Why Your Corporate Banking Clients Just Aren’t Feelin’ the Love

Here’s a scary statistic: 90% of big corporate banking clients would consider switching to a different financial institution for better service around onboarding, account maintenance, service requests and inquiry handling.

Pega recently asked Finextra Research, a leading specialist in financial technology news and information, to conduct a survey of corporate banking customer satisfaction. The 90% finding is just one result that suggests banks have a lot of work to do if they are going to make their corporate clients feel loved. From sales to service, they just aren’t happy. Consider:

• During the sales process 50% of corporates are dissatisfied with bankers’ ability to demonstrate a consolidated view of relationship/accounts within the bank and its value/annual revenue.
• 56% of banks have no real-time connection to customer data, account maintenance or existing onboarding inquiries from within their sales tools and 70% can’t carry data over from sales to the onboarding process.
• 78% of banks lost some corporate business in the past 12 months. While 35% of respondents cited price sensitivity as the main reason, this was followed closely by the lack of omni-channel access to information and services at 33% and slow resolution of request and inquiries at 30%.

There’s one word that best describes the situation: disconnection. The first disconnect is between the banks’ perception of what corporate customers want and what they actually want. Most banks think pricing, then products and services win them business. OK, these are important-but for corporates, quick turnaround time for resolution of requests and inquiries is just as important.

The second disconnect is the isolated channels, systems and processes that slow down every aspect of the corporate client relationship. For example, banks cite the difficulty of integration with third-party data providers as a prime cause of inefficient (and costly) onboarding. Service requests are taking even longer to resolve than in 2010 according to the survey!

The good news is that there are clients to be gained and money to be made by focusing on the technology that can transform your corporate clients’ experience. As you execute on your IT plan for the coming year, keep in mind the following four key technology issues:

1. How do I leverage mobile and omni-channel capabilities not only to offer multiple ways to engage, but also ensure that interactions conducted across channels and devices are consistent, coordinated and transparent?
2. What do we need to create an integrated client view so that clients experience one face of the bank across the client lifecycle?
3. How do we implement business processes across data, systems, lines of business and geographies to efficiently manage the client journey from sales through service?
4. How do we gain the flexibility to manage rapid change at all levels including regulatory change, new business opportunities, and competitive challenges?

By targeting your investments in these areas, you can become the go-to bank for that 90% of dissatisfied corporate clients, delivering a connected, consistent and responsive client experience that makes them feel loved-and love you back.

Click here to read the complete Finextra Corporate Banking Customer Satisfaction analysis.