ServiCaixa, la Caixa’s online
ticketing subsidiary covering theatre, cinema, music and sport, is
one of the most successful non-banking service companies operated
by any bank. Since its launch in 1993, ServiCaixa has become
Spain’s biggest ticket agency and a highly profitable operation for
its parent. Rodrigo Amaral reports.
The recent expansion into
retail banking by multinationals such as Tesco and Virgin reflects
a growing confidence that non-banks can compete with traditional
lenders on their own patch.
Go deeper with GlobalData
But in Spain in particular, there have been
movements in the other direction too. Spanish banks have been
developing their non-banking business via the online channel in a
quest to find new sources of revenue and to create a means of
communicating with current and potential clients.
As a result, a wide range of products, from
holiday packages to cars and new flats, can be purchased via
websites maintained by some of the largest banks in the
country.
The most successful example of a web-based,
non-banking service provided by a bank in Spain is ServiCaixa, an
operation established by la Caixa, the Barcelona-based savings bank
in 1993.
ServiCaixa sells tickets to movies, theatre and
football matches via two sources: a dedicated website at
www.servicaixa.com and from the majority of its 7,951-strong-ATM
network.
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By GlobalDataBy 2009, ServiCaixa had developed into a
profitable company in its own right, handling 47m transactions and
producing group revenue of €168.6m ($230.9m), an 8% increase from
the previous year.
“ServiCaixa’s goal, when it was created was to
add value to the clients of the bank, and the same story applies
today,” ServiCaixa’s general director Jon Sarabia told
RBI.
“We were the first Spanish company to offer a
service to sell tickets online, both via the internet and from
ATMs,” he added.
At first, ServiCaixa was run by the bank’s
retail banking unit but, as the business expanded, a new
organisation was set up to cope with increased demand.
In 1999 a new company, called Serviticket, was
created. It is responsible for the management of advanced ticket
sales, the negotiation of contracts with event organisers and the
development of new technologies offered to clients.
Steady progress
The progress of the business has been steady,
reaching new heights in 2009, despite a severe economic downturn in
Spain.
“After August, we had four months of strong
growth, until we achieved record volumes of ticket sales,” Sarabia
said. “In fact, in December, ServiCaixa managed to surpass, for the
first time, the threshold of 1m tickets sold in a single
month.”
The sales data rattled off with relish by
Sarabia is hardly typical of a retail banking executive.
For instance, the biggest single contributor to
ServiCaixa revenue in December was the success of Avatar,
director James Cameron’s Oscar-winning blockbuster.
The film helped boost ticket sales by 80%
compared with the same month in 2008, reaching 1.2m.
“On 26 December, we sold 96,700 tickets in a
single day, an average of over 4,000 tickets an hour, or more than
one per second,” said Sarabia. A total of 9.3m tickets were sold
last year by ServiCaixa, a 6% increase over 2008.
The contribution of ServiCaixa to the group’s
results makes Serviticket an important part of the business in its
own right. But the popularity of the service also creates important
opportunities for la Caixa to promote its retail banking products
and services. According to the consultancy Nielsen, ServiCaixa is
the most popular online tickets service in Spain, with a share of
more than 36% of the market.
In 2008, it was estimated that the website had
almost 800,000 unique users. People who access the page to buy
their tickets are invited to register and become members of a
ServiCaixa Club that provides access to a number of special offers.
Total membership of the club at the end of 2009 was almost 1.6m
members, 226,000 of whom joined in the previous 12-month
period.
The popularity of the service is helped by the
high profile of a number of the sports and events providers that
sell tickets via ServiCaixa. They include top tourist attractions
such as the Alhambra in Granada, and Barcelona’s Aquarium, as well
as the main chains of cinemas and theatres in Madrid, Barcelona and
other cities.
ServiCaixa also sells tickets to the matches of
the two most popular football clubs in both Madrid (Real Madrid and
Atlético de Madrid) and Barcelona (Barcelona FC and Espanyol) and
Valencia, the largest club in Spain’s third most populous city.
“Most of ServiCaixa’s clients are not clients
of la Caixa and are aged between 20 and 55,” said Sarabia.
This represents a large pool
of potential la Caixa clients that can receive information about
the bank’s product range, via the ServiCaixa website, as they buy a
ticket for a football match or a night out at the opera.
“As a subsidiary of the la Caixa group,
ServiCaixa is able to promote the products linked to the bank,” he
added.
The ServiCaixa website has, for example,
recently been promoting the new Euribor Account offered by Self
Bank, la Caixa’s online bank, in a banner at the bottom left side
of the home page.
Non-clients are also drawn in with offers that
demonstrate the benefits of being a la Caixa customer, when making
future ticket purchases, as clients enjoy a number of advantages.
Those aged under 26, for instance are targeted by la Caixa with a
dedicated retail banking service called LKXA, where clients don’t
pay commission on each ticket sale (and which represents the main
source of revenue of the service).
Account holders of la Caixa who accumulate
loyalty points in terms of the banks rewards programme can also
redeem the points via the ServiCaixa website.
ServiCaixa also helps the bank to fine tune its
multi-channel distribution strategy. Tickets are sold via five
different channels: la Caixa’s ATMs, the internet, ServiCaixa’s own
service points, telephone and mobile phone.
“ServiCaixa was a pioneer in Spain by
introducing m-ticketing services at the end of 2007,” Sarabia said.
“Via this service, electronic tickets are stored in the buyers’
mobile phone, which can also be used to locate ServiCaixa-served
events by GPS.”
Clients can use m-tickets to get into some
cinemas in Barcelona and Madrid. Tickets can also be collected at
most of la Caixa’s ATMs, which are equipped with a system developed
in-house to allow the printing of the tickets.
While ServiCaixa was an early player in
promoting the online sale of non-banking services, it is not the
only one. A number of la Caixa’s rivals have adopted similar
strategies: Bancaja and Ibercaja sell holiday packages, while Caja
Madrid and Unicaja also offer ticketing services, although less
comprehensive than ServiCaixa’s set up.
Bankinter sells mobile phones and internet
access in association with Dutch telecom provider KPN, competing
with the likes of Orange and Vodafone. But the most ambitious
initiative has been carried forward by BBVA, the country’s second
largest bank.
Diversify e-services to
survive
Back in 2007, BBVA chairman Francisco
González caused a stir in the market by declaring that banks would
have to be prepared to sell all kinds of goods and services if they
wanted to survive.
González announced an investment of €5.6bn to
develop the technology required to turn branches and online
resources into a one-stop shop for anyone wanting to buy a car or a
refrigerator in the same place where they would obtain the loan to
make the purchase. The bank developed BBVA Servicios, an online
shop that sells articles that range from toys, jewellery and vacuum
cleaners to cars and flats.
The items sold by the shop are also widely used
in promotions to attract new clients to sign up to deposit and
investment products offered by the retail banking network.
Another area where Spanish banks have had to
learn how to sell non-banking products in a hurry is the property
market.
After finding themselves landed with an extra
172,000 of new and used properties on their books, due to loan
defaults by mortgage customers and developers in the past two
years, Spanish banks have had to sell and rent out properties as
quickly as possible, to reduce the impact that they have on their
balance sheets.
Santander uses an online portal, Altamira, to
sell only new residential properties with discounts of up to 50%,
while Caja Mediterraneo offers mortgage loans of up to 100% of the
value of the property via the website www.oportunidadescam.es.
Perhaps boldest of all so far has been
Bancaja, the Valencia-based savings bank. People who buy properties
from the bank’s property portfolio do not need to pay either
interest or the principal of the loan for the first three years of
their mortgage.
|
PERFORMANCE |
|||
|
La Caixa – fundamentals, |
|||
|
2009 (€bn) |
2008 (€bn) |
% change |
|
|
Net interest income |
3.93 |
3.50 |
12.1 |
|
Net fees |
1.30 |
1.25 |
4.2 |
|
Total income |
7.18 |
6.75 |
6.4 |
|
Total operating costs |
-3.56 |
-3.52 |
1.0 |
|
Net operating income |
3.62 |
3.22 |
12.3 |
|
Allowances for insolvency and |
-1.40 |
-0.61 |
126.4 |
|
Post-tax income |
2.00 |
2.31 |
-13.5 |
|
Recurring income attributed to |
1.71 |
2.05 |
-16.7 |
|
Cost-income ratio |
42.9% |
45.2% |
(230) bps |
|
Source: La Caixa |
|||
