20%+ clients for personal finance acquired digitally by top-3 banks
As young and prospective customers now rely more on digital channels and social media networks to learn about banks and banking products and a large number of existing customers prefer the ease and efficiency of remote channels to do their banking transactions, banks in the UAE have started realizing that their online visibility is just as important as mass marketing and branch presence.
As such, many of these banks have started making the most up-to-date technology available for their retail and commercial customers and are increasingly encouraging them to use the lower-cost internet and mobile channels for accessing banking services as well as processing their transactions. Some of these banks have also embraced technology as a means for providing integrated, innovative, exceptional and easy-to-use services in a bid to remain competitive. As a result, customers have been benefiting immensely as they are now able to access banking services online from remote locations or from their smart phones.
Some of the top UAE banks have enhanced their digital services by depending on a host of digital products and solutions offered by innovative financial services technology solutions providers like Fiserv Inc, Fidelity, MasterCard and Global Payments. Their enhancements to digital channel include innovative solutions that facilitate mobile banking, bills payment, checking deposits at ATMs, check capture, instant messaging, online account opening and online banking.
At the recently concluded Sibos 2013, Fiserv Inc, the leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, made a presentation explaining how its innovative solutions can enable banks to tackle a broad spectrum of challenges such as delivering a consistent and compelling customer experience for mobile and online channels, finding growth amidst growing competition, safeguarding against frauds and financial crimes, mitigating risks, increasing efficiency and ensuring compliance in a changing regulatory environment.
For instance, as banks perceive substantial potential for growth in mobile banking adoption among its customer base, key to their digital strategy is Mobiliti from Fiserv. This technology solution not only offers robust mobile banking and payments functionality across a range of devices, but it also enables customers to view balances, make transfers, pay bills, sign up for alerts and notifications so that they can proactively monitor and manage their accounts from anywhere.
Banks that have drawn up a digital strategy to boost their business are also finding that digital channels are extremely useful and low cost options to acquire clients. For example, if you search for 'Personal Loan' on www.Google.ae, you would be surprised to find banks like HSBC and Citibank advertising on Google apart from online personal finance players like MoneyGulf.com and others. It is learnt that the top-3 banks in the UAE acquired over 20% of their new clients for personal finance digitally.
According to a recent survey, some of the successful UAE banks are now allocating 10-20% of their total marketing budget towards digital channels. This trend seems to be catching up with local banks too, with mandates being given to advertising agencies to prepare a digital marketing strategy.
The online space seems to offer a level playing field where time and content are of great essence. Here, banks not only compete with other banks but also with online personal finance aggregators like MoneyGulf.com and others who might be able to innovate or change strategy or deliver in a much faster way compared to large structured banks with multiple levels of hierarchy and red tape. Such sites also offer services to apply for multiple banks so that their customers get a choice and can choose the best possible option.
Globally, MoneySuperMarket.com in the UK and LendingTree.com in the US have had significant impact in the way personal finance industry functions in their respective markets. Google buying BeatThatQuote.com in the UK and starting GoogleAdvisor in the US confirms the potential of personal finance customer acquisition through the online strategy.
Will it be a similar story in the UAE where internet penetration is growing and the mobile penetration is already around 200%? The early trend seems to suggest that we are indeed moving towards an online personal finance world in the UAE.
In the case of MoneyGulf.com, the site traffic has been growing at a scorching pace. The story is almost the same with some other online aggregators in the market. The benefit, of course, would be for the consumer as all the requisite information on personal finance would be available online and one need not visit multiple banks to get them. Here, let us take the case of Thomas Wilkins, a tourism industry professional. Thomas says that within 24 hours of applying on MoneyGulf.com he received three personal loan offers as his employer was "listed" with those banks and he chose a bank on the basis of the lowest interest rate offered.
Undoubtedly, the success of future marketing strategies would significantly depend on the effective use of online channels and social media. Hence, banks that fail to keep abreast of the times and are unable to make optimum use of the digital channels might just get left out in the future!
About MoneyGulf.com
MoneyGulf (www.moneygulf.com) is an online financial and feature comparison provider for personal finance as well as commercial finance. The site allows a user to get information on interest rate and other charges/features of 20+ banks in the UAE. MoneyGulf also offers users to apply for loans from multiple banks online. MoneyGulf distributes such queries to its data subscribers from multiple banks. Banks/Bank intermediaries get in touch with the customer with their offers and the customer gets to choose the best offer in the market. MoneyGulf.com is UAE's leading personal and commercial finance comparison site.
For further information, please email: info@moneygulf.com
© Press Release 2013
