Silo Busting 45: Liz High and Alex Jimenez on Personalization in Banking

This time, it’s personal. Welcome to the premier installment of #TakeItToTheBank, our new series of financial services conversations on *Silo Busting.* In this episode, Liz High, co-author of *Think like a Brand, Not a Bank: 5 Practical Strategies to Unlock Innovation, Connect with Customers, and Grow,* and Alex Jimenez, Managing Principal, Financial Services Consulting at EPAM, get into how banks do, and should, approach personalization. High says that banks need to do a better job of understanding that “brands and the customer experiences you build have to feel personal” and that banks shouldn’t be customer-first. “If your decision-making framework is either bank first or customer first, you're never gonna get to [a] fair exchange of value,” she says, “because no [one element is] more important than the other.” Jimenez notes that even when banks go to market with a customer-first message, “ROI is always going to come first, despite the mission being all about the customer or all about the member.” Together the note that lifecycle and lifestyle marketing isn’t personalization. When banks try to sell mortgages to 21-year-olds there’s a disconnect because, as Jimenez says: “You're not doing the hard work of really understanding your customer.” The talk about the importance of using data to look forward rather than backward (“Your rear-view mirror is smaller than your windscreen for a reason,” says High, quoting her co-author) and for managerial purposes: “That mind shift needs to be throughout the organization and not just in marketing and customer service and customer experience, but it also needs to be in the back office,” Jimenez says. They get into niche banking (did you know there’s a bank dedicated to musicians?) and analyze the evolution of community banking. High says the contemporary idea of community is about “moving away from geography and moving into emotion and moving into brand.” If you want to spend time learning about neobanks, fintech, and charters (“the most valuable thing in that whole ecosystem is, the bank charters,” says High), then this is the conversation for you. Now visit the link below, withdraw the conversation, and collect your dividends! Host: Alison Kotin Engineer: Kyp Pilalas Producer: Ken Gordon