HEADLINES
- There was a very diverse group around the table
- Opinions varied as to the relevance to their business models
- The threat to traditional banks and building societies from new challenger banks such as Starling which had 1M customers by the end of 2019
KEY CHALLENGES
- Can the big banks get their technology sorted if so could they control the market?
- People become nervous about making choices. Apparently 21% of the UK is risk adverse, would a marketplace with a big name give them more confidence?
- Where the institution choses who should be its partners in a marketplace, perhaps for commercial reasons, does the customer lose out in terms of choice. Single ties for life assurance as opposed to whole of market for instance. If the number of these marketplaces increases, as certainly would seem to be the case from the discussion, how will the customer be able to choose?
- Client ownership is a concern with a multi-branded offering, both for the suppliers and the customers, who are the customers actually dealing with?
- Within a Barclays Marketplace for example if one of the non-brand services has an issue such as a data breach what would be the ramifications for Barclays?
- Is brand loyalty as important as it was? The room was divided on this.
- Trust is a big thing
- The young are used to instant reaction and transactions. But it is not only the young we can see online shopping with the likes of Amazon devastating the high street. A digital marketplace is viewed by some as the way forward to facilitate changing customer demands
CONCLUSIONS/SOLUTIONS
- For traditional smaller Banks and Building Societies they view the relationship with their customers as the most important thing going forward. They are not interested in this emerging distribution segment.
- The larger institutions all seem to be viewing some sort of platformification
- Digital delivery is important, open API’s and Open Banking
- We are seeing the increase rise of digital banks with traditional bank growth down to 1%
- It was stated that mobile banking will overtake traditional banking by 2021
- There was still a belief that savings were rate driven by the majority in the room
- The Yorkshire and I expect others are taking a multichannel approach looking at Marketplace, digital and traditional face to face customer interaction.
Experts: Kevin Mountford & Phil Alcock, Raisin UK
Facilitator: Brod Whiting, JoyndUp Ltd
