Customer Centricity: Four Bank Success Stories

There’s a good deal of consensus around the idea that retail banks need to become more customer-centric. It’s a key topic with nearly every company I’ve met with and nearly every industry forum I’ve attended over the past few years. Publications by Gartner, McKinsey & Company, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Economist, Businessweek, Forbes—and, of course, FICO—have all addressed it.

Nevertheless, many banks have yet to swing into action. I often hear executives and managers voice frustration at the lack of a navigable map between lofty industry goals and their own particular business situation. “Yes, we agree that we need to become more customer-centric. Now what do we do?”

In a new Insights white paper (No 78), I tell the success stories of four banks that are taking significant strides on their own paths to customer centricity. They start from very different places, and not just in terms of geography. I share stories of banks in markets obsessed with retaining and building customer relationships, as well as markets focused almost solely on growth. Of banks building on an already strong base of analytic decisioning, and banks still lining up the basics.

The banks I’ll be talking about still have a way to go before they can claim to be fully customer-centric—so why do I say they are successful? In each case, they’re beginning to achieve the kinds of results—in increased profits, expanded market share, reduced compliance risk and higher customer satisfaction—we’d expect to see in the transformation to customer centricity. Their achievements are good indicators that, as an industry, we’re on the right path.