Corporate Culture in Banking

By Roger Claessens

Roger Jean Claessens; Founder of R.J. Claessens & Partners is an
International lecturer and Independent Consultant for the financial
services industry in marketing, planning, economics, wealth management,
prevention of money laundering and branch management especially for
the central and commercial banks. Currently, he serves also as a Professor
at UBI (United Business Institutes, Brussels (BBA & MBA) and as an
expert lecturer for FEBELFIN (Federation of banks and insurance
companies in Belgium) and the Banking and Finance Academy of Serbia
as well as the Bank Association, amongst others.
Roger Claessens is a specialized trainer who has delivered more than
500 training courses, seminars, workshops and conferences in Europe,
Asia and Africa. He lecturers for banking professionals in several countries
and shows an extensive experience in course design and implementation.
Some of his key qualifications are as Former Marketing Manager for the
Netherlands at Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland and former head of
marketing for North Africa for Bank of America.
Roger Claessens is a much sought after speaker in numerous
presentations, conferences and training in more than 25 countries. With
over 30 years of experience, his forte is in the preparation of the course
material for specific bank training sessions covering Branch Management,
Prevention of Money Laundering, Compliance, Retail Banking and
Market & Branding. He has extensive knowledge and experience of the
banking sectors training requirements in developing countries. He has
authored several books in the financial sector covering from Marketing
of Financial Services, Ethics, Corporate values and Money laundering,
Bank Branch Management and Banking fundamentals in his latest book:

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467889506

Roger Claessens

Roger Jean Claessens; Founder of R.J. Claessens & Partners is an International lecturer and Independent Consultant for the financial services industry in marketing, planning, economics, wealth management, prevention of money laundering and branch management especially for the central and commercial banks. Currently, he serves also as a Professor at UBI (United Business Institutes, Brussels (BBA & MBA) and as an expert lecturer for FEBELFIN (Federation of banks and insurance companies in Belgium) and the Banking and Finance Academy of Serbia as well as the Bank Association, amongst others. Roger Claessens is a specialized trainer who has delivered more than 500 training courses, seminars, workshops and conferences in Europe, Asia and Africa. He lecturers for banking professionals in several countries and shows an extensive experience in course design and implementation. Some of his key qualifications are as Former Marketing Manager for the Netherlands at Credit Lyonnais Bank Nederland and former head of marketing for North Africa for Bank of America. Roger Claessens is a much sought after speaker in numerous presentations, conferences and training in more than 25 countries. With over 30 years of experience, his forte is in the preparation of the course material for specific bank training sessions covering Branch Management, Prevention of Money Laundering, Compliance, Retail Banking and Market & Branding. He has extensive knowledge and experience of the banking sector’s training requirements in developing countries. He has authored several books in the financial sector covering from Marketing of Financial Services, Ethics, Corporate values and Money laundering, Bank Branch Management and Banking fundamentals in his latest book: “What is a bank?”

Book preview

© 2012 Roger Claessens. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 2/29/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8949-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8950-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Corporate Culture In Banking

Banking In A Nutshell

Chapter Questions

Branding & Corporate Culture

What Is A Brand?

What Does A Brand Mean?

What Makes A Great Brand?

Which Goals Need To Be Reached To Get Branded?

Why Does A Corporation Need To Get Branded?

How Does Branding Leads To Establishing A Lasting Reputation?

The Best Way To Establish A Bank - Brand

Chapter Questions

Defining Corporate Culture

What Is Corporate Culture?"

Typical Corporate Cultures

The Power Of Culture

Corporate Culture And Performance!

Corporate Culture And Corporate Values

What Are The Benefits Of A Strong Corporate Culture?

What Are The Consequences Of An Unhealthy Culture?

How Difficult Is It To Transform A Culture?

Corporate Culture In Banking

Culture Changes Over Time Because Our Environment Changes All The Time.

Chapter Questions

A Winning Corporate Culture

The Candour Effect As An Essential Feature Of A Successful Culture

The Cost Avoidance As An Essential Feature Of A Successful Corporate Culture

Finding A Way To Do Things As Part Of A Successful Corporate Culture.

The Right Compensation As Part Of A Successful Corporate Culture

Chapter Questions

Leadership And Management

Leadership

Leaders Appraise, Coach Or Build Self-Confidence.

Leaders Make Sure People Live And Breathe The Vision.

Leaders Show Empathy

Leaders Establish Trust

Leaders Have The Courage To Make Unpopular Decisions And Gut Calls

Leaders Make Sure Their Questions Are Answered With Action

Leaders Set The Example

Leaders Should Have Intrinsic Character Features Not Be Winners At Any Price.

The 4 E & 1P

Management

Chapter Questions

People As A Making Or A Breaking Factor

The Link With Branding

I Am Working For My Bank

Getting The Best Out Of People.

How Can You Achieve A Permanent Performance Enhancement?

Accountability

The Qualities Of The Appraisal Process

Let The Best Win

This Is The Golden Age For Hr

Chapter Questions

Corporate Communication

What Is Corporate Communication?

What Are The Benefits Of A Successful Communication?

What Does Corporate Communication Require?

The Organisation Of Corporate Communication

Internal Communication

Crises And Communication

Chapter Questions

Change

What Is The Answer To Change?

Corporate Culture And Change

Changing The Resistance To Change

Change And The Individual

Change And Members Of Staff

Chapter Questions

Customer Value

Safety, Reputation, Disciplined, Customer Centred …

A Strong Corporate Culture

A Winning Corporate Culture

Loyalty

Lending The Ultimate Customer Value.

Chapter Questions

Case Study

My First Impressions

The Bank And A Few Meetings

Corporate Values

Conclusions

Linking Marketing Hr And Operations Conclusions

Bibliography

Websites

Biography

Endnotes

To my daughters Geraldine and Stéphanie.

Acknowledgements 

Very special thanks to:

Dragoslav Vukovic and Natasha Tsarikova, who strongly encouraged me to write this fifth book, as well as their review,

Dragana Markovic, for her fine contribution to the case study and questions,

Flavia Toader, PhD, for reviewing the English version,

I would like to thank the bank which graciously allowed for a series of interviews.

I express my gratitude to Svetlana Raicevic for the translation into Serbian.

Thanks also to Eléonore Tabery-Snyers, for her continuous involvement in most of my professional activities.

Thanks to Marie-Laurence Demousselle, Professor at UBI, EFE, for the opportunity to provide for the course on Branding for the Commission.

Special thanks also to Marija Nicolic for her continuous support for this project.

Special thanks to Graham Cheshire who always contributes to my activities with wise business advice.

There may be others who remain unnamed in this brief list and I apologise for any omissions.

Introduction

Corporate Culture in Banking

Linking Marketing-Human Resources and Operations

People are not made of numbers. They are made of hopes and dreams, passions and partnerships, talent and tenacity.

Credit Suisse advertisement

Years ago, like all fresh graduates, I looked for a job with hope and, yes, also with passion. I remember one interview in particular at the branch of Bank of America in Antwerp, Belgium. A manager told me a story, a unique story of a bank, which was at the basis of its very own corporate culture. The original name of the bank was Bank of Italy! The bank was founded at the beginning of the last century by an Italian immigrant, Amadeo Peter Giannini, in San Francisco, California in 1904. The story goes that, whilst the city was severely destroyed in 1906 due to the great San Francisco earthquake and fire, Mr. Giannini kept his bank open with a desk at Washington street wharf with a Bank of Italy sign over it. He advised his colleagues, who wanted to keep the banks closed in the destroyed city, to: beg, borrow or steal a desk and follow my example in the street.

At that time branch banking in the United States was a novelty and it took years of legal battles to allow for state wide branch banking. Bank of Italy acquired many small local banks and gradually built a state wide retail bank, later renamed Bank of America, often referred to as BoA, which evolved into a powerful organisation with its most glamorous days at the very beginning of the eighties.

Mr. Giannini wanted a bank for the little fellow rather than the big fellow who, according to him, was much less loyal to an organisation. A major feature of his management style was openness and sharing of his values. The bank was known for the open door policy. The managers kept their office door open as a sign of their availability to all, employees and customers alike, irrespective of the seize of their bank accounts. When a new bank was acquired, Mr. Giannini had the building restructured so that officers of the bank were working on an open platform in order to assure fast circulation of information and accessibility.

Gradually the organisation evolved into a very distinctive organisation in comparison with the peer banks at that time such as, for instance, Crocker National Bank or Wells Fargo.

I had the pleasure to join the bank after graduation. Working for Bank of America was a unique experience. The culture was one of winning. Most of its staff shared the feeling that it was possible to move from a humble level to the executive level, from a national base to an international base. Exposure, learning, job rotation were all in the cards. It was up to the staff, it was the staff’s culture, at least in the international division of the bank. Not only was it a unique experience, it was a unique learning ground!

The bank has evolved since then and has gone through rough waters, mainly because of a tremendously unmatched position in its mortgage portfolio in the mid-eighties combined with substantial loan losses. The present BoA is a very different bank now. Its headquarters are presently in North Carolina. The bank is still amongst the largest financial institutions in the United States.

When there were training meetings at BoA, we were not talking about the bank but about our bank. There was osmosis between the bank’s future and our future, at least so we felt. In any event, there was a strong culture! This feeling for young graduates of being part of something big and that excellence was the answer to the profession, has never left us and has become for quite a number of us, not only a professional culture but a personal attitude. Indeed, there was room for people with passion, talent and tenacity.

I have selected the opening sentence of this introduction to Corporate culture from a recent advertisement from Credit Suisse. Today, this is quite an unusual statement for a bank. It is not a coincidence that this advertisement was launched shortly after the last crisis. It indicates recognition of the need of values, such as the ones shared by Mr A.P. Giannini. It is a sort of back to the basics, back to the original culture of banking, or at least what it supposed to be.

But is the sentence above just a statement or does it reflect a corporate culture? Are these just nice words or are they factual? Indeed, quite a few wizardly structured products seemed to indicate that the key to banking, certainly investment banking, was making money by all means. The idea that a transaction should be a win-win situation seemed to have vanished in quite a few organisations through complicated mathematical formulas. The culture, at least, so it appeared to outsiders of the banking system in general, became more like: the winner takes it all.

Not all banks were in the situation of making profits at all cost and not all needed to revise their marketing campaign and related message. Not all needed a massive government bailout. Not all institutions had a culture like that. Why the difference? The simple answer is a matter of risk taking or lack of willingness to indulge into complex transactions where the final purpose was unclear! Maybe the answer is a matter of policy but in all likelihood the matter is an issue of corporate culture!

But, what is corporate culture? The purpose of this book is to underline key issues related to corporate culture in a simple manner. Why do banks, which basically sell the same products, have such different cultures? What determines the fact that a customer feels more at home with one bank rather than another one?

The idea of this book generated during quite a number of discussions with the Serbian bank association, with whom we have published four books, the latest one being What is a bank – Linking key banking functions?

The reader may remember a comment often made in my previous books - be it in Marketing of financial services or the Ethics, corporate values and the prevention of money laundering or Bank Branch Management - that people are the make or break factor of any organisation. I do often underline that the difference between one bank and another bank lies in people and systems, not so much in products, nor in product attributes.

People…look at the advertising of major airline companies! We hardly see them claiming they have the best planes or the best pilots or even that they usually take off and land on time. We see them advertising with smiles of members of staff. But what brings the best out of people?

Why are people in one organisation more committed than in another one? Why would people be committed, especially when performing repetitive tasks, which is the case in banking! How and why would they get over boredom and switch into a higher gear in order to search for excellence? More importantly how do customers react to the difference in culture? Moreover, how do they feel there is a difference?

The structure of the book is not random. After a lot of thought, and probably based on my specialisation on marketing, I selected after a first brief chapter on banking, a first major issue: Corporate image, branding and communication. The reason for this is the broken image of major institutions. The massive intervention of Governments, as a result of the sub-prime crises, has long lasting effects in the minds of the customers. The saying that the most important asset of a financial organisation is its reputation was undoubtedly confirmed. A system break-down could only be avoided thanks to a historical coordinated intervention, for the first time ever, by three major central banks, i.e. the US Federal Reserve Bank, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.

Other chapters followed from this starting point are admittedly less structured than a classical book would be. Hopefully this originality will be appreciated especially by the employees motivated to pave the way forward.

You will see that at the end of each chapter there are about 20 questions, which underline the key points of the chapter. The numbering continues throughout the chapters to reach a total of 200 questions. In case of perfection on all fronts with a maximum quote per question, this would entail a total of 1000 points. The questionnaire’s purpose is to determine where the reader’s organisation stands and which items are legible for improvement and