Author: Jeremy Thomas

Switching suppliers is becoming less painful and that means local players will need to lift their game and fast. Get them in young and you’ll keep them forever. This has been the prevailing marketing philosophy in the financial services sector for decades and it’s informed the way institutions have engaged with their customers and delivered products and services. The bad news is, that old playbook is now seriously out of date. In today’s times, businesses and consumers are no longer as ‘sticky’ as once they were and relationships for life have ceased to be a ‘thing’ in the banking world.…

In 2025, elevating the customer experience is the top agenda item for Australian and New Zealand financial services institutions.Understandably so. The market is not just mature and crowded; it is being reshaped by an unprecedented wave of mergers in the customer-owned sector and intense pressure from the ‘Big Four’ and a new generation of digital challengers. When it comes to selecting a primary bank, the quality and responsiveness of the service on offer has become the chief differentiating factor for customers. Should the experience they receive be deemed sub-par, they’ll likely vote with their feet, defecting to banks that are…

Customer centricity: the essential driver of growth, powering both organic expansion and the successful integration of acquired platforms. Small is beautiful, as the old saying has it, but it doesn’t hold true where financial services are concerned. Here in Australia and around the world, small and mid-sized banks are under pressure to contain costs while meeting ever-evolving – and increasing! – customer expectations. Merging with, or acquiring, complementary businesses, coupled with energetic organic growth, are the strategies commonly adopted to achieve these ends and it’s likely there’ll be further announcements in this space in the next 12 months. ‘Heightened competitive…

Is your organisation planning a large-scale transformation exercise in the upcoming financial year? Or perhaps you’re already in the midst of one and have some key milestones looming in FY2025? While high tech modernisation has become the overarching goal for thousands of Australian and New Zealand enterprises of all stripes and sizes in recent times, the financial services sector has been hard at it for the past four decades now, and counting. Local organisations’ willingness to move with the times – and invest large sums in doing so – has helped them remain in the vanguard, through the PC, internet…

The Australian banking sector is at a crossroads. Industry consolidation and rising competition are pushing banks to innovate, but outdated technology continues to hold them back. Banks with traditional digital banking solutions aren’t able to offer the superior experiences that customers now demand. Decades of point solutions and a patchwork of legacy technologies has made it impossible for them to compete with the rising threat that fintech, bigtech, and neobanks present. And their customers know it. Whether hindered by the weight of legacy systems or the rigidity of one-size-fits-all solutions, both large and small banks must adopt transformative strategies to…

Australia and New Zealand are no strangers to digital disruption. With pioneers like Afterpay, Xero and Humanitix setting the standard, organisations across all sectors – including banking – face a new reality: customers now expect the same frictionless, intuitive experiences across all their interactions. Falling short isn’t just a misstep—it’s a fast track to losing customers. Customer satisfaction with traditional banks is generally lower than with customer-owned banks and digital-only banks. For example, only 66% of users report satisfaction with traditional banks, compared to 79% satisfaction for digital-only banks, reflecting the growing preference for user-friendly digital services[1]. As a result,…