7 Themes in Retail Banking

Boca Raton, Fla. – With new regulation burdens curbing what were once reliable revenue sources, lingering low interest rates and stalled loan growth, generating profits at banks is becoming increasingly difficult.

To find methods of coping in an ongoing lousy environment, retail bankers rallied together at this week’s Best Practices in Retail Financial Services Symposium. Though all sessions Bank Innovation attended were ripe with survival tips for retail banks, a number of recurring themes and possibilities stood out to us from the trade show. Here are seven themes from the conference:

1. Though floor traffic to bank branches is diminishing, consumers continue to frequent branches when opening accounts. Because customers are still coming into branch locations, banks must enhance and modernize their looks to meet customer experience demands. Panelists urged banks to modernize their branches via methods like deploying digital signage and creating more of a hangout vibe at their “stores;”

2. The fallout of Durbin is the death of free checking, but banks continue to scramble to find ways to fill in the revenue void. Filling this void is extra challenging for banks because consumers are used to getting the checking service for free. Now banks must find ways to price in checking fees, while also getting consumers to understand why the service costs more;

3. Banks should only roll out innovative products that add “core value” to customers. Just because a banker deems a product or service as “cool” doesn’t mean a consumer will use it;

4. Innovation efforts at banks can’t go by the wayside, even with constraints of time and budget concerns;

5. Banks are losing their customer connections because they aren’t keeping pace with customer expectations. Losing the connection with the customer is a huge risk to traditional banks;

6. In today’s environment, if the only way a bank is competing is on price, it’s dying. A bank needs a better value proposition than “price.” Bank products are a commodity; and

7. Consumers are pretty well served by plastic cards. In payment innovations, banks need to look beyond the actual “payment.” In other words, the notion of tapping versus swiping isn’t powerful enough to influence the method in which a consumer pays.