In a reversal of recent trends, building branches is becoming popular, in order to attract market share and deposits.  Royal Bank, the country’s largest bank by assets, may build as many as 112 branches in the next four years, Chief Operating Officer Barbara Stymiest said today at a CIBC World Markets investor conference in Montreal. Scotiabank, the third-biggest bank, plans to open 30 branches next year, Chief Executive Officer Richard Waugh said at the same conference. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, the fifth-largest bank, said last month that it plans to open or expand 70 branches in the next five … Continue reading Canadian Banks & Insurance | RBC, Scotiabank to Add Branches

 I’d say its pretty darned exciting for a country to be entering the world of online banking from scratch, as in this example in Uganda.  I think too there will be lessons we can learn, from watching such implementations because they will likely avoid the mistakes we al made when we started this gig 10 years ago.  Key lesson for me, is walk, don’t run.  Pace yourself, and do it right remembering the customers who use the online banking service. Total online banking solutions will be provided in the country. This follows a partnership between Solutions for Business, a local company, … Continue reading New Vision Online : Firms to provide total e-banking services

There is a real thread developing amongst banks and their strategies, as they realise their marketing to home nationals misses immigrants.  And immigrants form a large part of every country’s make up now.  Here is a further update on the Canadian Banks efforts to develop market share amongst “new Canadians”. In order to reach them, RBC too has set up a multilingual website and can facilitate non-resident account openings online. The site averages about 5,000 hits a month. “The Chinese version is already about 35 per cent of the traffic,” Whitmell said. “We’ve launched that so that anybody, anywhere around … Continue reading Big banks compete to court immigrant clientele; market, in Canada alone, worth about $3B a year

High street retailers are losing ground to online sales, and this is clear now.  It doesn’t matter whether you are looking at clothes or entertainment (movies and music), the picture is the same. But the key question is whether these initiatives will be enough to stem the decline in their traditional businesses. It will clearly be a struggle. Last week’s trading statement from HMV, which also owns Waterstone’s, showed that sales were down 3.7 per cent over the last 12 months. Others are suffering too: while Next could boast a 15.3 per cent rise in sales of its Directory mail … Continue reading The Observer | Internet’s new wave threatens to wash the high street away

Located this article from Celent, at Aqubanc and the first thing that strikes you is the lack of differentiation in strategy amongst banks. In North American Bank Priorities: Convention or Innovation, Celent examines & analyzes — through the eyes of bank CIO’s — bank IT & business priorities.    …. Finally, the report focuses on the area banks consider core to their entire operation — customer-centricity. ‘In order for banks to succeed, they must learn to innovate while working within regulatory & budgetary constraints,’ says Jacob Jegher, Celent. Source:  Aqubanc Customer centric has got to be the most overused, misunderstood, and … Continue reading "North American Bank Priorities" don’t provide competitive differentiation

 McKinsey have released a book (registration required) that digs into the challenges facing marketing today. Marketers are struggling to keep up with an explosion of new customer segments, sales and service channels, media, marketing approaches, products, and brands. Many have responded to fragmenting opportunities by bolting on new brands, channels, and marketing programs, but doing so increases costs and complexity while reducing organizational agility. To deal with proliferation companies must instead become more sophisticated at prioritizing opportunities and allocating resources while increasing the consistency and coordination of their marketing execution. Source: The McKinsey Quarterly: Profiting from Proliferation One chapter that … Continue reading McKinsey: New thinking in customer segmentation

Jenny from the Webby Awards pointed out that there is a bank category in the annual awards for interactive advertising.  The Webby Awards recognizes outstanding Interactive Advertising in 15+ single and campaign categories. An entry may be entered into multiple categories if appropriate. Entries in multiple categories will be reviewed separately for each category entered and may win multiple awards. Source: Webby Awards The awards are quite well known now and here are last years winners.  The awards, hailed by the New York Times as “the online equivalent of an Oscar”, officially launched their Call For Entries last week. Bank of America … Continue reading Webby Awards nominations are being sought

 Great post on the new tactics required to consider your marketing audience from Tara.  (emphasis added) Of all of the ‘traditional’ marketing practices I choose to ignore, targeting is not one of them…but I do approach it in a bit of a different fashion: instead of the ‘Males, aged 18-34, from urban areas, with some college education’ etc. I like to think in terms of ‘behaviour’ or specific ‘characteristics’. Like, Technorati serves Bloggers first and Blog Readers second and targets their development goals to suit those people. [Now note that when they began that was a very narrow market…not so … Continue reading Target practice

Forrester continue to ask the obvious yet absolutely right questions, yet the answer here is confusing.  Although the branch was once thought to be dead in favor of alternative channels, the majority of consumers still prefer the branch for doing most of their banking business. A Forrester survey shows that these consumers are generally older, less wealthy, and don’t trust online banking. Source: Forrester Research: Who Are The Bank Branch Loyalists? This survey took a look at what turns out to be a significant consumer group. …  took a closer look at the 58% of consumers who say they prefer … Continue reading Forrester Research: Who Are The Bank Branch Loyalists?

Rubel picks up on the social network moves from Banks, and adds one I didn’t have in my list.  I suspect once we dig into it, there will be more Banks is MySpace, Facebook, and the likes.  Those are of moderate interest for me, and really an extension of banner ad marketing.  It remains to be seen whether that’s the model vs build your own social network, a combination of both, or more likely something we haven’t seen yet. Chase Credit Cards has a promotion running with Facebook (login required) Source: Micro Persuasion: Banks Jump to Social Nets to Reach … Continue reading Micro Persuasion: Banks Jump to Social Nets to Reach Gen Y