What
drives a bank today? Is it share price? Profitability?
Or market share? Or maybe it is customer service and
customer satisfaction?
It
is indisputable that the banks serving (and I use
the term serving loosely) New Zealand today have reinvented
themselves so many times that they are unrecognisable
from the form they were in five to 10 years ago. I
know the branding is the same in most cases, but the
mechanics behind the scenes are completely different.
For
the staff the changes have been rapid and dramatic.
They have struggled to keep up, with many of the older
ones, known in some quarters as "the old School",
not keeping up and as a consequence have been discarded.
The percentage of staff over 45 years of age in the
banks now would be considerably smaller than even
five years ago.
If
the staff struggled to keep up, and remember they
were being kept informed to a large extent, it is
no wonder that the customer and business owner of
today has no idea. Questions like, who do I talk to?
How do I talk to them? And what can I expect from
my bank today? Are often expressed to me.
It
is with this in mind that I have been prompted to
write this guide, to lift the lid and to some extent
explain the complexities that now drive the modern
bank and banker in New Zealand today, particularly
from a lending perspective.
