality of products and services; second, customers generally have a positive image of whatever bank they dealt with; third, the regression analysis results indicate that the most important factor in choosing a bank was bank products followed by service quality and then religious factors; fourth, there is a significant difference between how customers perceive UAE Islamic banks versus conventional banks; fifth, there is a significant difference in how customers perceive UAE Islamic banks based on their gender, education and duration of the relationship; and finally, there is a significant difference in how customers perceive UAE conventional banks based on their gender.