King: Banks face telco-style marginalisation

David Walker
Australia's banks face the same challenge that former telecommunications monopolists have been failing for some time, says a prominent global banking consultant.

Brett King, banking consultant and author of the book Bank 2.0, told Banking Day in an interview that telecommunications network businesses had once held most of the power in their industry but were slowly being marginalised.

"The same thing is going to happen with the banking industry," he said. "They own… the transactional platforms and so forth, but they're really poor at gaining the customer.

"In fact, right now, today, if you're a retail bank and you want your customers to have access to your bank through mobile apps who do you need to ask permission to allow that to happen? You need to ask Google and Apple."

As vendors of the two leading operating systems for smart phones, Google and Apple control what applications can run on their platforms. (It should be noted that neither firm limits access to particular websites, although, in theory, they could.)

King argued that bankers have been deluding themselves about the strength of their customer relationships.

"Banks sit there and they say, 'Customers don't leave our bank… We've got all of these accounts; they've been with us for 18 years. Once they sign up, they don't leave'.

"That's actually not a realistic assessment. What people do is, their account goes inactive and they use another relationship, or they might keep a little bit of money in it for a rainy day...  But you can't call that a premium customer relationship."

King assessed Australian banks as doing relatively well at technical innovation for consumers. He singled out banking apps from the CBA and ANZ for praise, saying the sector had "spots of brilliance". NAB's online UBank brand has created the eighth-largest bank brand by deposits in Australia.

But advertising such as the ANZ's "Barbara from Bankworld" campaign and a series of campaigns from different banks saying they are "trustworthy" and "different" had helped create a "very cynical community", said King.

"The trust is not there."