National Bank of Greece (NBG) the traditional, formerly state-owned bank that can be found in most of the Greek markets. Established in 1841, it was the first bank to be set up in the Modern Greek State. It was destined to be a part of the Greece’s economy throughout the 180 year course of history and today it is leading as the NBG heads one of the largest financial groups in Greece. The efforts taken by the banks play a key role in supporting the Greek economy and the social and economic transformation of the country. With an extensive reach of 600 branches , NBG was and still is the present in the every corners of the Greek state. It is present even in the busiest neighborhoods of the major urban cities to being in a peaceful rural villages somewhere in a remote island in the Aegean Sea or the mainland. NBG plays such a big role in the local community that the branch manager enjoys the social recognition next to the mayor, priest and doctor. This level of relationship with the people , their customers has led the bank to build strong relationships with its customers and making them enjoy the trust of a disproportionate number of the country’s population compared to its market share.
Following the economic crisis of 2008, Greece suffered a prolonged period of recession , due to the over borrowing on the part of the state. The state defaulting its obligations to its foreign lenders and its citizens. People soon were unable to repay the loans they had taken from banks. It was time to test the limits of the banking system by rationalization by targeting the biggest contributors to a bank’s cost side with physical distribution networks and front line personnel to be put into effect. As the deals were struck for banks to be saved with that their consumers saving was also at stake. The profit margins which supported the sizeable distributions networks and large branches with numerous employees were a luxury became the luxury of the past. Banks in Greece reduced their number of branches from 3,300 to 1,800 and number of employees from 63,500 to 37,700. The physical networks’ size and reach, together with the number of people on their payrolls were drastically reduced. The bank needed a strong change in its strategy.
To tackle the challenge, a comprehensive digital strategy based on five key steps was created: awareness, onboarding, engagement, sales and community.
Creating awareness and educational camps and to design this online marketing is the key. It is a myth that “build it, and they will come” works for any banking sector. It is not enough to just build a strong online banking system and move the ritual of people moving away from visiting the branch. Selecting ambassadors who are popular among our target groups and crafting a message indicating that something interesting was happening online, and they were missing out. Employees were also tasked with consistently showcasing our digital offerings.
The effective combination of awareness-promoting actions and intuitive onboarding journeys allowed NBG to move a large percentage of its customer base online, reaching 3 million registered customers. In a country with approximately 7.5 million bankable citizens, of which approximately 6 million are internet users, that was quite an achievement. User engagement is the new currency, likes from Google and Facebook, put engagement and establishing an extensive user base of a couple of billion active users before profit. Next was to improve the sales. It was done by providing savings accounts and a range of time-deposit products. Integrating those with insights from the personal financial-management tools allowed the banks to create unique customer experiences and the results were very impressive.
