Services plays a critical part in building loyalty with every customer interaction we have; from putting money in the ATMs, to keeping our customers safe from fraud, processing trillions of pounds in payments across the world, and making sure the bank’s technology systems are there for our customers when they need them. With that in mind, the last year for us has been all about creating a strong foundation to build on.
It’s no secret that, in the recent past, our technology has been well known for all the wrong reasons. There’s not a single service we provide today as a bank that isn’t in some way dependant on our technology. It’s the very core of what we do. And when you add to that the volume of business that we do without any human intervention at all - around 90% - you get a true picture of just how important it is.
In 2014 we demonstrated through our actions that our technology platform and our services were more resilient, that they were available for our customers when they needed them, and that they didn’t fail. As a bit of context, during 2013 our mobile banking app failed more than 30 times. It’s a great achievement that in the last six months we’ve got through some really busy days - record breaking online shopping days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday - without incident.
Our systems are available more than 99.9% of the time and I’m pleased to say it’s a different picture now from a few years ago. But I’m not complacent, there is still further work to be done on our resilience and infrastructure. This will include further enhancements to our mobile app and our online services, in particular digital banking and Bankline for our corporate customers. We are also focused on improving our key customer processes, such as customer onboarding, lending and mortgage applications.
Innovation is key to improving things for our customers. We’ve just launched TouchID which lets customers log into the mobile banking app using their unique fingerprint. We’re the first bank in the UK to offer this and it’s the kind of solution that we know our customers want, to enable choice, convenience and flexibility.
We’ve also made excellent progress in reducing our cost base, which we’ve been able to do intelligently with the focus being on removing the things that don’t add value to our customers.
Transforming the bank over the next few years will allow us to reach our ambition and put us right up there as a bank that’s great for customers. I really believe we have developed a plan which will deliver this goal.
All of this work is fundamental if we are to achieve the target we’ve set ourselves of becoming number one for customer service, trust and advocacy.
