Banking CRM and the Top 10 Solutions You Need to Know

In today's ever-changing financial world, the most common customer expectations in banking are smooth service and a super personalized banking experience like never before. On the other hand, bank employees struggle with the pressure of tracking a customer journey and carrying out repetitive activities, which impede productivity and growth. Not to mention, traditional banks are in fierce competition with neobanks, fintech companies, and credit unions.

So, what is the solution to these challenges? A sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tailored to the banking businesses. As customers' needs grow and competition heats up, using a banking CRM is now more valuable than ever, and the stats back it up. In 2021, the banking CRM software market was worth $9.5 billion, and it is estimated to skyrocket to $39.2 billion by 2031, with an impressive growth rate of 15.7%.

In this article, we explore how banking CRM solutions are reshaping the future of financial services, delivering a lifeline to both customers and bank employees alike

What is CRM in the Banking Industry?

A CRM system in the banking industry is a sophisticated software solution designed to manage and enhance interactions with customers. It provides a comprehensive platform for storing and organizing customer data, tracking communication history, and automating various processes.

CRM systems provide a range of capabilities, including contact management, sales and marketing automation, customer service, and analytics to name a few. These capabilities enable banks to offer highly personalized experiences to customers, predict customer needs in advance, and consistently provide exceptional service. Moreover, a banking CRM platform plays a crucial role in assuring compliance with complex regulatory requirements, enabling banks to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape with confidence and efficiency.

By fostering stronger customer relationships and streamlining operations, banking CRM systems contribute to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately, the long-term success of banks in a highly competitive financial services market. Let us look more closely at the benefits that a CRM for banking software offers.

The Impact of CRM: Benefits for the Banking Industry

When properly implemented and utilized, CRM enables banks to:

Elevate customer satisfaction and loyalty

A banking CRM enhances customer experience and loyalty by providing banks with a comprehensive view of each customer's preferences, behaviors, and past interactions. This wealth of data facilitates tailored engagements and services, meeting customers’ individual requirements. Consequently, this leads to higher customer satisfaction and greater trust, fostering long-term loyalty and a higher rate of customer retention.

Cultivate brand advocates and enhance reputation

A banking CRM improves brand awareness and helps banks' reputation by enabling banks to consistently deliver high-quality and personalized services, which are more likely to be positively shared through word-of-mouth and social media. As customers receive a superior level of service and engagement, they become brand advocates, attracting new customers, and reinforcing the bank's reputation as a customer-centric institution.

Boost employee efficiency and collaboration

A CRM for banking solution enhances employee productivity by automating routine tasks, allowing staff to focus on more strategic and value-added activities. Additionally, it promotes collaboration by providing a centralized platform for sharing customer information and insights, fostering better teamwork and coordination among employees. This leads to improved customer retention, productivity, and service delivery.

Drive profit growth

By streamlining processes, improving customer relationships, and identifying new sales opportunities, banks can effectively manage their resources, improve their bottom line, and boost their overall profitability.

Ensure regulatory compliance and mitigate risk

CRM assists banks in compliance management by providing a structured platform to document and track customer interactions and transactions, ensuring adherence to regulatory requirements. The system's robust reporting and analytics capabilities help to track customer interactions and identify potential compliance issues, giving you actionable insights and reducing the risk of regulatory violations and penalties.

As a bank customer, you also reap the advantages of the banking CRM system in use, which include:

24/7 high-quality support at your fingertips

A CRM for banking solution enables customers to access high-quality and fast service 24/7 by centralizing customer information and interactions such as phone calls, allowing bank representatives to quickly access a customer's history and needs during any interaction. CRM also supports online self-service portals and chatbots, ensuring that customers can address their issues at any time, resulting in efficient and round-the-clock support.

Tailored banking solutions aligned with your needs

A CRM for banking solution captures and analyzes customer preferences, behaviors, and transaction history. This data-driven approach allows banks to tailor offerings to individual needs and preferences, ensuring that customers receive financial solutions that are aligned with their unique requirements, expectations, and goals.

Timely updates and seamless communication

Automation features in CRM ensure that customers receive timely notifications, updates, and reminders, guaranteeing that they stay informed and engaged with their bank. This leads to improved communication and a more seamless banking experience.

Core Features in a Banking CRM Software

In today's dynamic landscape of the banking sector, choosing the right CRM system can pose a significant challenge. Each CRM solution boasts its unique attributes, features, strengths, and weaknesses. Nevertheless, regardless of the specific CRM platform you select, several fundamental features stand as essential pillars in enhancing customer journey in banking:

• Centralized data management. The cornerstone of an effective CRM system is the centralization and thoughtful organization of customer data. This encompasses financial history, preferences, interactions, critical documents, etc. A comprehensive view of customer information gives users an in-depth knowledge of their clients and enables banks to gain profound insights into individual customer needs, facilitating the provision of highly personalized services.
• Marketing and sales automation. Streamlining marketing campaigns, lead generation, and sales opportunity management is crucial. These capabilities ensure the efficient conversion of prospects into loyal customers, boosting revenue streams, and optimizing the return on marketing investments.
• Customer service and support. Robust CRM systems offer case management, support ticketing, and fast issue resolution. This ensures that customers receive timely and effective assistance, nurturing customer satisfaction and trust.
• Workflow automation. Automation underpins banking front-, middle-, and back-office activities. Processes like customer onboarding, loan management, verification, and underwriting benefit immensely from automation. CRM systems streamline decision-making, eliminate manual effort, and elevate operational efficiency.
• AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning. In today's data-driven world, AI and machine learning tools are indispensable. They enable bankers to analyze data, recognize trends, and make predictions. AI/ML tools are pivotal for making informed decisions and offering tailor-made financial solutions to customers.
• Integrated omnichannel communications. It is crucial to ensure seamless interactions between your bank and customers across all available channels. Integrated omnichannel communications enable customers to engage with your bank in the manner most convenient for them, enhancing their overall banking experience.
• Document management. Robust document management is a cornerstone of the banking sector. It involves centralized document storage and retrieval, simplifying access to customer records, financial forms, and other critical documents.
• Security. Robust data security features are paramount in a CRM for banking platform to safeguard sensitive financial information. Protecting customer data is essential for maintaining trust, meeting regulatory requirements, and preventing unauthorized access, thereby preserving the integrity of banking activities.
• Analytics and reporting. These tools provide valuable insights into customer behavior, performance metrics, and the efficacy of marketing and sales strategies. Armed with this data, banking professionals can make data-driven decisions, fine-tune their strategies, and perpetually enhance the quality of their services.

How to Choose the Right Banking CRM?

There are many modern CRM systems on the market and plenty of factors to consider besides the features when choosing CRM software. In this section, we recommend the steps to selecting the best CRM solution that will help enhance customer engagement in your organization.

1. Determine your budget: to decide how much you can spend on the software consider the number of users, the volume of data you aim to manage, and the functionalities you require that may cost extra such as AI-powered personalized customer service.
2. Prioritize user-friendliness: A powerful state-of-the-art CRM tool is no use if its interface is too complicated to operate properly. Choose the CRM that your sales reps, marketing managers, a service agents will be able to master without a hitch.
3. Consider the ease of data migration: It's likely you're already using a legacy CRM system or another data management tool. Inquire how streamlined the migration of data from your existing storage is to make sure it won't be an issue during implementation.
4. Ensure scalability: Your core banking system should be growing along with your company - make sure your CRM of choice can handle a larger number of operations and data on individual customers.
5. Check the compliance and security: Ensure that the software you purchase complies with local and international standards of security such as GDPR and regularly undergoes regular independent audits like the SOC 2 Type II Compliance Audit.
6. Check the integration: An effective CRM system should be compatible with other business automation tools in your ecosystem to facilitate exchange of data and workflows. Make sure your solution fits in with other software you're using.
7. Research the vendor's experience with banking organizations: Many CRM vendors provide case studies and success stories from their clients, which you can read to see what banking-specific advantages the CRM offers. Moreover, you can browse the reviews focusing on those coming from companies providing banking services. Ensuring that the vendor has experience providing CRM solutions for your industry helps eliminate issues such as lack of industry-specific integrations or features.
8. Request demos: Once you've narrowed down your list, request the demos for the remaining candidates and evaluate the features, customization, and ease-of-use yourself. Then, you'll have all the information to choose the best option for your business.

10 Best Banking CRM Software

1. Creatio

Creatio's offering, Financial Services Creatio, is a no-code platform to automate banking processes and CRM with a maximum degree of freedom. This platform caters to retail and business banks, as well as other financial companies, facilitating end-to-end customer journeys and operational optimization across various banking departments.

With Financial Services Creatio, these banks and credit unions can offer highly personalized customer experiences, improve up- and cross-selling, execute efficient workflows, facilitate the launch of new financial products, centralize data and applications, empower business users with no-code capabilities for rapid innovation, and enhance alignment between business and IT teams.

Key areas where Financial Services Creatio can enhance banking processes include:

• Customer 360: access an integrated view of each customer to personalize interactions and improve overall satisfaction.
• Marketing: boost demand generation with multichannel campaigns tailored to specific markets and regions, delivering offers at the right time and through the right channels.
• Sales: efficiently manage sales opportunities with automated workflows; allocate resources smartly with sales forecasting; and enhance engagement with personalized value propositions using predictive scoring and AI/ML-driven insights.
• Onboarding: provide personalized onboarding experiences with a 360-degree customer view, streamlined offer management, and an automated product catalog.
• Account opening: automate account opening procedures, streamline verification processes, accelerate approvals, and digitize document management to reduce errors and enhance customer satisfaction.
• Customer experience: improve the customer experience by responding promptly to inquiries, resolving issues effectively, and delivering tailored services.
• Lending: streamline loan origination, underwriting, and approvals through digital workflows and a consolidated 360-degree customer data view.
• Compliance management: ensure compliance, mitigate risks, and meet regulatory obligations with consolidated data management, reporting, and automation tools.
• No-code customization: customize your CRM to align with the specific needs and regulatory standards of the bank without the need for IT specialists or programmers.

Transform your banking operations with Banking CRM Creatio

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2. Salesforce

Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is a dedicated CRM platform that provides a comprehensive array of tools uniquely suited to the requirements of banks, insurance companies, wealth management firms, and other financial institutions. Financial Services Cloud empowers banking experts to gain deeper insights into their customers, personalize interactions, and optimize operations across different banking divisions. It offers tools for lead management, customer onboarding, financial planning, and regulatory compliance. With its data-driven insights and seamless integration with other Salesforce offerings, Financial Services Cloud assists banks in elevating customer relationships, fostering growth, and maintaining regulatory compliance. 

See also: Salesforce Alternatives & Competitors and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Alternatives & Competitors

3. Microsoft

Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services is a comprehensive suite of integrated solutions designed specifically for banks and other FinServ businesses. It leverages the power of Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Microsoft Teams, and Power Platform to address the unique needs of financial companies. This tailored solution empowers banks to efficiently manage vast financial data, deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance staff capabilities, and combat financial crime. By promoting collaboration, automation, and data insights, it optimizes banking operations, personalizes customer engagement, elevates overall customer experiences, and provides valuable data-driven insights.

4. Oracle

Oracle CX for Financial Services enables banks to shift towards a digital customer experience. With a holistic view of data and interactions, banks can build a more personalized customer experience and offer tailor-made financial solutions. Automation simplifies the process of identifying, nurturing, and generating referrals for cross-selling products across diverse channels like social, mobile, and web. The Needs Analysis feature facilitates guided selling and self-service personalized product recommendations, streamlining customer onboarding and account origination, ultimately elevating the customer experience.

5. Pegasystems

Pegasystems is a dedicated solution that unifies marketing, sales, and service applications and a general-purpose solution that has the ability to automate large-scale repetitive tasks. This tool streamlines customer management, enabling personalized financial planning services and promoting deeper customer relationships. Tailored features and AI-powered functionalities consolidate customer data and facilitate seamless communication, empowering banks to provide exceptional services and foster enduring customer relationships. With Pegasystems, banks can focus on maximizing client value and delivering top-notch customer service, ensuring clients receive the best financial guidance and support. 

See also: Pega alternatives

6. ServiceNow

ServiceNow provides CRM functionality tailored for retail banking, wealth management, and insurance firms. While it excels in customer service with robust workflow and operational features, its sales and marketing functionalities are comparatively limited.

ServiceNow’s Financial Services Operations platform is designed for effective employee collaboration, featuring embedded channels, advanced work assignment routing, and extensibility through declarative actions and API accessibility. It also supports curated agent and advisor role profiles complete with impressive risk management features.

However, for essential in-house financial services functions like lead generation, prioritization, and prospecting, the platform relies on third-party integrations. Fortunately, the app integration marketplace offers robust options to meet these needs.

Overall, ServiceNow is a suitable choice for midsize and large financial services organizations with complex customer service processes.

7. BUSINESSNEXT

BUSINESSNEXT offers a customizable CRM platform designed to accelerate digital transformation with a focus on self-service rather than agent-led service. Although BUSINESSNEXT does not have a purpose-built offering for financial services, it provides robust features valuable to retail banking, wealth management, and insurance businesses.

BUSINESSNEXT's CRM integrates AI across the platform to enhance:

• Prospecting and outreach capabilities, continuously learning and improving offer recommendation accuracy.
• Lead generation and prioritization, automating prospect scoring and routing.
• Customer 360 view, generating insights for its smart Action Center.

Additionally, the platform provides AI-powered chatbots for customer interactions.

BUSINESSNEXT is best suited for midsize to large financial services firms with complex processes looking for a comprehensive solution for digital transformation.

8. Total Expert

Total Expert is primarily focused on the lending sector, particularly the mortgage industry, but is gradually expanding its capabilities to better serve retail banking and insurance businesses. Known for its purpose-built CRM for mortgages, Total Expert aims to create a comprehensive customer profile.

Total Expert’s CRM offers extensive prospecting and outreach features and integrates well with retail banking, particularly favoring mortgage-related businesses.

The platform provides firms with access to hundreds of prebuilt compliant assets connected to a journey creator and campaign builder. These intelligent customer journeys can trigger automatic events, suggestions, and actions based on workflow rules for agents.

However, Total Expert falls short in several areas compared to other leading CRM solutions. It lacks robust lead generation, prioritization and customer acquisition tools, prepackaged analytics, customer self-service, knowledge management, goal tracking, and programmatic customization.

Total Expert is well-suited for small financial services firms looking to automate and consolidate customer data across multiple platforms, offering a user-friendly solution with strong support.

9. Zoho CRM

Zoho is a horizontal CRM that offers high customizability. Although Zoho does not provide purpose-built solutions for financial services, it offers generic capabilities that can be adapted for retail banking, wealth management, and insurance businesses.

Zoho CRM boasts broad capabilities in lead generation and prioritization, knowledge management assistance, and automated workflows. While Zoho provides generic prepackaged integrations, it does not offer integrations specifically tailored to retail banking, insurance, or wealth management.

Despite these limitations, Zoho is a suitable choice for small and midsize financial services organizations with moderate process management needs, offering a customizable and user-friendly solution.

10. Hubspot

HubSpot is known for its CRM marketing solution. The platform offers customizable products focusing on marketing, sales, services, operations, and content management, which can be combined to meet various business needs. Although HubSpot does not provide a purpose-built solution for financial services, it includes generic elements that can support some financial services organizations.

The HubSpot CRM suite offers tools to support agents, such as a chatbot that retrieves support resources and a sidebar that facilitates employee collaboration on customer cases. It provides role and profile identification with relevant knowledge and workflow support but is not specifically designed for retail banking, insurance, or wealth management roles.

The suite lacks crucial functionalities needed by many financial services firms, including advanced prospecting and outreach, lead generation and prioritization, comprehensive customer insights, and customer goal tracking.

HubSpot is best suited for small and low-complexity financial service firms with straightforward CRM requirements.

Conclusion

Banking CRM solutions reshape the future of banking by emphasizing customer satisfaction and loyalty, brand advocacy, employee efficiency, profit growth, and regulatory compliance. For customers, these systems offer round-the-clock support, tailored solutions, and seamless communication, enhancing the overall banking experience. In a competitive financial landscape, CRM is the cornerstone for banks to adapt and thrive, ensuring they deliver exceptional services while maintaining regulatory compliance and achieving sustainable growth.

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