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Banks need fresh communication perspective

Opinion & Analysis
Kingdom Bank on the brink of collapse! Showdown looms at Trust Bank! Oh no, here we go again!

Kingdom Bank on the brink of collapse! Showdown looms at Trust Bank!  Oh no, here we go again!

Financial Sector Spotlight with Omen Muza

Is the banking sector sill safe, sound? Opportunists on the prowl! Blacklist errant banks! Banking sector crises cripple economies, destabilise govts!

These are all real headlines for articles on the local banking sector that appeared in the print media over the past year or so.

Such a sustained chorus of scare headlines would seem to suggest that the banking sector is in a crisis of sorts, something that should ordinarily be a call to action for stakeholders to craft a sustained and coordinated response seeking to salvage the industry’s image.

However, some argue that the collective response of the banking sector, as currently framed, does not seem to reflect concern that the sector is under siege. Is the industry in need of a different perspective that will drive a new communication approach?

According to Vivid Branding, a local publicity and communications management company, reputation management in Zimbabwe is still taken quite lightly. In a survey it conducted, Vivid said it found that although some companies have a “crisis preparedness policy” in place, very few, if any, amongst the top management, let alone middle to lower management, actually know what the document contains.

Vivid says this is evident in the many crises that some big corporations have faced in Zimbabwe. For the most part, organisations choose to either ignore the crisis and hope it will go away; or issue a Press release without actually communicating with its clients directly. Vivid gives the example of a bank that was put under curatorship in 2012 as the classic case of how not to communicate in a crisis.

Typically, communication approaches in the banking sector have tended to be “individualised” to the extent that a coordinated sectoral message has never really emerged. The collective voice is drowned by a cacophony of individual voices all clamouring for attention at the same time, while emphasising differences instead of similarities.

It seems to me that banks are yet to appreciate that one plus one does not always have to equal two, it can equal three if they want it to. Though banks commendably started work on a Code of Conduct some years ago, the project was never taken to its logical conclusion, so the code was not widely adopted and deployed to the best advantage of the sector’s public relations initiatives.

Coordinated communication approaches have tended to be relegated to such issues as bank charges and competing products like EcoCash through the Bankers’ Association of Zimbabwe; but a coordinated articulation of the wider benefits of the banking sector as a collective appears to have been in short supply.

Admittedly, worldwide banks have traditionally tended to be conservative in their communication approaches in line with old-world sentimentality which casts banking as an honourable that lets its work do the talking.

The global financial crisis, however, stood everything on its head.

Practically overnight, perceived culpability for the financial crisis put bankers in a vulnerable position from which they were forced to re-examine their posture in line with the emerging context of openness and transparency which characterises the resolute march towards sustainability.

According to one Mandi Woodruff — in an article titled Credit Unions vs. Big Banks: Where Should You Put Your Money? — in the wake of the financial crisis, the retail banks that so many millions of consumers relied on for decades suddenly became public enemy No 1.

For instance when Bank of America and Chase threatened to levy $5 monthly fees on debit cards in 2011, an entire holiday — National Bank Transfer Day — was created to encourage customers to cut up their credit cards and ditch big banks. Millions have answered the call.

In the last year alone, the credit union industry surpassed $1 trillion in assets, adding more than 2 million new customers. Is it time for the banking sector to rise above self–interest to prioritise a co-ordinated, sector-wide approach to public relations in the same manner the mining sector appears poised to do?

Feedback: [email protected].  Omen N. Muza writes in his personal capacity. You can view his LinkedIn profile at zw.linkedin.com/pub/omen-n-muza/30/641/3b8