Winning back your customers - Retail Banking Study 2010

This report is the 2010 edition of an annual study on the retail banking industry in Belgium carried out by Deloitte and the Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School.

There is no doubt that the Belgian banking industry is under fire. The recent spate of government bailouts, takeovers and closures has made consumers anxious. At the same time, consumers continue to voice their dissatisfaction and distrust.

While the 2009 study focused on distribution strategies and more specifically on the future of over 4000 branches, the 2010 study analyses customer loyalty, satisfaction and trust towards the retail banking industry. It is based on responses from 2,000 retail customers regarding their experiences with their primary and secondary banking providers.

What makes this study relevant and unique is that we have information from retail customers on different types of banks and on two different dimensions of loyalty: trust and satisfaction.

This specific information allows us to point out the following:

• The percentage of customers who are not certain they will continue using their current bank services has doubled over the past year (from 11% in 2009 to almost 25% in 2010).
• Loyalty remains low and there is a clear gap between all banks and peer to peer actors.
• Financial institutions suffer from a lack of trust and satisfaction, especially Belgium’s Big Four banks.
• Highly committed customers use more products, give more references and are much less likely to speak badly of their banks to other customers, but they only represent 16% of the market.

 

Give the future economic outlook, our study recommends that it is even more important for banks to:

• Reconfirm a singular market positioning and align the customer value proposition.
• Move from traditional CRM to innovative sales models and enhanced service quality, hence speeding up the transformation to financial advisor.
• Adapt your sales approach to customer generations, especially to Generation Y.

 

 

Published on 28/02/2011