OCBC Bank also received the Excellence in Customer Relationship Management Award
Singapore, 19 March 2010 – OCBC Bank is recognised by The Asian Banker as the Best Retail Bank in Singapore for the second consecutive year, and for Excellence in Customer Relationship Management.
The Best Retail Bank in Singapore
The citation by The Asian Banker reads, “OCBC overcame the challenges in 2009 by taking decisive action to maintain profitability, build its own reputation and serve its customers really well, bagging again for the second consecutive year the Best Retail Bank in Singapore award. OCBC continued to perform well in the areas of developing products and services catered to families, bancassurance, infrastructure and brand, and growing its affluent business. Both the Baby Bonus CDA and Mighty Savers program were driving core deposit growth which was the second highest in absolute numbers in 2009 based on its network size in the retail financial services industry. OCBC also has been continuously strengthening the element of sustainability in its business model, and as one of the very few players in the region that has re-structured fundamentally the compensation and remuneration scheme among its sales force. OCBC is also leading in the area of transparency with its clear retail banking strategy, strong crisis management capabilities and comprehensive articulation of its value proposition to its stakeholders.”
Excellence in Customer Relationship Management
The citation by The Asian Banker reads, “OCBC has built up a powerful event-based marketing platform and is now deploying the event-based marketing and CRM-based platform regionally. To further lower the cost of analytical services, OCBC established an offshore analytical team. It is also one of the very few banks in the region that changed substantially their remuneration system for wealth management sales personnel.”
Accepting the awards, Mr Andrew Lee, our Head of Global Consumer Financial Services said, “We are encouraged by this accolade and the recognition of efforts we have made to build a leading consumer franchise. Over the past several years, we have invested heavily in product innovation and service improvements to differentiate OCBC from our competitors. Insights gained through our extensive research of the needs of customers are valuable inputs not gone to waste. Sometimes, we are ahead of our times – like our mobile banking services launched in 2006 - but our going-in position is always to look at the needs of our customers and do what is right for them.
Our mobile banking services, full-service Sunday Banking offering and Mighty Savers™ Programmehave received very good feedback from our customers in Singapore. Leveraging on the success of these programmes, we launched our Mighty Savers™ Programme in Malaysia and Indonesia, and introduced full-service Weekend Banking in Malaysia, as part of our build-and-transfer efforts. Last year, we introduced the OCBC SmartParent Programme and OCBC SmartSeniors Programme in Singapore. We will continue to roll out products and services to cater to our customers’ different life stage needs in the core markets under our New Horizons II strategy.”
Mr Lee added, “While putting appropriate products and services on the shelf is important, having the right corporate culture is equally critical. The right culture is built over time. Just last year, we implemented several new measures to enhance our customer engagement process. We re-engineered our sales and service processes across different product classes and made several improvements to our sales and service practices, implementing higher disclosure and fair-dealing standards, refresher training and certification for all frontline staff. We also introduced a new remuneration structure that aligns rewards with sales results and service quality for all sales and service staff. We were prepared that some employees may not accept the changes in our enhanced customer engagement framework and we may lose them. Regardless, it is our view that it’s best to know early if an employee does not buy into the culture. In fact, shaping a culture that helps OCBC build sustainable customer relationships is the very reason for this change.”
