Content - Why first-class loyalty matters to a new class of banking customer in the GCC

Why first-class loyalty matters to a new class of banking customer in the GCC.

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Today's banking challenges.

Consumer behaviour.

Changing market landscape.

Traditionally structured by products, banks struggle with multiple siloed legacy platforms. This hinders their ability to gain consumer insights and create a robust value exchange with customers, up-sell/cross-sell relevant products and services or drive additional revenue outside of banking products. Also, regulations and governance aimed at protecting customers from cyber-crime are constantly being updated, and the secure handling and storing of personal data must be ensured, to prevent reputational risk and even financial penalties.

Today's banking challenges.

Consumers have become more aware of the brands, services, and products they engage with. Digital enhancements have made 24/7 instant access to personalised and relevant content possible. As a result, banks must adapt to continually engage with choice-rich & patience-poor customers. They should look to attract and retain customers by engaging with them in real time and through every customer touchpoint. Banks should be able to understand, predict, and target individual customer behaviour to build trust and enhance the customer experience.

Consumer behaviour.

With open banking readily available, agile new players, like fintech firms and neo banks are emerging in the marketplace all using customer payment data to identify new consumers to serve. This is forcing traditional banks to compete on a broader spectrum not just to satisfy their customers’ growing needs, but to stay relevant! As a result, banks must do more to empower their customers by evolving existing products and services into an expanded portfolio that addresses their specific in the moment needs to seamlessly deliver value across connected lifestyle ecosystems.

Changing market landscape.

The past decade has seen some of the biggest shifts in both culture and operations, for financial institutions around the world.

The adoption of digital technology has thrown the market open to new challenges, competitors, and alternative ways of working.

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Fintech advancements have flooded the marketplace, resulting in consumers expecting more from their bank—and traditional banks are finding it hard to keep pace.

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While banks have a vision for the future, failure to address current challenges means the road ahead could be long, complex, and costly.

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The Changing GCC Banking Landscape.

…more is spent by customers when they have an excellent experience with a brand.¹

140

…of loyalty programme members currently access their rewards using a mobile app.²

The future loyalty landscape.

For the first time in many decades, banks are being forced to rethink how they do business which is leading to a gradual transition from financial services providers to lifestyle enablers. To power this transition, banks are looking for ways to continually engage with customers with rewards beyond bank related benefits. Having said that, “lifestyle partnerships” have always been part of banks’ reward portfolios via points redemptions for vouchers and merchandise. However, there is a significant opportunity for banks to extend this by leveraging digital channels. With a seamless and frictionless mobile app at the heart of the customer experience, banks are focusing specifically on integrating partner propositions within the mobile banking app.

However, to really add value to their customers’ lifestyles, banks must deeply embed their loyalty programme into their core banking app. To do that, banks must embrace loyalty and wholeheartedly extend it to include all the products in the bank’s eco-system. We call this bank-wide loyalty. Bank-wide loyalty requires data to be unlocked and utilised to provide a single customer view. This way, banks can up-sell & cross-sell products as well as foster customer engagement and drive what we call first-class loyalty.

Qatar National Bank’s strategic partnership with travel platform booking.com gives its customers access to more than 29 million accommodation listings via a co-branded site— www.booking.com/qnbdeal.

What does first-class loyalty look like?

To modern GCC customers—many of whom are millennials—first-class loyalty means more than just points and benefits, it is about receiving more meaningful experiences and contextual rewards. They expect their bank to understand and engage with them on a personal level, so it’s more important than ever for banks in the GCC to put customers first. A first-class loyalty programme enables you to get to know them as individuals and reward them in ways that suit their lifestyle and meet their expectations.

91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide specific and relevant offers.³ 31% of consumers wish their buying experiences were more personalised.⁴

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Unlocking value from data.

Sustainable, socially conscious rewards.

Super apps for Banking – the next frontier.

First-class loyalty requires a full picture of your customers’ engagement with the bank across all touch points. With this visibility, banks can offer customers relevant products from across their portfolio. However, today, while banks are investing in advanced analytics techniques, they may not be thinking about the type of engagement that data from bank-wide loyalty systems could generate. With technology at its core, a first-class loyalty programme is data-driven and engagement-based, making it easier to analyse customer behaviour and unlock actionable insights. Such a programme can empower banks to go far beyond traditional transactional benefits and engage in activity-based marketing to reward relevant behaviour with relevant rewards—thus increasing customer lifecycle value.

Unlocking value from data.

Millennials and Gen Z make up much of today’s GCC customer base; with greater awareness of the environmental consequences of consumerism, they’ve brought sustainability into the mainstream conversation. Demand for socially and environmentally responsible products and services is on the rise and to thrive, banks need to make sustainable reward offerings available as part of their first-class loyalty proposition.

Sustainable, socially conscious rewards.

According to a recent Paypal study, half of millennials are convenience-seekers and one-third are financial wellness-seekers — as a result this influential group likely will drive demand for super apps in the future⁵. As super apps enable users to perform all their purchases, payments and other transactions via a single platform, they are fast becoming the preferred answer for customers’ needs. Today, with the advent of open finance and open data, banks can now create their own super apps by leveraging these technologies to connect with more partners and market their products to an even wider customer base. More importantly, by owning the end-to-end customer value chain, banks now have the opportunity to not only drive greater use of their mobile banking apps, but also delight their customers with contextual and relevant rewards.

5: https://www.pymnts.com/study/super-app-shift-consumer-finance-shopping-connected-economy/

Super apps for Banking – the next frontier.

First-class loyalty, the Collinson way.

Premium technology and services.

Collinson’s experience within the loyalty industry means we can provide a suite of products, services, and solutions that are not only right for the bank’s business, but also delight customers across the GCC. With 35+ years in travel services and an extensive global network of lounges and partners, our premium rewards across a number of categories, are chosen by some of the world’s leading banks. Our global team of experts innovates multi-channel, personalised loyalty services and programmes that push the right offers and communication to the right people at the right time.

Through one-off projects, and our e-commerce solutions, we not only transform customer engagement and loyalty, but also enable a dynamic value exchange between publishers, merchants, and customers. As a result, targeted offers alongside tailored rewards—based on customer insight—drive frequent engagement that matters to customers, encouraging long-lasting, highly-profitable relationships. Our award-winning loyalty technology engine Collinson Realtime-XLS delivers targeted experiences, rewards, and communications for 25+ of the world’s leading banks. With real-time customer insights, our platforms seamlessly deliver loyalty across your entire organisation and securely integrate with your existing systems and databases including, 3rd party CRM platforms.

A first-class pedigree in banking loyalty.

We work with the largest banks, processors, and retailers across the GCC; designing, defining, and delivering their loyalty visions suited to the growing expectations of modern banking customers. With so much experience within the loyalty industry, our suite of products, services, and solutions gives banks and financial services organisations an edge. Our leading airport lounge and experiences programme, and our earning, redeeming and engagement solutions enrich banks’ reward offerings. Our loyalty and customer engagement services enable banks to develop powerful programmes that drive successful strategies. Through data & analytics, we deliver first-class loyalty platforms, programme management, and both CRM and market automation. Our first class loyalty solutions focus on:

• Online merchant-funded rewards • Ecommerce earning and redemption stores across multiple categories including travel • Enabling Payment using any loyalty currency

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Banks We Work With.

Featuring: • Bank-wide loyalty for all customers with a single overarching proposition • Flexible and exciting earn rule mechanics for continuous engagement • Extensive portfolio of redemption options, including travel experiences, reward shop, points transfer, and gift cards

We helped FAB upgrade to first-class loyalty by implementing, launching, and managing an innovative programme that rewards the total customer relationship.

400k daily loyalty transactions 700k+ customer accounts 1 million+ cards

Emirates NBD, one of the largest banking groups in the Middle East and a long-standing Network International client, wanted a reliable, future-proof payment and loyalty infrastructure. Our award-winning loyalty Realtime-XLS solution enabled them to migrate multiple legacy programmes and manage card portfolios through a single platform including their co-branded cards such as Emirates, SPG, dnata, and Manchester United.

20,000 daily visitors 110% increase in redemptions 89% more members redeeming Close to $15m in points redeemed since launch

In 2007, Collinson created a travel proposition card—Amyali— for Saudi Arabia’s largest bank, to grow and reward its frequent traveller segment, support its branch partner network, and drive cross-border spending. Since then, the programme quickly grew. As a result, the portfolio of cards and related reward propositions became difficult to manage for the bank. In 2015, SNB began consolidating all cards into the Al Ahli Credit Card, with one reward platform—Lak Rewards. To easily manage the evolving programme, the Amyali platform we created, was selected as it already contained travel rewards, eGift vouchers, and points transfers. Our Real-time XLS™, SmartRedeem Travel™ platforms, combined with real-time partner APIs ensure this pioneering programme delivers choice and personalisation by targeting different segments with relevant rewards and offers.

We upgraded Commonwealth Bank of Australia—Australia’s largest bank—to first-class loyalty, by delivering a differentiated and innovative value proposition that increased brand awareness while boosting an existing loyalty programme to drive redemption. We delivered a multi-partner loyalty platform that enabled the inclusion of Myer (Australia’s largest department store) into the CBA partner portfolio, which led to a significant increase in traffic and revenue while boosting CBA’s programme with instant redemption at the point-of-sale.

50,000 monthly redemptions 40% of CBA redemptions at Myer’s POS 10,000 POS terminals across 68 stores

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2019/04/17/customers who have excellent experiences with brands spend 140 more/?sh=130faf9 c2794 2: https://rocketmarketinggroup.com/6 customer loyalty trends to watch in 2020 3: https://www.contentstack.com/blog/all about headless/ 43 facts on content personalization marketing strategy 4: infosys.com/newsroom/pressreleases/Documents/genome research report. pdf 5: https://www.pymnts.com/study/super app shift consumer finance shopping connected economy 6: Collinson 2022 ‘Value of Lounge’ study, conducted by Lucid

About Collinson.

At Collinson, we work tirelessly with customers to unlock the magic within their business, to design, build, and deliver the best loyalty programmes that set them apart from their competition, drive desired change – more mindshare, wallet share, advocacy, and Loyalty. Our customer benefits products also include the original, market-leading airport experiences programme, Priority Pass. For over 35 years, we’ve been chosen by the world’s leading payment networks, 1,400+ banks, 90+ airlines, and 20+ hotel groups to craft customer experiences that win a competitive edge.

This enables them to acquire, engage and retain the most profitable, but most demanding customers. Our extensive list of clients includes FAB, Saudi National Bank, American Express, Commonwealth Bank (Australia), Diners Club, JCB, Mastercard, UBS, UnionPay, and Visa. To learn more about our work with businesses like yours and how we can help you achieve your customer vision by upgrading you to first-class loyalty, please get in touch.

Visit our first-class loyalty hub to access our interactive insights and other information to inspire you to upgrade to first-class loyalty.

For more information, contact:

Soukalin Ghosh