Radoje Maric from Addiko Bank on DX practices and creating digital trust: “It is easier to drive a yacht than a passenger ship.”

In the sea of digital transformation efforts, potential, and possible directions, it can be quite hard to determine which way you should go, and what your current and future priorities and values should be.

In IDC’s Future of Trust online survey, 80% of 507 respondents across seven countries indicated that there is an urgent need to engender organizational trust (both internal and external).

That is why we have focused our efforts in the Adriatic region this year on digital trust practices and added to them the requirements for a customer-centric approach. As a new and respected company in our region, Addiko Bank was our first choice to exemplify these practices. We spoke with Radoje Marić, Managing Director of Operations, who was kind enough to share his organization's own best practices and digital transformation efforts, as well as some fresh ideas.

Q: What are the core values and practices of your company?

The bank, as a financial institution, nurtures core values such as trust and security, as it is the nature of the banking business. Nurturing core practices — innovation and rapid implementation of ideas into action — wasn’t so hard. Maybe because we are one of the smaller and more agile banks on the market. We aim to connect innovations with the context of security and trust. So far, it has worked great for us.

Q: On a scale of 1 to 10, how trustworthy do you think your brand is?

Our actions speak for themselves — over 90% of private individuals payments made through our bank take place through ebanking or mobile banking. Of course, there are some transactions that still require paper and physical certification (stamps) — for example, specific payments or tax liabilities — but other types of electronic bills are being done online. Addiko bank's mobile app processes more credit loans per day than any of our physical branches. 

We have recently launched the option of managing a savings account through our mobile app, and already 40% of deposit accounts have been renewed in this way.

It might be the crisis circumstances that have motivated people to turn to various digital channels. But it is important to note that the challenges created by COVID-19 did lead to one good thing — the acceleration of digital innovation.

We didn’t have a single complaint throughout the wide range of digital services that our customers have used — so in this context, I would say we have earned a 10, especially considering the troublesome period that is, hopefully, behind us.

Q: What are the top 3 challenges in terms of building digital trust from customers (both internal and external)? Can you give us some examples?

One of the first challenges of digitalization in the finance sector is maintaining customer's digital trust, while gaining the trust of new users. One important barrier is the lack of physical contact. People usually think that digitalization requires a website and online payments. But it’s more than that. The goal of digitalization involves a completely digitized experience on every level of doing business. The bank itself must be seen as something safe, trustworthy, and long lasting. You are giving your unconditional trust to one institution that has all your savings and handles your daily financial needs. What does the bank emoji look like? 🏦 As you can see, it is represented by a big building with heavy doors, which symbolizes safety and trust in people’s minds. This is an outdated perception, but one that we must fight to change. One possibility would be a slight adjustment to our business model. We may have a large number of small branches throughout the country, with a number of employees nurturing trust with customers via in-person interactions. A rather good example is the IQOS locations that Philip Morris has opened in shopping malls; nice, small physical branches. Of course, we are not going to open branches in shopping malls, but this concept is something that could serve as an inspiration to our business model adjustment.

The second challenge is traditional bankers, if I may. Being the big and old organizations that they are, banks have their own way of doing business that hasn’t changed much since the beginning of, well, time 🕰️. We all know how it worked and still works — making payments, getting loans, saving money. Banks see digitalization as a promising option that will happen at some point, but they are not investing all the possible resources into the process. Comparing to a bank's conventional business processes digital processes are relatively marginal. Innovation processes and digitalization sounds exciting and interesting, but when it comes to allocating resources, the banks usually focus on the profit that is already created and so adhere to traditional business processes.

The last challenge is finding a niche that would make digital banking and digital finance relevant. And we won’t be able to find this new market by carrying on with business and marketing in the traditional way. To be honest, we are lucky that our culture has allowed all the departments to realize the serious importance of digitalization and our current challenges. I presume the challenge would be even bigger if our bank were bigger. You know, it is easier to drive a yacht than a passenger ship. There are a lot more people and processes involved, of course. But I am afraid that those big organizations, those Titanics, are in grave danger of striking an iceberg — which is the lack of digitalization and innovation. I have to say that what we have done in the digital context, especially during 2020 and beyond, can serve as an example to all the medium-sized organizations, both within and outside the financial industry.

Q: What do you think is the leading reason for consumers to trust your brand?

I would agree with IDC’s Future of Customer and Consumer practice that suggests three factors to create trust: competence, integrity, and empathy.

Customer experience and the way you deliver products and services is everything nowadays. I recently read an interesting announcement: You can open a Revolut account in just 24 clicks! And it sounds great, but when we tested our app, it put this claim into perspective. We discovered that our app is 7 clicks better — but who's counting?

I would say that integrity and empathy go hand in hand. I must emphasize the importance of unlimited trust, which the bank is required to nurture as an institution, both externally for customers and for internal customers (employees). And I must mention again that we have managed to create strong organizational relationships in our small community and foster a reputation of integrity.

I would also emphasize the significance of regulations. Banks tend to be hyperregulated, which is utterly necessary for a financial institution. But we have received tremendous support from Serbian authorities, who have more recently regulated the environment to make it easier for companies to become digital.

Q: How important is social responsibility for you and in which ways do you preach it?

Besides profit, as the obvious priority every company making profit has, social responsibility is a must. Social responsibility is the human dimension of making profit. How we nurture our relationship with workers and with our community reflects on us developing our company and our roles in the business and in society.

Addiko Bank’s social responsibility is focused on providing top quality services for customers, continues development of employees, preservation of environment and improving relationship with social communities. Addiko Bank follows different kinds of association which help in improving targeted group position in community such as Nurdor, Paralympic Committee, UN Woman’s Empowerment Principles etc.