Banking Review

Video hits

Citibank’s deployment of video-conferencing rooms in two new branches
in Victoria and WA could herald the mainstream arrival of technology

BY ELTON CANE

Citibank has confirmed that video conference rooms will be included in its new branch plans in Australia, with two branches in Camberwell in Melbourne and Joondalup near Perth due to open by the end of the year.

While high-end, tele-presence-style video conferencing has found widespread use within large banking organisations keen to boost productivity and cut down on travel costs, until fairly recently, most banks couldn’t make a business case for widespread retail branch deployment. But now with the cost required to deliver a high quality reliable customer experience falling, and banks looking to differentiate and boost branch sales effectiveness, the technology is likely to become much more widespread.

Simon Pelletier, head of development and partnerships with the retail banking division of Citibank, says the two new branches are part of a plan to extend its retail footprint during the next 12 months, with branch locations influenced by Citi’s focus on the emerging affluent and globally minded retail clients. Joondalup, for example, is an area heavily populated by well-off recent British expatriates.

“Video consulting rooms incorporating large plasma screens will give customers access to specialist expertise at head office or elsewhere that otherwise wouldn’t be available in the branch. This is particularly useful for clients interested in structured products or other investments,” he says.

Citigold customers (Citi’s high net worth segmented offering) get a single relationship manager who handles their financial needs. But with video conferencing, that manager can be supported by subject matter experts whom the customer can also engage with.

“Technical considerations include not only quality of video and sound and maintaining the link, but also a system for bookings,” says Pelletier.

Wide screens, broad appeal
In May this year, NAB announced it had conceptual plans to introduce 40-inch video conferencing machines in various branches.

The plans would build on its successful Collaborative Workspace Program (CWP), which used a unified communications suite comprising tele-presence video conferencing, instant messaging, presence and mobile functionality, to yield travel cost savings, boost its green credentials, and give employees more flexible working conditions.

Other large Australian banks have also adopted video conferencing as part of their internal communication strategies. But they have yet to disclose plans for retail branch deployment.

Citi won’t be the first financial institution to introduce customer-facing video conferencing technology in Australia.

Back in 2006, northern NSW’s New England Credit Union (NECU) began to extend its internal use of Tandberg video technology to provide services to its customers following the acquisition of another credit union. As its field personnel were taking three full days to cover the operation’s enlarged territory, video conferencing was used to deliver financial planning advice and commercial lending interviews.

Brett Maunder, NECU’s head of marketing, says that although internal use of video conferencing has continued to grow, the credit union hasn’t gone as far with customer-facing video as it initially expected. “We’ve found that for financial planning most people still really want the face-to-face. But for quick service requests and in some of our more remote locations it’s been really useful.”

The credit union is currently rolling out new contact centre software that will give it service agent instant messaging from its website, and it plans to extend this capability to video chat.

Support in situ
Randel Maestre, global director of industry solutions at Polycom, says he expects a range of video conferencing form factors _ from desktop-phone based systems through to kiosks or full rooms – will help banks improve customer service inside and outside the branch.

“One useful application would be to extend the bank’s presence into other locations for originating business, for example car dealerships or home improvement stores, where customers are likely to be making decisions that can trigger a need for financial advice or loans,” he says.

But when applied just within a branch, the benefits can also be significant. “Of the existing bank channels, it’s been proven that the branch is still the best performing for sales, but it is the most expensive to set up and run.

“One of Polycom’s large bank clients in the US saw an increase in cross-sell closure rates for products such as accounts and credit cards from 20 per cent to 90 per cent after introducing video conferencing,” he says.

“We expect that in the coming years, we’ll see more and more video, not only branch, but also online and mobile channels.”

HSBC provides a good example of the latter. In May, it became the first bank in Hong Kong to launch an instant online video consultation service for meetings between Premier customers and relationship managers.

As the bandwidth available to bank branches and individual consumers continues to improve, and with it the quality and reliability of video delivery technology, more launches are likely.