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Savings banks—Engage customers

“The key to increasing revenues and defending market share is customer contact.”
Hans-Jörg Kuttler, Senior Manager, zeb

Challenges

Leveraging potentials, engaging customers, creating growth 

Forecasts predict that the phase of low interest rates will continue. However, if net interest income were to plummet further—without additional growth in retail and corporate banking business—savings banks would suffer a significant decline in earnings. To effectively meet this challenge, institutions need to achieve growth in the higher-income segments of high net worth individuals and private banking clients as well as corporate customers. The customer base and the share of wallet must be increased—both in branch-based business and online.

In truth, however, savings banks have been losing market shares for many years to tech giants, fintech companies such as N26 and other new competitors, particularly among younger, digitally savvy customers. These competitors understood—earlier than many savings banks—that customer journeys no longer start with the customer advisor in the branch and lead to an immediate sale, but often include various platforms and channels.

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Savings banks exploit the market potential of their customers in private customer business by only 30% and of customers in corporate customer business by only 40%.

In addition, customers who only have secondary bank accounts at a savings bank (savings or current accounts) are often not recognized by means of existing segmentation criteria in retail and private banking. Many institutions squander the potential of these highly sought-after customers. 

Savings banks also neglect available potentials in corporate banking business. Here, it is mainly short-term lending and payment transactions. Institutions thus often fail to offer what customers would require from a main bank. As a result, they exploit the market potential of their customers in private customer business by only 30% and of customers in corporate customer business by only 40%.

Solutions

To engage new and existing savings bank customers and retain them in the long term, we have identified key fields of action: