Case Studies - Standard Chartered First Bank Korea Limited

INTRODUCTION

Standard Chartered Bank has local presence throughout 56 countries on six continents and is the world’s premier banking organisation focused on serving Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Recently, Standard Chartered purchased Korea First Bank to form Standard Chartered First Bank Korea Ltd, and became one of the largest financial services organisations in South Korea. SC First Bank immediately began to ask the questions – how can they take an already successful bank and make it even better? How can they provide a higher level of service for their customers, differentiate the bank in the customer’s mind from competitors, and see measurable increases in important metrics such as assets-under-management and revenue-per-customer? One area of focus was the growing market of high net-worth individuals in Korea.

The bank realised that in order to see substantial growth at this level, there were some sales challenges that needed to be addressed.

SALES CHALLENGES

“We realised that our Priority Banking Relationship Managers tended to avoid delving too deeply into the financial aspects of our clients”, says Mark Daldorf, Senior Vice President of Organisational Learning. “Our RMs tended to be transactional in their approach to clients, pushing product and doing most of the talking during an average sales call. We needed them to be more client-focused, more consultative in our sales approach, focused more on the issues, needs and priorities of our customers and less on the bank’s products. But very importantly, they must do so in a way that is culturally sensitive and appropriate. Also, our Branch Managers were never trained on coaching and developing their sales people, and we felt that was a critical part of improving overall performance and sustaining the behaviour changes.”

THE HUTHWAITE SOLUTION

1. Representatives of various levels of management worked with Huthwaite to establish clear sales and business outcomes for the initiative. 
2. All Relationship Managers and Branch Managers participated in a customised Korean version of the SPIN® Selling workshop (to date a total of over 500 people have participated in these workshops) to build value-creating, consultative selling skills.
3. Branch and Priority Banking managers participated in a series of coaching programmes to learn how, who and when to coach their direct reports to sustain skill levels.
4. Branch Managers and Relationship Managers were measured after the workshops on their application of their new skills and the impact it was having on their customer interactions.

THE RESULTS

“This is a process of ongoing improvement, but already we have seen our Relationship Managers using better questioning skills to probe more deeply into our customer’s financial needs, and do so in a respectful way”, says Daldorf. “The RMs are uncovering a broader range of needs and as such, capturing greater wallet-share by showing the customer how SC First Bank can meet these needs better than our competitors. This is a different approach than that typically used in Korea and for the most part, our customers are appreciating it.”

Chris de Bruin, Executive Vice President for Wealth Management, is also impressed with the results, "In 2006 Wealth Management has gone from a non-performer to a high-performer as measured by growth in revenues, new customers and assets under management. At the same time we have seen an improvement in our client satisfaction – our client positive & loyal score is now 99%. The development and application of SPIN® Selling skills in our wealth branches has been a major contributor to our success this year."