A paradox in retail banking culture

A note from the field

Real time comments and questions to speakers, polls, and voting are increasingly gamifying professional conferences around the world. This is good for conference producers that can create more sticky events, but it is also great for directly observing professional tribes in what they perceive as a non-hostile environment.

I recently attended the 11th CEE Retail Banking Forum, a major conference on retail banking in Budapest. This is the kind of event where speakers and delegates are constantly called for online interaction via twitter, and vertical real-time interaction platforms such as sli.do.

On the very first day, we were asked whether the banking industry does the best to cater to the needs of retail customers. The answer was a staggering 76% yes. Empathy for the customer, and quick response to their needs were the reasons for such an unequivocal result, upon which most delegates seemed to agree.

On the second day, Sylvia De Voge from the Hay Group gave an amazing speech about the incredible misperception of the managerial style in the banking industry. Executives in the industry see themselves as goal-oriented, competitive, resilient, analytical and liking well structured conventional environments. From the outside though, they look as quite unfit for collaboration, incapable of listening, incredibly opinionated, and absolutely narrow minded. This is not an issue of agreeing or disagreeing: Sylvia was only making the point that bankers do not see themselves the way they are seen from the outside. This holds true for the way they are perceived by executives from the other industries that where indeed mentioned in the presentation, but my guess is that also banking customers may believe that this is the case.

The third day, we were asked to vote for the best presentation in the conference.While I didn’t make it myself to be on the top 3 by a nose, Sylvia’s presentation was the second most voted out of forty. This was a bit of a surprise to me, because the first day’s poll results are not quite compatible with such a warm appreciation of unveiling pitfalls and contradictions in the managerial culture of an industry.

I guess we still have to connect the dots.