A Long Way To Go

Chinese banking officials may have aspirations of the country becoming the world’s financial centre within a decade however this notion is a million miles away from where consumers inside China see the banking sector at present.

More than half of Chinese consumers in a new dragondata study said they wanted their banks to provide better customer service (51.8%), open more service outlets (54.9%) and offer flexible business hours (53.4%).

As China’s premier signed contracts at APEC to lock in access to some of the resources needed to keep the Chinese economic juggernaut rolling, a senior Bank of China executive Dr. Zhu Min spoke at a forum in Sydney about how Asia and China could feasibly become the new global financial centre in the near future.

However Chinese banks have been only partly focused on the retail aspects of their businesses in recent years as the huge profits involved in the corporate financing sector have accounted for a large proportion of their focus and efforts.

Which of the following areas would you like banks to improve?

n = 2,000

With the Chinese market slowly opening up to foreign competition, the lack of workable solutions on the retail side – despite some efforts by the banks – could prove the Achilles heel for the sector in its aspirations to be taken seriously on the global stage.

The research of 2,000 people nationwide by dragondata also found bank customers wanted to see customer disputes/complaints solved in a timely manner (39.2%), education provided on how to use self-service machines (21.9%) and the development of more self-service options (30.0%).