Our practice manager, Sharon Chinn, referred to me in her recent post as resident doctor of consumer banking. I’m flattered! I only wish that the challenges faced by today’s bankers were amenable to that old-fashioned prescription, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”
I’ve had the chance during the last several years to interact with hundreds of executives at banks, credit unions, cooperatives, and cajas. It’s been interesting to track the patterns of what’s been cooking on their proverbial front burners.
Challenges have typically been similar across geographies, as well as distinctly cyclical. It really didn’t matter where you went: with a few exceptions, the same issues tended to resonate across our membership at roughly the same time. At the turn of the century, it was all about getting on “the Net” (funny how that term sounds dated now!). Next came CRM, the customer experience, and (by 2006) strategies for continued growth in an environment about to turn.
