Where have all the digital bankers gone?
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John, is this because some people see a difference between an app that looks and works a bit like a bank, and a bank that also has an app?
The former is where a digital product, service and application are one and the same-while the latter is a bank, that happens to have an app.
Would we expect votes for Lloyds business banking app in this category - for example?
The biggest reason for using the app-based banks IMO, is the speed of opening a new account. I have a client who has had a company bank account with HSBC for over 10 years and wanted another account for a recently incorporated second company (which runs alongside the first, and still profitable, company). HSBC wanted to wait weeks just to have an appointment for a customer (the sole director/shareholder of that company) that they already knew well! Starling carried out due diligence within the app on a customer that they did not previously know and completed the account opening in about 48 hours from first contact.
Incidentally, I had a meeting at the tail end of last year with a client at Barclays. Most of the staff were wandering freely around the modernised branch in funky Barclays branded T-shirts, looking like the staff of apps that you see at accounting conferences. Not one of them could even confirm where the manager that we were due to meet was. It turned out that he'd entered the appointment in his online diary but managers' diaries didn't sync with the overall Barclays system so, when he went off ill, no one knew that this appointment existed and thus they could not offer an alternative manager to see us. Barclays had gone to the effort of looking like a 21st century bank (casually dressed staff, not kept locked up behind windows, cool branding, etc.), but had customer relationship management from the 19th century......wait, strike that; in the 19th century CRM was much better, despite being fully manual :)