COLORADO SPRINGS - Banks of any size that fail to offer one-stop shopping risk losing customers to those that do, the head of the Financial Services Roundtable warns.
"The new paradigm of financial services says, Deliver a continuum of services that your customers demand," said Steve Bartlett, president of the Washington lobbying group. He spoke to 300 bankers this week at the North Carolina Bankers Association's convention here.
"To thrive" under financial modernization, Mr. Bartlett said, "every financial services company has to deliver a breadth of services" - from auto insurance and car loans to Internet banking and venture capital.
Though the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 was more a response to the consolidation trend begun a decade earlier in banking than a revolution unto itself, it will change the industry "profoundly" in the next several years, Mr. Bartlett said.
And though some observers argue that the delivery of financial services is an economy-of-scale game to be played primarily by the big banks, Mr. Bartlett says all banks can be all-in-one stores.
"Size only determines how large a market you choose to serve," he said.
In an interview after his talk, Mr. Bartlett said: "I don't think that financial service companies - large or small - have a choice. Customers will ask for those services
from whomever they are banking with. If it's not provided, they'll go and find it somewhere else."
