Bank and fintech execs report strengthening customer and employee relationships

A financial services industry survey conducted jointly by FS Club and US-based Ravco Marketing in the summer of 2020, sponsored by Salesforce, found that the industry sees a silver lining resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. Most thought that the crisis had a positive effect on their customer and employee relationships, on the market fit for their current products, and the productivity levels of work from home employees. Not all was positive, with the majority saying that their ability to reach the year’s business goals was negatively affected.

The survey drew upon 130 global executives in banking, fintech, and consulting, and covered six key areas: crisis management preparedness, effects on current operations, working from home, relationships with key constituencies, the future effects, and their current state-of-mind. Among the findings:

• 51% of banking executive think the crisis has had a positive influence on their customer relationships; about half think there will only be a small amount of account switching as a result of the crisis;
• 59% think the crisis has had a positive effect on their employee relationships;
• 83% say they support work from home initiatives, and 76% predict that this will reduce their future need for office space.
• 60% think that the Covid-19 crisis has had a positive effect on the market fit of their current products;
• while executives think the crisis has had a negative effect on all parts of their business, with sales and marketing getting hit the hardest, they think that the crisis has had a positive effect on their IT department’s ability to reach their KPIs (key performance indicators);
• 56% think there will be many changes to the financial services industry due to the crisis, with 27% predicting ‘dramatic’ changes;
• 40% of Americans said that they were unprepared to handle the covid-19 government programs that flowed through their organizations, which was almost double the global average and four times the European responses.

According to Chris Skinner, the well-known industry commentator and chairman of the Financial Services Club: “While the Covid-crisis has wreaked havoc on society and business, we were surprised to find that the banking industry believes that their performance during the crisis has had a positive influence on their customer an employee relationships. The industry has talked about digital transformation for over a decade and many are now realizing the need to accelerate their investment to become a truly digital bank and better able to compete with the growing number of challenger banks that are well positioned for a post-Covid world.”

According to George Ravich, president of Ravco Marketing and co-author of the study: “While the industry believes that they were well-prepared for the covid-crisis, most interesting to me was how the Americans felt so much less prepared to deal with the covid-related government programs that flowed through their organizations than the those in Europe and other parts of the world.”

About the Survey
An invitation to participate in the survey was made widely available to industry participants through social media posts during May and June 2020. A total of 130 people completed the 13-question survey administered online through SurveyMonkey. The sample clustered around a few characteristics which can be summarized as follows:

• Almost all (94%) of the respondents are people employed in either FinTech, financial services, or consulting.
• Most (56%) live in Europe/UK, 15% live in the US, and 12% live in Asia.
• The largest group (41%) are employed by small companies with less than 100 employees, followed by those (25%) employed by large companies with over 5,000 employees.
• Almost half (48%) describe their organizational role as either executive management or line of business (LOB) management. About one-quarter are in product management or innovation.

Download the Survey Report and View the Video News Release

The survey is available at no charge and can be downloaded here. View the video news release here.