Introduction

Since the onset of the Credit Crisis, the strategic focus of firms in the Financial Services industry has changed dramatically. The decline in demand for complex products has forced banks to place greater emphasis on customer service and customer retention. At the more vanilla end of the spectrum, it becomes difficult to differentiate between the services offered by these banks, and they therefore have to work harder to carve out competitive advantage. Technical advances such as Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) have further reinforced the feasibility of aesthetic appeal and ease of use in providing a flawless end User Experience.

Key Findings

• Focus on Customer Service – Responses from participating banks clearly indicated that the industry has placed a heightened focus on building an intuitive User Experience following the Credit Crisis. All institutions expressed that while User Experience had always been deemed important, the shift towards client-driven flow business has led to much greater attention.

• Demand from Clients – Although the Credit Crisis led to receding confidence in the financial sector, the participants did not feel that external and internal customers had become more demanding.

• Improvements to the Current Setup – Banks are pursuing various strategies to improve customer experience. These include standardisation of interfaces across divisions, development of integrated suites and formulation of global strategies.

• Rich Internet Applications – Major banks are clearly inclined towards richer applications that combine visual elegance and functionality akin to a desktop application. A consensus upon an ideal solution, however, does not exist at present. A plethora of applications, each with a unique profile of performance against features, have complicated decision making, leading to a variety of solutions being adopted at different levels within a firm.

• Development and Training – All banks reported a dramatic fall in development and training costs once rich applications are implemented. The participants also noted that global strategies facilitate greater sharing of knowledge among developers and reduced dependence on individual expertise, especially when introduced gradually. This purges any isolated pockets of expertise, thereby ensuring a common set of skills gained through learning across the firm.

Conclusion

Visual elegance, an integrated view across various applications, responsiveness and visualisation of information are traits that participating banks value strongly. Given that RIAs can offer all these qualities in abundance without consuming precious resources, banks seem to be nearing the objective of providing a seamless and intuitive User Experience. At the same time, potential complications still exist, including time pressures, compatibility issues and the need to demonstrate tangible benefits prior to development in order to procure necessary funding.

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