Online banking has evolved from a supportive role to more strategic roles in brand enrichment, market share, cost reduction and customer relationships.
It is useful for a bank to pinpoint its location on the value chain in order to set a path for moving up the chain. There are five phases to this process:
Create. In this phase banks create a static website with limited transactional and servicing capabilities.
Transact. During this phase, banks graduate to create multichannel service offerings and enrich transactional capabilities.
Experiment. Normally this is a phase where channel stakeholders take more control from the technology teams. This means the enhancements are driven by cost reduction, channel profitability, improving customer loyalty and lowering prospect abandonment. Prototypes of new technology, concepts and market trends are explored. The bank collates ideas of the best practices and trends.
Innovate. When the bank has successfully created a business case from initiatives in online channel — such as generating independent revenue streams, substantially contributing to the multichannel revenue growth, or creating impressive cost reductions and enhanced brand positioning — management has the confidence to invest further. During this stage CEOs take keen interest in observing the growth strategy of the online banking channel and pushes to become a leader in a given region, product stream or business segment.
Become a role model. This is the phase where the online channel drives the growth strategy. Banks try untested waters. Every offering is enriched with loyalties benefits, third-party discounts, personalized offerings, customer-driven product structuring.
Channel oversight involves finding new alliances, new customer segments, new business opportunities, new geographies, for example a bank may try aligning with the government agencies or industry leaders to tap underbanked segment or microfinance solutions.
