OREANDA-NEWS. June 20, 2013. Sviaz-Bank and the International Analytics Unlimited Bank Club have held a round table “Loyalty Programs in a Bank: Russian and Foreign Experience.” The round table participants exchanged ideas and cases on development, introduction, and analysis of loyalty programs. Alexander Borisov, General Director of the Moscow International Business Association (MIBA), was the round table moderator.

Alexei Bakhayev, Director of Sviaz-Bank’s Retail Business Development Department, focused the participants’ attention on the fact that 92% of customers choose a bank on recommendations of their acquaintances. Loyalty is, therefore, a key sales instrument. “Customers are annoyed by being provided with information they do not need, and for a bank to develop its loyalty program it has to guess right about a customer’s personal preferences and offer him what he really wants,” said Alexei Bakhayev.

In his presentation, Igor Repin, Sviaz-Bank’s Product Marketing Director, gave a lookover of the role loyalty programs have in retaining customers – a 5% decrease in customer desertions to competitors increase a bank’s profit by between 20% and 45%. Igor Repin centered on innovation, image, convenience, timesaving, and, most important, emotions as customer motivation factors.

All speakers shared Igor Repin’s view that the emotional side of banking had the decisive part in cultivating loyalty to a bank. Elena Naumchik, an expert and cofounder of the Customer Loyalty and Cultivation, head of the Service Quality Department, the Post of Russia, spoke about ways to make the best of emotions in loyalty cultivation program development and implementation. She gave a close-up of trends in loyalty cultivation and handicaps of program introduction, uncoordinated operation of bank units being their main problem. “Loyalty cultivation programs were first introduced in banks around the world and in Russia beginning in the 2000s. This country is striding in step with the international community in this field.” In Elena Naumchik’s estimates, Russian loyalty cultivation programs turn over 100 billion rubles.

Elena Repman, an international business consultant, spoke about the introduction of a loyalty program at Italy’s Banco Postal. Marina Lantsova, a leading analyst of R-Style Softlab’s Analytical Systems Department, spoke about analytical IT approaches that help track customers’ needs and use the information obtained to cultivate greater loyalty to a bank.

As a round table summing-up, Alexander Borisov said: “Of the 40 big banks in Russia, 26 only have loyalty programs, so we have a small market in this field, yet one of enormous capacity.”

The round table was attended by almost 40 representatives of Sberbank, URALSIB Bank, Home Credit Bank, Gazprombank, Renaissance-Credit, MARITIME Bank, Petrokommerts, and the First Republican Bank, among others.