Depositors’ trust: Some empirical evidence from Indonesia

We develop a comprehensive index, based on Robbins and Judge’s (2008) five dimensions of trust, to measure depositors’ trust in individual banks as well as trust in the banking industry and financial safety net. Using a survey of 992 retail depositors in Indonesia, we find that trust in individual banks where depositors save their money is greater than trust in the overall banking industry and financial safety net. We also find that depositors’ trust is affected by personal characteristics—for instance, women and older depositors have relatively less trust. Depositors tend to put their trust in individual banks and the financial system if they have greater trust in information conveyed by the government. Religious and economic values have positive effects on depositors’ trust at both the micro and macro levels. Our results also document that risk-taking behavior is positively associated with depositors’ trust. Furthermore, we find that more-educated depositors have significantly less trust. This finding might imply that the erosion of market discipline by depositors in a country with relatively generous deposit insurance, such as Indonesia, can be mitigated through greater financial literacy.     

IT governance: Objectives and assurances in internet banking

This paper develops and tests a new factor of the trust model in electronic commerce; namely, internet banking. Internal control of internet banking is very consistent with high levels of trust factors such as security, privacy, and other risk issues. However, this type of association has not yet been widely recognized as a trusted model from the consumer's electronic commerce point of view. This study attempts to create new factors in IT governance and the COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) assurance seal. The empirical results of this experiment show that customer familiarity with IT governance and the COBIT assurance seal has impacted customers' trust in internet banking. Moreover, the results also show that perceived internet banking quality and reputation impact customers' trust in internet banking. Given the results of this study, we propose future research aimed at developing a COBIT assurance web seal of internal control, applicable to information technology based on IT governance.     

Factors that affect consumers' cross-buying intention: A model for financial services

Cross-buying behaviour in retail banking is receiving increasing research attention. Most studies on relationship development however revolve around relationship depth and length, while there has been hardly any work on the factors that affect relationship breadth. This research proposes and subsequently tests through structural equation modelling a model of factors that affect customers' intention of cross-buying retail financial services. The study yielded rich research results. Most notably, it demonstrated the centrality of image and trust in the formation of cross-buying intention and also showed that customers' cross-buying intention is formed by a combination of interrelationships among the four variables in the model, which should all act simultaneously.     

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.     

Mobile banking: A powerful new marketing and CRM tool for financial services companies all over Europe

In the last decade mobile handsets have become ubiquitous. There are three times as many mobile phone users as online PCs and they are becoming very sophisticated and demanding users. Increasingly they will expect real-time information and access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, wherever they are in the world — and they want very high levels of service. This paper looks at how and why financial organisations across Europe are beginning to take advantage of mobile services and in particular mobile banking as a powerful new marketing tool to build long-lasting and mutually rewarding relationships with new and existing customers. Examples show how European financial organisations are using mobile banking to improve their customer service and relationships, to reinforce their brand by literally placing it in their customer's pocket and to reduce their costs.     

Customers' perceived value for private and state-controlled Hellenic banks

Under conditions of increasing competition banks try to improve their customers' level of satisfaction in order to create strong preferences and hence increase their customers' loyalty. This paper is based on data drawn from 1,470 questionnaires completed by customers of both private and state-controlled banks in various areas of Attica. It looks at the bank customers' satisfaction but focuses mainly on their perceived value from the banking services received. A first analysis of the data collected shows that state-controlled bank customers are older, with lower education and lower income. Additionally, state-controlled banks show lower proportions of very pleased customers and high proportions of displeased customers. A principal component analysis performed on the data related to perceived value has defined three main factors: professional service, marketing efficiency and effective communication, which have then been used as the basis for comparing the customers' perceived value between the two types of bank. The main findings of this analysis show that state-controlled bank customers enjoy a higher perceived value in the case of marketing efficiency (mainly due to the wider network and the favourable pricing policy) whereas private bank customers enjoy a higher perceived value in the case of professional service and effective communication.     

Determinants of information technology investments: The case of ATM in an emerging economy

This paper examines the determinants of automatic teller machine (ATM), a kind of information technology (IT), in the Taiwanese banking industry. The lessons learned from Taiwan's banking industry can be applied to China's banking industry to facilitate the understanding of the IT adoption strategies of Chinese financial institutions. Factors that are expected to have impact on IT investment in general and on ATM investment in particular are identified from three perspectives, namely operating scale perspective, deposit service perspective, and operating cost perspective. The results of this study indicate that operating scale, banking deposit service and operating cost are all significant determinants of ATM investment in the Taiwan banking industry. The results are useful for those banks and financial institutions outside of China in deciding their ATM investment strategies in China when trying to enter and penetrate the Chinese banking market.     

An empirical investigation of the relative effect of trust and switching costs on service loyalty in the UK retail banking industry

The crisis in the UK financial services industry has led to retail banking customers treating transactions with growing scepticism. Retail banks are having to work very hard to regain customer trust. Despite recent research in marketing that acknowledges the importance of service loyalty to service firms, studies that have examined the relative effects of trust and the different types of switching costs on attitudinal and behavioural loyalty are scant. Therefore this article aims to build a model to examine the strength of the relationships between these constructs. Using survey data collected from a convenience sample of 290 retail banking customers in the United Kingdom, the article reveals that the main drivers of attitudinal loyalty are trust and relational switching costs. In contrast, the main drivers of behavioural loyalty are trust, relational switching costs and attitudinal loyalty. Interestingly, financial and procedural switching costs exert no significant effect on either attitudinal or behavioural loyalty. Trust and relational switching costs exert a stronger effect on attitudinal than behavioural loyalty.     

Who Benefits from Deregulating the Separation of Banking Activities? Differential Effects on Commercial Bank,Investment Bank,and Thrift Stock Returns

We analyze the deregulation impact on commercial banks, investment banks, and thrifts associated with four major events progressively integrating commercial and investment banking activities in the United States during the 1990s. We find that commercial banks are the only group to react favorably to Federal Reserve announcements relaxing firewalls and easing restrictions on commercial bank revenues from investment banking activities. These regulations primarily benefit large banks. The Bankers Trust acquisition announcement of investment bank Alex Brown is associated with increased wealth for each of the three types of financial service institutions. At the eventual deregulation of the financial services industry, with the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999, the values of commercial banks and investment banks increase significantly although thrifts are not affected.     

Helping bank customers switch: A case study

Despite a reasonable level of competition in the New Zealand banking market, there is a relatively low rate of customers switching between banks. A common reason cited for the low churn rate is the costs associated with switching between financial institutions, including simply the difficulties associated with the physical transfer of existing banking arrangements. One non-bank financial institution, PSIS, introduced a pilot scheme to make it easier for existing customers of other financial institutions to move their banking facilities to PSIS. The pilot sought to understand the extent to which the switching costs associated with changing financial institutions could be reduced, and the impact that had on customers' switching behaviour. The results of this pilot scheme did not meet the organisation's expectations, and as a result, was not extended beyond the pilot period or the pilot participants. This paper provides a review of the pilot scheme, and attempts to identify the issues that contributed to the lack of success. The key findings were that there was no real demand from customers for the type of service offered, and that the time and effort involved on the part of the financial institution were greater than expected, making it undesirable to continue.     

新形势下推进我国银行业国际化经营的战略思考

经济金融全球化是当今重要的时代潮流,它深刻地影响着世界经济格局,也对我国经济金融发展产生深远的影响.本文在全面分析我国银行业国际化经营现状的基础上,提出了推进我国银行业国际化经营战略的基本设想:统一规划和构建银行业国际化经营的战略平台;积极建立以大型商业银行为主体的国际化经营机构布局;重点拓展亚洲、欧洲、美国三大金融战略区域;有选择地推进我国银行业对国外银行机构的重组、并购和联合经营;选择成熟的国际金融产品为平台,逐步构建银行业国际化经营的产品序列;以我国跨国公司为载体,加强国际化经营的战略协同;进一步构建与国际银行业接轨的风险控制系统.     

Banks: Advisers or sellers of mortgage loans?

The financial sector has undergone major changes in recent years. From being sharply divided between various sub-sectors, financial activities within banking, insurance and mortgage credit have become increasingly integrated. Two different trends have emerged in this process: One of them is the conglomerate strategy in which the various sub-sectors are linked through joint ownership offering the customers all financial products in-house. The other trend is the focus strategy in which the financial institution sticks to its core business but offers its customers complementary products sourced from other financial institutions. This paper presents an analysis of the conglomerate strategy versus the focus strategy. A questionnaire sent to Denmark's largest companies reveals that the choice of bank and mortgage credit institution is not based on independent decisions. The paper raises the question of whether the financial service businesses are able successfully to balance their functions as sellers and advisers to the customer.     

The customers' perspective on relational benefits in banking activities

The nature of banking activities is based on the relationship with the customer in as much as this activity implies direct contact. In this paper, some fundamental questions for the development of relationship marketing activities within the financial firms will be analysed. In particular, this paper intends to demonstrate that it is possible to divide up the market into different types of consumers according to the customers' perspective on relational benefits. This paper bases itself on the perception and evaluation of relational benefits by the customer: with this objective in mind, an empirical study was carried out in various financial firms. This study contrasted the evaluation given by each customer to the different relational benefits.     

Contact management and customer loyalty

This paper is concerned with examining how contact management influences customer loyalty in the retail banking industry. The concept of contact management is explored and developed with reference to the literature on retention, service quality and loyalty. Customer experiences with contacting their bank and their intentions were obtained by means of an online survey, in which consumers were asked about their points of contact with their banks and their intentions to continue their custom and make recommendations. The findings of the survey suggest that contact management plays a significant role in customers' stated intentions. The study concludes that banks and building societies need to manage customer contacts to achieve high levels of customer satisfaction levels and so that loyalty is strengthened.     

我国房地产融资方式的比较、选择与调整

央行121号文件发布以来,中央政府及具体职能部门一系列紧缩房地产银行信贷的政策和措施,拉开了我国房地产融资多元化发展的帷幕。本文分析与比较了目前我国存在的银行信贷、企业债券、企业上市、境外融资、投资基金和信托等主要的房地产融资方式运作的内在机理和宏观环境,以期正确选择和有目的地调整我国房地产融资方式。据此,提出我国房地产多元化融资在近期内应选择“银行贷款 房地产信托”和“银行贷款 房地产投资基金”两种模式。同时,为保障这两种模式的有效运作,应对银行内部资产负债互动机制的构建、投资基金法的确立和信托融资中不必要限制的解禁等方面进行调整。     

Forging relationships with services: The antecedents that have an impact on behavioural outcomes in the life insurance industry

The extent to which service quality is linked to satisfaction, value and behavioural outcomes continues to be debated in the literature. This research investigated two models involving the linkages between service quality, satisfaction, perceived value, repurchase intention and willingness to recommend to others. The life insurance industry was chosen as the industry for investigation since it is virtually a pure service with little tangibility and high credence properties. Data were collected in Singapore in response to concerns about broadening understanding of these variables cross-culturally. Results of path analysis indicate that service quality has an indirect relationship with behavioural outcome measures via satisfaction and value. The study found that satisfaction was positively associated with customers' re-purchase intentions but its relationship with customers' willingness to recommend to others was relatively weak. This finding has important marketing implications as word-of-mouth has previously been found to have significant influence on customers' purchase decisions.     

EVOLUTION OR EXTINCTION: WHERE ARE BANKS HEADED?

The banking industry represents an interesting and important case study of how changes in technology and regulation influence business strategy and organizational design. A narrow focus on traditional bank products and performance measures would lead one to conclude that banking is a declining industry. Such a focus, however, would miss most of the innovations in banking–most notably, the move to “off-balance-sheet” activities–that have been taking place in recent years. A broader perspective shows banks evolving in ways that are enabling them to provide the same basic functions as before, but in new, more efficient ways. In the past, most banks thought of themselves as delivering a set of specific, largely unrelated products to different sets of customers. Today many banks are pursuing strategies that aim to strengthen their ability to perform various functions–for example, financial planning for retail clients, or raising capital for middle market companies–that tend to cut across the old product boundaries. As a result, and in contrast to most industrial firms, many banks are offering a more diversified range of products and services than ever before with the aim of exploiting potential synergies among those products. Such major changes in banks' strategies are in turn leading to fundamental changes in their “organizational architecture.” Some banking activities that were once controlled by a rigid management hierarchy are now being decentralized, whereas other functions that were largely decentralized are being subjected to more central coordination to help realize potential economies of scale and scope. Along with these changes in decision-making authority, banks are also being forced to rethink their internal performance evaluation and incentive compensation systems. As an ever larger portion of their activities continues to move off balance sheet, more and more banks are deciding that conventional accounting measures of bank operating performance such as ROA and ROE are inadequate, and that economic measures of performance like RAROC and EVA are needed to reflect the new reality of where banks are putting their capital at risk, and whether the rates of return they are earning on their different activities are high enough to reward their shareholders.     

Trust in financial services: Retrospect and prospect

Fostering and maintaining high levels of trust in the financial services sector is seen as crucial because of the characteristics of many financial service and in order to promote consumer engagement in the sector. In this article, we report evidence from a body of work and other commentary to provide an insight into trends in consumer trust in the sector as a whole, in comparison with other organisations and how different types of financial services provider have performed relative to each other. We show that the financial services sector as a whole is trusted more than some comparator institutions, and that aggregate levels of trust in the sector have fluctuated a relatively small amount subsequent to the financial crisis. However, important differences between provider types are apparent and these differences have become more profound in the recent past. We provide suggestions as to how trust in the sector may be improved and provider an analysis of current initiatives to improve trust levels in the sector in general and in banking in particular.     

关于银行业高利润的思考

近年来银行业在服务企业、服务民众方面取得了重大进展,取得了良好的经济效益与社会效益。当前银行业高利润成为社会普遍关心的问题,但与银行业当前高利润相比,银行业在服务方面,还存在一些值得关注的问题。     

Should a financial service provider care about trust? An empirical study of retail saving and investment allocations

Motivated by evidence of low trust for financial service providers, this study turns to scholarship on trust, which suggests that trust influences individuals' risk-taking. The study asks whether a financial service provider that is highly trusted, and with saving propositions across the risk continuum, has more success with risk-based savings than risk-free savings compared to an industry average, or overall situation? A number of theoretical expectations are empirically confirmed. Findings indicate that a provider not perceived as highly trusted may have difficulty selling risk-based products. Secondly, trust appears to be a form of competitive advantage in that it encourages more assets in risk-based products on which higher fees are earned. This highlights the importance of qualitative factors both in profitability and as unique selling points, and suggests possible strategic pathways for managers when allocating scarce resources to build firm strengths.