What ABN Amro could learn from Revolut

Banking is changing. Fast!

All major financials realize they have to get on board of the fintech hype. They indulge themselves in agile methodologies and stumble over one another by organizing hackathons and initiate start-ups at lightning speed.

Companies like Revolut and Nubank are changing the playing level field. They are introducing new products and features (like location-based fraud prevention).

What banks like ABN Amro do not realize is that it’s the attitude. Not the technique. Technology rarely gives you a competitive advantage. Not for the longer run.

Mentality does. Mentality, or call it culture, is hard to copy. Especially for larger companies.

That’s also evident from our recent experience with ICS Business Cards. The Mastercard of ABN Amro. The website tries to reduce direct calls by offering ‘Call me back’. That’s it was it start going wrong… The guaranteed response time is… 5 business days.

The other way to contact us is by phone. From 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. All of this time, but after 17 hours the departments are closed for most requests and calls are forwarded to employees who can’t support.

Then call back during regular office hours… On Thursday morning there is apparently a departmental meeting…. Would it be possible to call back in 10 minutes?

Would it be possible to call back in 10 minutes?

The reason we have to call on customer service in the first place was that we need historical account statements (it’s already January and that’s the reason for many entrepreneurs to sort out final details in thy financial administration of the previous calendar year).

“Doesn’t ICS have self-service for such user questions?” I hear you think… Yeah, sure. However, we’ve canceled the MasterCard at ABN and apparently it is ICS policy to also close the My ICS Business environment.

We were eventually able to send the copies in hardcopy by telephone… But the costs charged for this are €5 per copy.

In short, I think that parties like ABN Amro still have enough challenges to get their core services in order via traditional channels before even one agile blockchain start-up is blown into the world.

Anyone had a comparable experience?

Oh yeah, our first attempt was to request the statements via the email address on the site… But to date, there has been no response to our email of 3 February.