Seven in 10 college graduates said they kept their checking account with the same provider after leaving school, says Synergistics Research Corp. in a recent survey. Only 1 in 7 current students and graduates described their accounts as “temporary,” further buttressing the survey’s conclusion that banking college students can provide long-term benefits for retail banks. “Clearly, providers should view students as a key target market,” says Synergistics CEO Bill McCracken.

The retail banking sector generates more than half of all revenues in the global financial services industry, says a new report from Boston Consulting Group. For 75% of the participants in the benchmarking survey of 70 major retail banks, the retail business earned a higher ROE than the bank as a whole. Yet there are challenges ahead. While retail banks have achieved measurable benefits through cost reduction over the past decade, the years ahead will require more organic growth, says the report, which advocates 10 “growth levers,” or strategies, to achieve that goal.

For those banks that worried about image quality in the wake of Check 21, help is on the way. The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) announced it has successfully completed the second phase of a project to produce a set of metrics against which check images could be judged and establish thresholds that identify usable images. The FSTC said many of these standards have already been adopted and expects broader acceptance within the industry to facilitate a more robust deployment of image technology.

More Articles in This Issue

» 2005 IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR
Happy holidays from all of us at BAI Banking Strategies and BAI Banking Strategies Retail Delivery Insights. We’re devoting this issue of the newsletter to a recap of 2005. Our next issue, Jan. 4, 2006, will provide a forecast of what to expect in retail financial services in the year ahead. »more

Volume 3 Archives

» SPECIAL EDITION: ISSUE NO.1 NOVEMBER 13, 2007
    » BRANCH DESIGN: LEARNING FROM RETAILERS
    » DEPOSIT AND SMALL BUSINESS FOCUS BOOST STOCK PERFORMANCE
    » PODCASTING AND BLOGS AID RECRUITMENT
    » ALERTS KEY TO WINNING MOBILE BANKING CUSTOMERS