Embracing A CRM Initiative In The BFSI

Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the most important phrases in the banking industry – or at least it should be. In today’s financial world CRM should be linked with the following mission: “Gain a competitive advantage by identifying, attracting, and retaining profitable clients.”

Financial institutions today are facing the same challenge today as 15 years ago. Management is still trying to figure out “how do we obtain a complete picture (a 360-degree view) of our customers that is consistent throughout all contact points of the company?” Why is this challenge always a top priority for the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) industries? The answer is that it leads to a better bottom line.

The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) industries are in an increasingly competitive marketplace. The truth is, the next “Uber” of the financial industry is looming, and you should be ready for it. Due to the global financial crisis, the BFSI industry has placed a huge focus on customer relationship and experience. Many companies are faced with reducing costs (whilst scaling up the business), improving efficiencies, and offering flexibility for skilled resources that are client facing which will improve performance and efficiencies.

The top 3 challenges facing banks and financial institutions

1. Consumer expectations

These days it’s all about the customer experience, and many banks are feeling pressure because they are not delivering the level of service that consumers are demanding, especially with regards to technology. Customers want to manage all of their needs from one interface and want banking to be simple, fast and secure.

2. Increasing competition from financial technology companies

Financial technology (FinTech) companies comprise start-ups that use software to make financial services more efficient and reliable. The increasing popularity of FinTech companies is disrupting the way traditional banking has been done. The traditional companies need to adjust to the changing demands of consumers to ensure competitiveness.

3. Regulatory pressure

Regulatory requirements continue to expand, and banks need to spend a large part of their discretionary budget on being compliant and building systems and processes to keep up with the escalating requirements. At the same time, they must constantly evaluate and improve their operations in order to keep up with the fast pace of change in the banking and financial industry today.

Deloitte reports that the BFSI industry has been experiencing adverse economic conditions and exceedingly stringent regulatory control, with a resultant increase in the amount of capital required. Enormous pressure to reduce costs while upscaling operations is also evident. Simultaneously, customers are becoming highly demanding and expect services and simple communications across a range of emerging channels such as texts, tweets, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Leveraging CRM for Unprecedented Customer Visibility

The aim of CRM is to help businesses use technology to gain insight into the behaviour of customers and the subsequent value of those customers. If it works as planned, a BFSI provider can: provide better customer service, make call centres more efficient, cross-sell financial products more effectively, help sales staff close deals faster, simplify marketing and sales processes, discover new customers, and, ultimately, increase customer revenue.

CRM ProActive

Mint’s ProActive inception methodology drives project success by taking the debriefings, post-mortems, and learnings from more than 15 years of CRM project experience to identify the critical early steps that determine the quality and impact of a project. Find out more about ProActive.

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