Andrei Găman, FintechOS: Personal really differentiates banks in the era of digital banking

Andrei Găman, Commercial Vice President FintechOS, was the guest speaker of the Future Banking event Digital Banking Scorecard and commented about the launch of our report regarding the status of digitalization in the Romanian banking systems. (declarations start at min 4:24)

Mr. Găman considers that banks are motivated by a report like Digital Banking Scorecard.

“I think banks are challenged by seeing the result of the report because, at the end of the day, we all want to learn from those reports. I think there is too much information on digital transformation out here, but concrete facts and factoids, scorecards, numbers, rankings, I think this is what we need right now, so banks can understand how they can differentiate, but also how they can become at par with the «hygiene» as we call it right now, the level of digital transformation currently. So, I think this report is a good benchmark and a good ranking between banks, that will motivate them to step up and get to 100% achievement in those scorecard metrics.”

Hygiene factor in the digital propositions

Mr. Găman said that hygiene means many things, like customer experience and banks should consider what customer experience is made of since it's a sum of many factors.

“One of them is how it looks, the user experience, the user interface, how it looks, how it behaves, how accessible it is to customers. This is the first step and I have seen banks doing a good job in driving the transformation in this first step. Hygiene right now is making your products available online, hygiene is making sure they are present on the customers’ experiences, on the mobile phones, on the laptops, whenever the customer is at the point of purchase. If you are looking to sell a loan to the customer or at the point of inception if you are looking to onboard the customer with the current account, these factors are hygiene and the bank needs to be part of the customers’ life, to enhance it and make it easier for them to use the financial services, this whole concept of ambient financial services and embedded financial services are slowly becoming also hygiene.”

Mr. Andrei Găman stated that banks that are not part of the daily customers’ life will not be able to do banking with the customers because nowadays banking is not done in branches and in offices anymore, banking is done whenever the customer has a need, and that product or service can support that need fast.

Customer experience

“Customer experience is how it looks and how accessible it is and the whole user interface is, but customer experience is also the product and the personalization and the relevance of those products you put in front of the customers”, Mr. Găman said.

“You can be as personalized, and you can create a personalized experience as the weakest link in the chain which sometimes is the product definition engine on a bank. If you can support 2 products and they are static, you have the most personalized experience to put in front of the customers if you only have those 2 products, there is no personalization there. There is no relevance to the customer, they would have to choose between product A and product B.” (declarations start at min. 5:50)

“Banks are right now in full speed in terms of digital transformation, that’s going to be the next step, to really define those differentiated value propositions that are supported by innovative lending engines, product definitions engines that allow for the differentiated value propositions to be created and then surfaced in the customer experience.” (min. 6.19)

Customer centricity

Continuing his remarks during the event, Mr. Găman also mentioned customer-centricity which must be personal and relevant. And he said personal because personalization is already passe and personal is what really differentiate banks in the new era of digital banking. (min. 7:43).

“The customer journey encompasses the best moment when the customer can be addressed, with the problem they have, and the product, and the ecosystem of solutions that we put forward for that customer. And the last step is making sure you can administrate that product. I think this is what we should look at, putting the customer in the center, the data about that customer at the core of the value proposition, innovating fast, and empowering the business users to create and test and launch that valued propositions into the market fast so customers can react to them and get feedback and you can improve every day.”

First-mover in the digital landing

“It’s obvious, when you are a first mover you gain market share fast and I think that’s very important because as you gain market share, you decrease that barrier to switch or barrier to entry. Look at neo banks, they came with a value proposition that was so specific to a customer problem, low FX rates, or you can go out with your friend to dinner, split the bill, and get your money back instantly – instant payments. The move from a traditional bank to a neo bank was so easy because it was so personal and so relevant to the customer. So, as you're the first mover, you get access to many customers, obviously, that means increased revenues and profitability, but then you need to be looking at what you do is just because you did the critical mass of customers that then you can build on top of and really expand any larger your product portfolio with your customers.” (min. 9:15).

Banks should start the digital transformation process

Mr. Găman thinks all the banks must have a clear plan on how they achieve the most of the digital transformation scores and they should act on it fast.

“They need to understand what the gaps are, and that is why I think this report is relevant because it clearly shows banks where they need to get better and what they need to get better at, so they need to put in place a clear plan on how to achieve those metrics.” (min. 14:40)

Also, Mr. Găman stated that banks could start sharing ideas around roadmap planning, ideas around what they need to achieve in the future and build an ecosystem of support around themselves from technology partners, business stakeholders, partner companies.

“They need to build those differentiated value propositions with and provide access to a platform that everyone can create different propositions. Empower more business users to really own and create those propositions and put them into the market fast.”

Design thinking

“More and more banks embrace this concept of co-creation, opening up and listening to customers and partners. It’s all about building that continuous feedback loop. If you are in a fixed mindset and you have a product you want to push through some channels to the market, you might end up out of business sometimes. Because those channels are not relevant to customers anymore, the branches and the offices of the banks are not relevant, the digital experience that matters.”

Mr. Găman said that the concept of design thinking is making sure those continuous feedback loops are using a process of innovation and creating digital products.

“You need to have around the table all the stakeholders and the relevant party that can contribute to building that differentiated value proposition and that can validate very fast with the market. And we’ve seen good examples like Banca Transilvania, BRD, OTP.” (min. 19:34).

You can watch the entire address of Mr. Andrei Găman in the video below.

Photo Credit: Mihaela Savu