Communisis is helping its UK retail banking clients to better communicate with customers following the January ’13 retail distribution review. Billy Bambrough spoke to Graham Lee of Communisis about the challenges of dealing with customer communications on a grand scale and the importance of getting the right message across
With the implementation of the retail distribution review (RDR) it is expected that fewer people will utilise financial advice due to the cost. Communisis are aiming to help banks improve their marketing by better providing information to their customers.
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Working with four of the five big UK banks Communisis deal with a wide range of customer communications, everything from utilities, billing and transactional both on and offline.
Graham Lee, director of creative insight and strategy at Communisis, explains to RBI how the market is changing as a result of the RDR.
"A lot of banks sell non-advice products and therefore think that RDR isn’t relevant. But by default the consumer is now looking for a higher level of non-advice products because they don’t want to pay a fee", says Lee.
"You have to get your communication accurate in quality otherwise consumers will go else where. It’s the banks that grasp that firmly are the ones with the opportunity to attract more customers."
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By GlobalDataAccording to a recent Which? survey HSBC, Yorkshire Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, First Direct and Barclays failed to give correct answers to three questions on cash ISAs for over half of questions asked.
Just 16 of the 180 advisers that Which? spoke to gave correct answers to all of the questions that were asked to them.
Which? placed 180 calls to 15 leading banks and building societies to assess the quality of advice given to people who want to transfer their cash ISA savings.
Lee says: "ISA’s are an advice opportunity which the banks have missed out on. Highlighting how they could change that. It has massive commercial communication implications for the bank because in being unclear and not getting their information correct with a product like ISAs consumers will be left confused and less likely to invest."
He adds: "The implication of getting the right message across has a massive commercial impact."
Richard Lloyd, executive director at Which?, said: "Banks and building societies are still falling short when it comes to providing basic information over the phone about cash ISA transfers.
"Without reliable advice, customers could be put off from moving their money or worse still lose out as a result of misleading information. We want to see better training for frontline staff as part of the big change that’s needed in banking, so that banks put customers first."
According to Which?, an RBS advisor told one of the researchers that they could ‘just withdraw their funds, close the account down and transfer it over to somebody’ when asked about transferring the cash Isa.
This advice, says Which?, is dangerously wrong – doing so would mean losing the tax-free status that makes saving in an ISA so attractive.
Communisis positions itself as a universal communication platform, tailor-made for a multi-platform world. Following the changes brought in with the RDR, Communisis have identified an "advice gap" which needs to bridged.
"You’ve got more and more people in the public who want information on advised products and are seeking information from financial institutions because they don’t want to pay for the financial advice that is on offer," says Graham Lee.
"Banks and building societies are the ideal vehicle for giving this kind of advice. They’ve got the infrastructure, they’ve got the outlets, they’ve got the personnel, and they’ve got, to a degree, a captive audience that are holding funds. They’ve just got to get the message right, which is where Communisis come in."
As banks and building societies adopt more complex products and continue to grow their self service channels, it is vital that self serve products are understood by the people that are using them.
A government organisation, The Simplified Products Group, was set up in 2011 to gage whether or not a financial product is deemed simple enough to be self serve.
Lee says: "The companies that will be successful are the ones that have clearly categorised products, appealing to the mass market as well as to more specialised clients.
"I think it’s the self serve market that will be the mass market. The provider that gets their act together digitally and has a clear communications message both offline and online will be the one that impacts that market."
