COMMENTARY: PHYGITAL Bricks and clicks: A physical presence can drive online engagement, says Metro Bank
The
haloeffect Ian Walters is MD of Distribution at Metro Bank, the first new bank on the UK high street in 100 years and it’s committed to staying there. Matthew Williamson, VP of global financial services with Mobiquity, is focussed on helping banks be their best digital selves. We brought them together to ask, post-pandemic, is there room for both? We’re used to hearing that banking’s digital transformation has been hastened by COVID-19, but there’s no denying that on otherwise shuttered high streets, socially distanced queues outside bank branches stubbornly persist. Some say that the pandemic will prove the death knell for the physical branch;
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others argue that customers’ needs are more nuanced. Either way, the Financial Conduct Authority urged UK banks, such as Co-Op, which announced in August that it would lose a quarter of its estate, to reconsider closures during lockdown in order to adequately support customers. Its call reflected Metro Bank research from August, which highlighted public concern that the remaining 6,000 branches in the UK bank estate were rapidly disappearing. “Some 44 per cent of people have been impacted by bank closures or reduced opening times during the pandemic; with 48 per cent also worried that banks will continue on reduced hours or even close altogether,” says Metro Bank’s managing director of distribution, Ian Walters. In the battle between bricks and clicks, this bank is determined to straddle both, citing the ‘halo effect’ it sees created by having, simultaneously, a strong physical and a strong digital presence. Metro Bank is perhaps best known for becoming the first new bank on the UK high street for more than 100 years when it opened in Holborn, London, in 2010. As its incumbent rivals started to withdraw
from the high street and move services online, Metro committed to an ambitious store opening programme alongside investment in digital channels. There are now 77 stores, two opened during the pandemic, with a commitment to launch another 15 by 2025. “Our philosophy is that the customer should choose how they do their banking,” says Walters. “So, we aim to give a great service across all our channels – physical, the app, mobile, and telephone.” Mobiquity, which positions itself as a full-service digital transformation enabler, has successfully worked with banks around the world to ensure the branch fits into just such an omnichannel strategy. “A successful branch strategy will leverage technological innovations with a human-centric approach to solving frictions with accessibility, processing time, and the bottleneck associated with current branch banking,” says Matthew Williamson, VP of global financial services at Mobiquity. “It should be able to transfer a transactional relationship to a personal relationship, as well as addressing the scalability challenges with the support of digital innovations." www.fintechf.com