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Archives for April 2012

Best of Bank Innovation 2012- Part 2

April 3, 2012 by JP Nicols

Yesterday I brought to you some of the best thoughts from Day One of the Bank Innovation conference held last week in San Francisco.  It was a great event filled with some of the sharpest minds in financial innovation. Today, I bring you  some of the best ideas from Day Two, plus a few of my closing thoughts.JJatBI2012

Channel Agnosticism: Being Everything to Every Customer

“Multi-channel strategy is solving issues that exist in a single channel world…Think full service vs. self service, not traditional vs. alternative (channels)”

—Ginger Schmeltzer, SVP, Digital Channel Management, SunTrust Banks

“Be the right things to the right people in the right channel…Focus on optimization, not migration…” Think in terms of an analogy to eating:

  • Snacking- wherever, whenever = check your balances, transfers
  • Lunch- diverse, habitual and regular = online banking, bill pay
  • Fine dining- staff assisted =  important and meaningful decisions”

—Geoff Knapp, Vice President, Online Banking & Consumer Insight, Fiserv

“Mobilize and optimize– don’t miniaturize…Continuously evolve the experience as devices change…so many mobile capabilities to leverage– maps, GPS, messaging, speech input, camera, video, etc., etc.”

—Brian Pearce, SVP, Head of Retail Mobile Channel, Internet Services Group at Wells Fargo & Co

My Closing Thoughts

  • There continues to be a tremendous amount of innovation in the payments and transaction space, both from within the banking industry and from disruptive forces outside the industry.
  • Several speakers talked about moving beyond the efficient utility of flawless execution to creating more engaging experiences.
  • There was also increasing talk of creating more consistency in functionality and experiences across multiple channels (web, mobile, apps, mobile web and “real life”)– what Steve Jobs would have called an “ecosystem”.
  • Accordingly, financial institutions are beginning to integrate Big Data into the ecosystem (and vice versa), but most have a long way to go.
  • Most financial institutions are still in the early stages of integrating digital marketing and social media into their overall strategies, and many are still struggling with more basic concerns of sales and revenue growth, talent management and trying to figure out how to take market share from one another.
  • As far as I know, I was the only person in the room with a background in wealth management. I continue to be energized by how much white space there is to explore at the intersection of leadership, advice and technology.
Related articles
  • Where Banking Meets Innovation: Innotribe (bradleyleimer.com)

Filed Under: FinTech, Leadership, Practice Management, Wealth Management Advice Tagged With: Bank Innovation conference, Brian Pearce, financial innovation, Financial services, fintech, Fiserv, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, SunTrust Bank, Wells Fargo

Best Ideas From Bank Innovation 2012- Part 1

April 2, 2012 by JP Nicols

Last week I attended the Bank Innovation 2012 Conference in San Francisco. I met a lot of great people and picked up some new ideas. Here’s what stuck out for me (in a good way):

What Is “Banking” Today?  A Debate on the Future

“We need to marry the online experience to the real world experience– especially for high value transactions, while lower value transactions need to get more efficient.”

—Noah Breslow, Chief Operating Officer, On Deck Capital

“In essence, banking is a utility. Removing pain is a win. You need to give clients a reason to care…The key is to use data to predict what customers want, not dictate it.”

—Shawn Budde, Co-Founder & Chief Risk Officer, ZestCash

“We’ve reached the tipping point on electronic banking, but people need a better reason to go with a direct bank.”

—Dan O’Malley, Founder & CEO, PerkStreet Financial

“We should be trying to build brands that people want to be associated with. They should want to wear our logo because it says something about who they are.”

—Jeff Stephens, Founder, Tribed and CBC

–

New Product Strategies & Possibilities


“We don’t have an ‘innovation department’. All 2500 associates are responsible for innovation.”

—Todd Sandler, Head of Product Strategy & Deposits, ING Direct

“Consumers want a lot of help, and they still look to banks for it. They are moving past transactions and history, and they want help and advice for the future.”

—James Shanahan, President, Shanahan & Associates, LLC

–

Social Banking Without Being Insecure or Annoying

“Companies don’t blog, people do…we replaced logos with faces for our twitter responders and we expanded our 6AM-6PM coverage to 24×7…We pay more attention to sentiment rather than number of followers.”

—Darius Miranda, VP, Social Business Strategist, Wells Fargo

“We actually sat down and wrote 20,000 personalized emails…We got a 40% response rate”

—Josh Reich, CEO, Simple Finance Technology Co. / BankSimple

“You have to think anywhere/anytime and you have to be authentic…You have to connect your brand to employees first. You have to work inside out.”

—Eric Rinebold, Industry Principal — Digital Engagement, Infosys

Coming Up Tomorrow: 

Best Ideas From Bank Innovation 2012- Part 2


Filed Under: FinTech, Leadership, Practice Management, Wealth Management Advice Tagged With: bank innovation, BankSimple, financial innovation, Financial services, fintech, ING Group, Jeff Stephens, Josh Reich, PerkStreet Financial, Shawn Budde, Wells Fargo, ZestCash

Sorry, But You’re No Steve Jobs

April 1, 2012 by JP Nicols

Today is Apple’s 36th anniversary. Appropriately, there was an amusing article in the March 30 Wall Street Journal (Bio as Bible: Managers Imitate Steve Jobs) that described managers who take their admiration of the Apple co-founder beyond inspiration to imitation.

Mindless repetition of another’s actions in hopes of repeating their success may work for a simple task, but not for something as complex and artful as leadership.

Not a new phenomenon

Blatant imitation in the quest for success is hardly a new phenomenon. When I joined the business world in the 1980’s, GE chairman Jack Welch was widely regarded as the prototype for the modern manager. There were a number of factors that contributed to his success, including his contribution to a strong internal culture of developing leaders throughout the company (not to mention the tail wind of a strong economy and stock market during much of his tenure).

But for much of the public and the popular press, he was known simply as “Neutron Jack” in a wry reference to the neutron bomb for his ability to eliminate mass amounts of people while leaving their buildings intact. Welch was not alone. “Corporate raiders” like Carl Icahn, arbitrageur Ivan Boesky, junk bond LBO king Mike Milken and later “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap all grabbed headlines for their particular brands of  cost-cutting to “unlock shareholder value”.

Their ethos was personified in the star of Oliver Stone’s Wall Street– Gordon Gecko, who famously proclaimed that “Greed is good“.

Regardless of the unpleasant (and at times illegal) activities of some, there was a core of truth that many firms and many industries had become bloated with non-productive assets and expenses.

Imitation Without Integration

But other managers blindly imitated these activities, often without  broader context.

Suddenly, managers of every level thought that the key to the corner suite was cost cutting. Never mind that some of those costs were actually investments in their firms’ very future– infrastructure, key activities and key people whose disappearance could prevent paying customers from becoming, well, paying customers any more. Let alone loyal, raving fans.

A unique version of this played itself out in the banking industry too. For sure there were too many competitors with too many expenses to be supported in an efficient market. That’s a big reason why the total number of banks has been cut in half in the past 22 years, as I discussed in my March 26 post Is Bank Merger Mania Imminent?

The New Corporate Buzzwords

But now, the corporate buzzwords that seem to be in favor are some of those favored by Steve Jobs– “innovation”, “ecosystem”, “product focused” and “obsession with perfection”.

Those are all fine traits in the right context, but simply lifting them out of Steve Jobs’s biography and forcing them on your team blindly is not necessarily going to lead your company to become the most valuable in the world.

I recently spent some time with a senior executive who confided to me that her colleague was driving her crazy with his obsessive attention to all the wrong details while major issues have been left unattended. Knowing I can default to sports analogies when trying to make a point, she smiled and said “Let’s put it this way– his team is only scoring two field goals a game, but he’s obsessing over the right shade of color on the uniforms and the selection of halftime music.”

Worse, he had recently read Jobs’s biography and was now using it to justify his unproductively obsessive behaviors.

After all, he was just trying to make the company “insanely great”…

“Sorry, but you’re no Steve Jobs” she wanted to tell him.

Most of us probably aren’t.

Be You Instead

It’s great to pull inspiration from other successful people, but you have to channel that inspiration in a way that is consistent with who you are, and in a way that works for your team.

There was only one Steve Jobs.

Be you instead.

Filed Under: FinTech, Leadership, Practice Management Tagged With: Apple, Carl Icahn, financial advisor, financial innovation, Financial services, Ivan Boesky, Jack Welch, Pioneers, Steve Job

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