Tue 18 - Thu 20 November 2008 - Frankfurt am Main, Exhibition Grounds, Hall 5.1
"Revenues can only rise when businesses have fresh ideas."
26 Oct. 2004, Frankfurt - Interview with Thomas SchützManaging Director of the exhibition organiser Messe Frankfurt Ausstellungen.
Banks and insurance providers are not going to become successful just by cutting costs, believes Thomas Schütz, Director of Exhibitions at the Frankfurt Messe. The finance industry knows that and is looking for solutions. At the E.B.I.F., bankers and insurers can find the right tools to help them further increase their revenues.
Mr Schütz, in spite of tight cost-saving programmes, the banking sector in Germany is not doing well in international terms as far as profits and its ratio of costs to income are concerned. Do you think that this casts a shadow over this year's E.B.I.F.?
Not at all. The future is looking bright for both the financial sector in general and for the E.B.I.F. You know, cost cutting is only one of the many steps needed for the success of a business. In the finance sector, it's just as important nowadays to increase revenue streams and introduce process and product innovations – in Germany as well as elsewhere. For banks and insurance providers, this means getting to know and segmenting their customers even more effectively, trimming down and modifying their product portfolio, and investing in personal service and sales activities.
Does that mean a return to the good old high street bank and insurance office?
The good old high street bank is a thing of the past. Personal sales and service would simply be too expensive to maintain with all of the branch facilities and the staff numbers of previous years. It's still the case, though, that a competent customer advisor is still the most important resource that banks and insurers can offer to their customers. Any business that wants to keep its customers has to carefully scrutinize all other processes having nothing to do with customer service. In other words – automate them or outsource them. Specialists in rationalising back office processes and experienced outsourcing providers will all be exhibiting at the E.B.I.F.
That brings us back to the topic of cost cutting. But what can help finance businesses to increase their revenues?
Two things: better knowledge of their customers' needs and management of the innovation process. All information that a bank or insurance company has on its customers from whatever sales or marketing source has to be processed "just in time" and be easily retrievable – even in aggregated form. Financial service providers can then give more specific advice to customers and increase the opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling. They also gain a more detailed picture of their overall customer base. In addition, they need to have the right products available – and on a "just in time" basis. More rapid product development processes help in this regard, as does the ability to sell third-party products. By trying out products in selected high-tech branches, banks can quickly gain information of how likely particular types of customers are to accept a new product. Some techniques that can be tried out in this way include video-conferencing with finance specialists and certain types of self-service facilities.
As for managing innovation, this doesn't just involve finding out what customers might want in the future. It also relates to managers creating a technological platform for more rapid product development and creating the right environment for original ideas. The excitement surrounding an international exhibition represents just such an inspirational environment. This year, we are especially looking forward to seeing the British Pavilion. There, the top IT specialists from the UK will be presenting their new applications and products.
What are the other hot topics this year?
For reasons that are highly pertinent at the moment, I'd mention risk management – the new Basel II capital accord is casting a long shadow. But also the particular features common to financial service providers demand more effective solutions in the area of risk management. As part of the campaign against terrorism, the rules against money-laundering are also becoming increasingly strict. Some of our exhibitors are presenting new tools to deal with that issue. And we shouldn't forget the attention given by the E.B.I.F. and the specialist conference to important business areas such as pension provision and wealth management, the movement of payments across the expanded EU, and the issue of standardisation for banks and insurers.
Next year, the date of the fair is being changed.
The entire Euro Finance Week, with the E.B.I.F. at its heart, will be taking place from 14 to 18 November 2005, as it is being integrated with the renowned European Banking Congress, or EBC for short. The EBC will bring in around 1,000 guests from the international world of finance to Frankfurt. This will give the Euro Finance Week a more pronounced political angle while guests of the EBC will be able to find out about technological trends at the E.B.I.F. Fortunately, the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo are also happy to change dates. For three years, that show has been running in parallel to the E.B.I.F. – a fact of benefit to visitors at both events.
In addition, the E.B.I.F. and the specialist Euro Finance Week conference will be even more closely integrated in future. In 2005, the E.B.I.F. will once again be held in Halls 5 and 6, so that the distance between the exhibition and the conference is even shorter. Visitors can discuss the hot issues affecting the sector and then identify answers to some of those problems right next door at the exhibition – an ideal opportunity.
