A Branch for the Future – mBank

Ahead of the Mobile Marketing Finance Summit, taking place in London on 10 September, we spoke to S?awomir Kozio? and Piotr Sobiczewski, strategic project leads at mBank, who will be presenting at the event.

MBank_individual.svgCan you give us an idea what you’ll be sharing with us at the Mobile Marketing Finance Summit in September please?

We’ll be talking about the extension of mBank’s strong digital presence into the physical world, and the new customer experience that this will create. Specifically, we’ll look at the essentials of operating a successful branch network that’s been transformed for the digital age, including:

  • Being closer to the customer and adapting to changing customer behavior trends
  • Delivering tangible value that fits perfectly in the behavioral context of the customer
  • Using technology to encourage and simplify human interaction – not to replace it.
  • Designing a branch for a high-traffic, fast-paced retail shopping environment
  • Measuring and tracking detailed customer interactions for on-going improvement
  • Diversifying a branch network to respond to customer needs and strengthen basic sales and complex advisory competencies

Can you tell us a bit more about mBankss origins and the passion behind it, and perhaps shine more light on what the companys key goals are as a player in the financial services industry as a whole?

Throughout its 25 years of existence, mBank has built an impressive track record of delivering innovations in banking, and has grown to become the fourth largest bank in Poland in terms of its customer base. It’s now a globally recognised leader in online and mobile banking, having been awarded the Efma Award, BAI-Finacle Global Banking Innovation Award, Bank Innovation Awards, and three Finovate Best of Show Awards, among others.

In order to always be one step ahead of customers’ needs and expectations, we engage in partnerships with other innovation leaders. One great example is Orange Finance, launched in October 2014, which was a joint venture between mBank and Orange Polska, the telecom operator. This is a tailor-made product based on simple and clear conditions for people who value their time and want to access their money in a comfortable, fast and secure way.

We have a forward-looking philosophy applied here at mBank that helps our employees anticipate future trends and customer attitudes, and this has helped us engage the whole team and encourage their passion and commitment when implementing new concepts. We’re really proud of how fast we’ve been able to apply new, disruptive solutions – in the case of Light Branch it took only 6 months from idea to implementation.

The mBank branch network transformation is the first of its kind in Polish banking market, offering an exclusive insight into the “branch of the future” model.

For you personally, what have been the biggest challenges and successes whilst creating this mobile-first brand?

The mBank brand was typically associated with innovative online and mobile banking, but not so much with in-store branches, so the first challenge was how to extend our virtual brand legacy to the physical world. We wanted to give our customers the same unique experience that they had when using banking services via convenient online banking channels.

Although mBank currently operates over a hundred and thirty retail branches, we couldn’t just take the current model, make a few adjustments and put it in high-traffic retail locations. The current branch model was designed and targeted specifically for high-street locations; the behavior of customers and characteristics of traffic in a retail environment are completely different, and we had to consider the requirements and conditions of lease agreements and the cost of the lease area itself. For these reasons we designed specifically for the retail environment of a shopping mall.

Creating a larger Advisory Center model also proved challenging due to the complexity of combining retail and corporate banking, as well as subsidiaries, all under one roof.

Probably the most important challenge we found, however, was that banks are not typically welcome in shopping malls – banks are deemed as traffic killers. In fact, our research showed that customers passing by a typical bank branch in a shopping mall unintentionally sped up and looked away. It’s therefore very unusual for a bank to take up a location in the malls’ high-traffic fashion zones for example, but this is what we were aiming at, and this is why we needed to completely rethink our value proposition to a wider customer audience – not just our existing customers, but any consumer who just happens to be in the locale, and who is open to new experiences and values smart shopping.

The successful implementation of the project required the combination of unique skills, know-how and experience – some of which are naturally rare at banks – such as managing and rotating ‘collections’ of retail products based on retail shopping calendar.

Do you think the financial services industry is a leader when it comes to being mobile-first/ready?

Mobile is something that can’t be ignored due to new models of consumer behavior. It’s now becoming a field for competition between the bigger industry leaders and the new challengers. One can observe this clash in almost each industry, for example in with tourism (airbnb), the music industry (Spotify), and of course transport (social driving services like Polish Blablacar and the more universal example, Uber). The success factor behind these disruptors is – above all other factors – supplying the customer with a totally new experience in a mobile-only scenario that gives ultimate convenience and immediacy.

In the financial services sector, the potential of mobile growth is enormous because the industry is so close to the customer. A massive obstacle standing in front of banks is the strictly regulated environment that bears little weight for start-ups. This is why there is still a long way ahead before banks become as agile and efficient in bringing disruptive technologies to the market…but that doesn’t mean the battle is lost.

The Mobile Marketing Finance Summit will take place in London on 10 September. You can apply to attend here.