Five Banks Redefining Customer-Centricity in the UK

By Anushka Pandit

Customers are at the centre of the business for banks. These five banks have gone the extra mile to make the experience more gratifying for their customers.

Irrespective of how deeply regulated it is, the banking industry, too, is a witness to a broad variety of consumer trends—and, rightly so. Customers show keen interest in expressing their shopping habits and sectors like retail adhere. Why would customers not want innovation where they store their money?

Over the years, traditional banks have been joined in the leagues by newer members like neo banks that are entirely digital. Both are, however, constantly strategising to redefine and evolve the banking experience. At the end of the day, financial institutions want their customers to not view banking as a stressful or a monotonous thing they must deal with—they want the experience to be just as fun, satisfying and delightful as that with, say, a fashion store.

Here are five banks in the United Kingdom that have poured in extra thought towards captivating their customers and making the banking experience simpler.

1. Monzo’s ‘MOOD’ Recaps Customers’ Spending Habits

The young generation loves to see an annual recap of the music they vibed to all year-long. What’s another thing the young customers of today like seeing a recap of at the end of the year? Their spending habits. An extremely innovative and well-thought out idea – this concept was tapped by Monzo Bank in the UK, and it rocketed.

The latest initiative was what the bank called the Money vs Monzo brand campaign, the theme of which was “MOOD,” which focused on two key ideas:

A mood picker that tells the story of each customer’s year in two entirely different ways, so you can choose to experience your year in nice or savage mode depending on your mood.
A finale screen that defines your ‘mood’ for the year.

Using quips and puns, and stickers and imagery that expressed humour, the team at Monzo brought every customer’s financial year to life in a fun, engaging way. This was a great way to personalise the year for every individual, reflecting perfectly on customers’ spending habits.

2. Openbank’s Roboadvisor Manages your Investments

Santander’s Openbank is making investing simpler for its customers. Understanding investment options and maintaining a well-distributed portfolio can be challenging and overwhelming. In Europe, Openbank offers its customers an easier way to invest using its Roboadvisor platform as well as using artificial intelligence-based tools that provide more information to clients when saving and investing.

A ‘robo-advisor’ manages investments by automatically investing online according to investor preferences and profiles. Relying on automation and algorithms, they aim to tailor portfolios to clients’ preferences, conditions, assets and goals. In general, robo-advisors’ management is passive; but it can include active investing. Thus, they can charge better fees than personal advisors.

With offerings like roboadvisor, Openbank continues to reinvent itself by developing products and services with cutting-edge technology. After its complete redesign in 2017 with its own technology, it is now 100% hosted in the cloud.

3. Ki’s Underwriting Delivers Quotes in Seconds, Not Days

AI, amidst other technologies that form the digital revolution, have the potential to transform the fundamental way any industry functions, including the insurance market. In London, the University College of London collaborated with Google Cloud to create Ki – a digital underwriting platform for the Lloyd’s market.

They built the algorithm to significantly reduce the amount of time it takes for brokers to place their follow capacity, after arranging lead terms for specialty risks. Brokers log in to the Ki platform, fill out some details about the risk and can instantly generate a follow line, in as little as 10 seconds. The algorithm behind the platform underwrites the risk and determines how much capacity to offer to that risk.

Ki has not only revolutionised the speed of underwriting risks, but also the way brokers can access significant volumes of capacity, helping them efficiently cover risks for their clients.

Gartner’s Pace Layered Architecture

Gartner defines pace layering as “a methodology for categorising, selecting, managing and governing applications to support business change, differentiation and innovation.” This approach defines how businesses can make the most of their architecture and its components by evolving each at the pace most appropriate for its individual function and needs.

The pace layered architecture classifies systems into three layers:

1 – Systems of Innovation (New Ideas; Competitive Threats)

2 – Systems of Differentiation (Better Ideas; Unique Processes)

3 – Systems of Record (Common Ideas; Greater Efficiency)

In simple terms, the model helps organisations understand how to keep their technology systems up to speed with the way their business evolves.

4. Barclays’ Unreasonable Impact Reimagines Sustainability

Through its Unreasonable Impact programme, a partnership between Barclays and Unreasonable Group, Barclays is supporting high-growth entrepreneurs with the network and resources they need to seek to address pressing social and environmental challenges.

The programme has supported 330+ companies and the two companies have collectively generated a revenue of 11 billion and employed 31,000 people.

Currently operating across the UK, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas, the programme is designed to help participating entrepreneurs at a pivotal stage of their growth journey to quickly solve key challenges facing their business in order to help them rapidly scale. From making meat in a lab, to turning carbon waste into usable fuel – Unreasonable Impact supports entrepreneurs who are reimagining the future of energy, sustainable living, supply chains and more.

5. Natwest Works with OpenAI for Bank-Wide Simplification

In a bid to offer safe and responsible digital baking experiences to customers, Natwest partnered with OpenAI for utilising its latest technologies and expertise. Guided by the bank’s Artificial Intelligence & Data Ethics Code of Conduct, the wide-scale collaboration enables bank-wide simplification of experiences using AI.

The approach aims to accelerate how quickly and widely the bank can deploy some of the latest and most powerful developments in generative AI (GenAI). Natwest cites that developing digital assistant services for customers will be a key area of focus, including new ways customers can use AI to help them with more complex tasks, including the identification, reporting and resolution of fraud and scams.

Natwest is the first UK-based bank to work with OpenAI for a collaboration of such a scale.

With sessions like Future Proofing your brand for the next generation of consumers, Is loyalty dead?; Rethinking customer connections in the modern era, and many others, Vibe Marketing Technology Fest will explore how marketers can embed customer-centricity in their strategies.

Check out the full agenda here. Register now to join the event and reach out to our team for more information.