In this world, nothing’s more permanent than change and never has this been more true for the finance industry. As the world and overall economy changes, so too do customer’s interactions with their banks, and, essentially, this is why banks are going further to accommodate the individual and changing needs of their clients. ActivoBank, a Portuguese bank designed to the very last detail to make peoples lives easier, is driven by a goal to simplify customer relations with the bank and offer them exactly what they want. To this end, ActivoBank customers find value for money and pay only for what they get – this includes no esoteric or complex commissions. This value proposition of maintaining a dynamic and modern banking offering is considered essential for the bank’s growth and development.
“Innovation remains our focus, while our customer acquisition strategy is more and more intense, even as we work to retain customers and further strengthen brand awareness,” says Luis Magro, Head of Marketing for ActivoBank. “We also focus more and more on easier access and interaction with customers. Our online strategy is crucial for customer acquisition and retention. Despite the physical presence through our 14 branches, our main goal is to keep a strong online presence, through our website (both transactional and investment offer) and through social media: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Here the key word is convenience.”
And this strategy of ensuring a multimedia-banking offering has proven popular with clients. From the first quarter of 2013 to the first quarter of 2014, ActivoBank had a record 211,935 transactions made via mobile banking, reflecting continued steady and significant growth during thee last year. In March 2014, the number of transactions reached 22,515 compared to the 13,932 in 2013 – a 61.6 percent increase. Not surprisingly, the number of customers using mobile devices and the number of logins made for ActivoBank’s banking offerings continues to grow, as mobile customers surged from less than 9,000 in 2013 to more than 13,000 by the end of the first quarter of 2014. During this period, customer growth was constant, averaging two to five percent every month, and with log-ins to ActivoBank’s mobile banking surging 57.1 percent since March 2013.
61.6%
increase in activobank mobile transactions 2013-2014
57.1%
increase in mobile logins since March 2013
“Our clients can manage all their accounts from anywhere (home, office, restaurant, while travelling, etc) and 98 percent of our products are available online,” says Magro. “That reflects our belief that the online banking strategy is crucial for attracting and retaining customers. ActivoBank bases its strategy on new technologies and innovation. And that’s why ActivoBank continues to invest heavily in developing new services and features to keep up with trends and to evaluate the best opportunities.”
Simple banking
Essentially, this is why ActivoBank maintains simplicity at the core of all its processes, products and services – the aim is for all offerings to be as simple as their customers’ daily lives. This is expressed in the way the customers access the bank, but also in the way the bank itself communicates to customers from the very first minute. Crucially, this is why it only takes 20 minutes to become a customer at ActivoBank, allowing clients to open an account and immediately receive their cards. This is unique to the banking sector in Portugal, where cards typically arrive via post at home, days, weeks or sometimes months after opening an account. In comparison, ActivoBank’s innovation allows for customers to receive their cards in the branch office – right then and there. What’s more, this simplicity and broad accessibility is apparent across all the bank’s services, which are available 24/7, as banking is possible through ActivoBank’s website, on the applications made for smartphones and iPad, or by means of a call centre – regardless of when the physical bank branches have closed.
“Wherever ActivoBank is, so is innovation,” says Magro. “It’s in the application for smartphones, iPhones and iPads, in the image of the branches, on the website and social networks. Even more than the customers going to the bank, the bank goes to meet the customers. Another particularly important channel for ActivoBank is mobile banking. This responds to the positioning of the bank and its target customers: the self-directed, young-at-heart, intensive users of new technologies, who are in favour of a banking relationship based on convenience and innovation. This is why tablets and smartphones are essential for accessing ActivoBank, using the application.”
Mobile innovations
A pioneer in Portuguese mobile banking, ActivoBank was the first bank in the country to develop apps for such platforms and, currently, the firm is working hard to strengthen its identity as an innovative, forward-looking bank that uses technological advances to increasingly simplify its customers’ lives.
Accordingly, the firm has renewed its mobile apps and currently also offers versions for Android and iOS with new tools and a new overall image. The app, launched in June, features a new layout and a more intuitive navigation tool, and new menu options, grouped by function areas with options for several types of consultations and the carrying out of banking operations. This navigation is based on collapsible groups.
“In ActivoBank we want our customers to be totally informed regarding their assets. Hence, we created the ‘My Bank’ area, where customers personalise their access to the bank and visualise what they want swiftly using different graphic options for their assets,” says Magro. “In this area, it is also possible to personalise current accounts, savings, securities and loans using the customer’s image gallery pictures.”
With self-directed customers as a main target, ActivoBank has developed the self-making of bank operations as much as possible, ensuring customers can subscribe and reinforce their savings with only one euro, now and in the future. This channel also features the bank’s commercial offerings, presenting, in a systematic and periodic manner, products and services that better fit each customer’s individual profile. In addition, the bank app has a geo-localisation function, which enables customers to search by current location for the nearest branch.
In addition, a new investments app is being developed, set to be launched soon for Android. In the meantime, the main alterations added to the existing iOS version include the addition of a virtual portfolio synchronised with the website, providing information on new stock exchange indexes and the possibility of trading shares in those stock markets.
Sustainable processes
Along the track of investing in technology and making banking simpler, ActivoBank is also making a conscious effort to reduce its use of paper and become a significantly sustainable bank.
“Complying with our mission of simplifying the lives of our customers, ActivoBank always defined itself as a paperless bank,” says Magro. “The opening of an account was, until very recently, the exception in a number of interactions that the customers established with ActivoBank, since the reading of the general conditions and their subsequent agreement by means of a signature implied the use of paper as the only way to initiate the customer-bank relation.”
However, recent optimisations of the account-opening process led to the launch of “Project Paperless” in January, which aims to drastically reduce the use of paper in the bank’s processes. In essence, the process has now switched from ‘real paper’ to digital documents that the customer signs on an iPad using a special pen that guarantees a secure and sustainable account-opening experience.
Currently, more than 80 percent of all current accounts are opened using this system, and it has allowed the bank to further simplify its back-office processes as well as its offerings to customers, who have generally reacted positively to the new digital experience. In this respect, keeping customers happy is key to ActivoBank, which maintains that its success depends on the way the bank openly establishes relationships with its clients, as well as the efforts it makes in order to construct a truly different bank that can accommodate different people. In simple terms, foreseeing the future and changing needs of customers, and meeting them in the simplest way possible.
