See detailed industry insights about overlooked lobby management best practices in the retail branch environment.
Only two sessions are available so register now by clicking on a date below:
Tue, March 6, 2012 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM EDT
Thu, March 8, 2012 1:00 PM – 1:45 PM EDT
Get a look at just how impactful not having the proper lobby management approach can be to your organization when you attend this webinar brought to you by FMSI. Uncover insight for increasing your lobby sales plus strategies for improving your lobby service no matter how many branches you operate.
Kelly, first, thanks for your comment. I really appreciate it. I think this is a great dialogue to have, so thanks for participating in it.
I hear what you are saying. You make a valuable point that greater transparency should, in the long run, improve banking. I’ll grant you that. Greater transparency is good.
However, facilitating greater transparency for consumers right now seems to be sixth or seventh on the Top 10 list of things that need fixing in banking. All of financial services is literally endangered by a systemic risk that has spread the financial contagion from New York to Iceland and all parts in between. In the end, this is a crisis for consumers, true. SmartHippo and other sites address that, to some degree. But the crisis for consumers cannot be resolved until the crisis for banks is resolved. Put another way, the system needs to be fixed before the users of the system can find a better experience. And this is what I see missing from the startup epidemic today. The focus is on the “customer experience” when the the entire system is unraveling. It is great that you can go to SmartHippo and compare mortgage rates and mortgage providers. But what if there are no mortgage providers left? What if it really doesn’t matter whether you can compare the rates of two or three providers because your credit score is 679 and since you are just off prime, you won’t get approved for a loan anyway? The online personal finance sites will not be able to help with that.
Look, I’m all for innovation. We started BankInnovation.net to celebrate and investigate SmartHippo-like banking innovation. It just doesn’t fit today. In our opinion, the innovation today needs to be focused on resuscitating the banking system. Once that’s done, we can return to the customer experience — and SmartHippo.
My hope is that perhaps some of the energy being earmarked for online person finance can be redirected to creating ventures which can improve the way banking assesses and manages its risks, and disposes of its currently overwhelming backload of corrosive assets. Besides, there’s plenty of above-water options in that.