Innovation, Middle East

Financial Services mall opens in Bahrain

Colin Henderson

New concept for a mall, based on financial services. MENAFN – Middle East North Africa . Financial Network News: Kingdom’s first Financial Mall opens – Bahrain Bahrain’s first financial mall was yesterday officially opened in Adliya at an event held under the patronage of BMA Governor Rasheed Al Maraj. Customer convenience, and access are key considerations. The mall has been built to offer customers increased convenience, with an accessible location, dedicated parking, longer opening hours as well as telecommunications and insurance services, such as MTC-Vodafone and BKIC respectively. The architectural design is one of open and bright space, with ample … Continue reading Financial Services mall opens in Bahrain

AI

Brand action and brand image are critical considerations for your website

Colin Henderson

Harley Manning from Forrester, spoke eloquently at the Financial Forum keynote this morning.  He has developed a measurement for brand image, and brand action on your web site.  He made the case that people get confused when there is no framework for making a decision, and this particularly applies to web sites.  He advocated the use of persona’s to centre decision makers from disparate groups on assessment and design questions.  Such groups, would be Marketing, Product & Channel. Using the 14 sets of criteria, he made the point that the linkage between that which companies say their brand represents, and … Continue reading Brand action and brand image are critical considerations for your website

US4 Comments

Walmart bank – to manage their own debit credit and electronic check transactions

Colin Henderson

Listened to Jane Thompson from Walmart talk about the Walmart bank. She went to some lengths to demonstrate the value Walmart place in their in-store banking partners, and that the Walmart bank is soley required to manage their own debit credit and electronic check transactions. This was in response to the highly charged fight against their proposed bank. However they are, and will continue to offer cheque cashing, money transfers, and bill payment. That sounds like a bank, but Walmart contend these services, are aimed only at the unbanked population. There are still questions, and it remains to be seen … Continue reading Walmart bank – to manage their own debit credit and electronic check transactions

US1 Comment

Social computing, early examples – Banks

Colin Henderson

There are three good examples now. Nothing revolutionary yet. Visa – Lifetakes HSBC – yourpointofview.com Wells Fargo – Guided by history 1) Visa: during this marketing campaign, the agency sought pictures from real people, and sourced them from Flickr. They asked permission from the individuals. 2) HSBC yourpointofview.com is an HSBC site. It starts of with "Welcome to a place for those who believe that individual points of view enrich the world. A place for the naturally curious". It then asks if you want to express you point of view on something, or to read what others have said. Topics … Continue reading Social computing, early examples – Banks

AI

Yahoo provides perspective on financial services online

Colin Henderson

Yahoo spoke for an hour, and I think surprised many people.  Topics covered; the value of social search – example, yahoo answers – 10 million answers in 5 months how customers rely on friends and family as part of the purchasing process examples of financial services opening up their brands to social computing Visa – Lifetakes HSBC – pointofview.com I would also add to that, Wells Fargo – In History They spoke of the engagement metric, and the relevance of the portfolio of considerations, used to understand how customers get to their decision the value of product comparison – Progressive … Continue reading Yahoo provides perspective on financial services online

Innovation5 Comments

ClairMail reduces call centre calls for account balance

Colin Henderson

Just met with the folks from ClairMail at the technology showcase.  They have an implementation at Wells Fargo, that lets customers SMS or email to Wells, and get back their account balance for their credit card or deposit account.  This is in response to the number of telephone calls they get while customers are out shopping, and need to know their spend availability.  So a $12 phone call is replaced by a cheaper email. Their model is subscription based, but not sure how sustainable that will be, because many are going for the subscription model now, and each of these … Continue reading ClairMail reduces call centre calls for account balance

Business Models1 Comment

“Its just to difficult to sell”

Colin Henderson

Susan Faulkner, SVP at Bank of America speaks very clearly about the advantage of their integrated operating model.  Integrated product and distribution thinks about the consumer needs.  They have a Sales and Service organisation that runs the integrated model. Provocative stats quoted, for sales and service activity %                      2004   2005   2006Online                7.7      11.9      14.1Direct mail      14.3      8.9       4.7Branch             68.4     69.7      67.8Other                  9.6      13.6     13.4 Two things struck me: direct mail is disappearing other & online is growing rapidly Great … Continue reading “Its just to difficult to sell”

AI

Blow up the siloes

Colin Henderson

Bruce Tempkin opened the conference with a great speech, telling Banks to get rid of the siloes.  Not the usual organisational siloes though. He talked of siloes in marketing, products, channels, everything in terms of how we talk to customers. Key change drivers: changing customer needs intense competition new capabilities Solutions were listed, and generally were all tied to listening and thinking about the customer. His watchword was “help customers make good decisions”.  The opposite to siloes is responsiveness.  Social computing comes up a lot, as a means to responsiveness.  Thats as much detail as I will post publicly.  Good … Continue reading Blow up the siloes

AI1 Comment

Forrester Research Conference – New York

Colin Henderson

Well, today and tomorrow I am at the Forrester conference in NY. Just visited the trade show, and some interesting people there. Agencies – Organic, and Razorfish Every email & chat company you can imagine – Claremail, Strongmail, online lead companies, like Leadfusion Google, Yahoo, and Liveperson – must spend more time there RSA and PassMark – interesting, that RSA are promoting Passmark big time Webtrends, and Interwoven More to come throughout the day Its great they have a network set up, with decent speed too. Even more interesting though, compared to MESH last week, I don't see any other … Continue reading Forrester Research Conference – New York

AI

Forrester Research: Finance Forum 2006

Colin Henderson

Well, I’m here in NY for the Forrester Forum tomorrow. Looking forward to this one. Last week we had MESH in Toronto, which was the perfect lead in to this conference. Forrester are good at making us look at the Financial Services industry critically to understand where the competition is taking us. Anyhow, I think they have a network this year, so expect some liveblogging. Technorati Tags: Forrester_finance_forum Continue reading Forrester Research: Finance Forum 2006