BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Financial institutions that stay true to their core values and deliver for their customers have the strongest brands, an analysis of all American banks and CUs revealed.
In the first of its biannual brand value index report, Bancography determined the top banks and credit unions in the country based on a mathematical formula that backed out all tangible assets, and adjusted for franchise values such as affluence, competition and market, leaving only the strength of the intangible values, which it refers to as the brand.
"It is a quantitative ranking of brand and we were able to examine every bank and credit union in the US," said Bancography president Steve Reider. "If we can't attribute the value to the tangible assets and we can't attribute it to the franchise location, then how are you getting this income, how are you getting these deposits? And the answer has got to be brand."
Reider explained further that the brand is far more than logos, advertising strategies or how branch buildings look, and are instead the "values that the institution stands on." Commerce Bank of Missouri, which made it into Bancography's top 10 mid-sized bank rankings, Reider pointed out, also recently won the J.D. Power and Associates award for highest customer satisfaction at a financial institution. "That can't be a coincidence," he concluded.
Financial institutions that proved they have a personal relationship and rapport tended to score very highly, especially those that served a particular niche.
"They don't play the rate game. They are absolutely competing on relationship attraction rather than pure rate-based premises," said Reider. "If there is one way I can unite the top ranking banks, [it] is that the overwhelming majority of them have pretty focused marketing strategies from a segmentation standpoint. They aren't trying to be all things to all price points to all people."
Of course, such an attitude plays directly into the hands of CUs, even some of the country's largest, as Utah-based Mountain America placed first among CUs with more than $1 billion in assets. ASI, a community development credit union in Louisiana, earned top billing among small CUs.
But as the merger frenzy continues in the financial world, Reider sees an interesting dichotomy between growing to survive and establishing a strong brand.
"It raises a question, I believe, about how you maintain that service promise and that focus even as you expand to new line of business segments or new geographic segments," Reider said. The rankings did not include institutions that have averaged negative operating earnings over the past three years, those operating below regulatory capital adequacy thresholds, and those without traditional retail banking operations. It also only examined financial institutions that have been in operation for three years or more.
"One of our goals in deriving this is to promote some discussion about what it really means to have a good strong, brand out there," said Reider.(c) 2008 The Credit Union Journal and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved.http://www.cujournal.com/ http://www.sourcemedia.com/
