Dennis K. Berman, financial editor of The Wall Street Journal, asked one of the simplest, yet greatest questions anyone could ask an executive at a major financial institution. During WSJ’s CFO Network conference, he asked Bank of America Chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan the following: “If you were building a bank today from scratch, what would be the three attributes of this new bank?”
3 key attributes of today’s bank:
- Omni-channel | “You have to be able to meet every customer, everywhere they want, and no one channel wins,” Moynihan said. Bank of America hosts 130 million consumer interactions each week and, while 123 million don’t take place in a branch, 7 million still do. He goes on to say that, “Despite people saying ‘I never go into a branch,’ they all do.” For example, 40% of Merrill Lynch customers go into a branch once a year. Bottom line, the 4,600 brick-and-mortar branches that Bank of America has are critical to customers.
- Security | Investing in technology, such as cybersecurity, is a must. You have to protect the trust between you and the customer. The “trust element is huge.”
- Global | You have to be global, even for midsize companies. “If you can’t figure out how to operate around the world, it’s a competitive disadvantage.”
