Customers’ preferences, lifestyles and ways of engaging with their financial institutions have changed drastically over the past decade. From walking into your local bank branch and saying hello to the teller, to pressing a single button on your phone. With the introduction of new technologies and innovation, expectations for financial institutions (FIs) have changed. Customers want to be able to use financial services whenever and wherever they are. However, FIs are adapting slower than consumers are adopting these new digital mediums due to compliance issues, getting buy-in from upper management, and infrastructure upgrade costs.

In essence, technology has leveled the playing field, giving smaller players the chance to compete by being more agile and getting innovations to market first. Therefore, if financial institutions want to maintain a competitive advantage, they need to be at the forefront of digital innovation by offering customers the right products using the right device, being able to measure customer interactivity across channels and ultimately justify their marketing spend to deliver their greatest possible ROI.

It is a relatively rudimentary concept to understand that in order for a business to be successful it has to satisfy the people that are going to use its goods and services. When a bank or other financial organizations sit down to develop a marketing plan one of the key areas to be addressed is that of customer centricity or customer satisfaction. This ideal alone is very integral to the success of the bank in that if the bank cannot satisfy its customers; those customers will simply leave to do their banking elsewhere. Therefore a bank marketing plan must address the idea of customer centricity in order to enable to bank to stay competitive within its industry.

The world of finance and banking is a very competitive one and each organization is competing with one another constantly. When developing a bank marketing plan a bank must decide how it can most effectively satisfy its customers. Lower interest rates, free checking, and lower or non-existent overdraft fees are just a few examples used by banks as a way to make themselves more attractive to current or potential customers. Customer centricity is factor largely tied to the expectation a customer has for the organization's product. If a customer has high expectations going in, as most customers do when it comes to their money and banking, they will need exemplary service in order to deem their experience satisfying.

A successful bank or financial organization needs to retain its current customers while it attracts new business. By looking at customer satisfaction while developing a bank marketing plan, a bank is able to see how successful it is at satisfying its customers. This information then allows the bank to determine in what areas it needs to improve. This information can be a vital piece of the puzzle.

By determining what the bank needs to improve upon, the bank will be able to cast a wider net. By casting a wider net to potential new customers, the bank will invariably generate more business. The banking and financial industries, like all other service industries are customer driven. Without customers these industries suffer. Therefore customer centricity is crucial in developing a successful marketing plan.