Interesting and thought provoking meeting with a colleague today. Topic was customer behaviours, behavioural economics, and impacts on how we develop banking strategies.

How we leap that chasm between strategies and results that can be directly attributable to those strategies?

We all want to grow revenue, and let’s say there are 4 ideas on the table to generate revenue. All will require customers to buy into the idea and buy our products. At some point, it becomes a leap, and do we really know what constitutes success?

Then layer in customers’ rapidly altering behaviours as a result of internet. Its a genuinely disruptive technology, but at what point does it become the premier technology to consider in strategy development. Is this a fork in the road, or a slow filter through the countryside before we reach the new highway (terrible metaphor)?

This with the backdrop of years of banking in branches, and relying on face to face interactions, that makes it hard, for banking leadership, and banking investor analysts for that matter, to reflect on the power of relationships managed not just electronically, but without direct human interaction. Of course the converse of no human’s is immediacy, and sustainment, and that will be preferred by many customers – where is the tipping point?

Then we have to consider the different generational characteristics, and how Gen Y for example, are prone to peer advice rather than institutional advice. So where do social networking sites play in that space?

And all this when productivity pressures mean we can’t do everything for everyone.

Anyhow, lots more to think about here, and more questions than answers. This is an exciting time for banks’!