Day Two at #SoFI2015

“If you deliver a customer experience that is unique it will pay off.”

MetLife’s Chief Customer Officer, Claire Burns, opened day two of the Symposium by detailing her organization’s journey to client centricity. Claire became a customer of MetLife to experience the customer journey for herself. What she found was system that wasn’t working. So, she said, she set out to “humanize insurance”. MetLife built a customer-centric business model by listening to customers, repairing what they told the organization was broken and delivering simplified experiences to create market differentiation.

Following the morning keynote, the Boulder Institute’s Bob Christen moderated a panel on the sometimes elusive Business Case for Client Centricity, with YES Bank’s Sumit Gupta, Opportunity International’s John Magnay, Samuel Makome from KCB Bank, Kenya, and Mathilda Strom from BIMA.

CEO James Mwangi demonstrated Equity Bank’s business case by outlining his organization’s path from a building society facing liquidation to a bank serving millions of low-income clients.

“There was no other way to change the organization than to go ask customers why they had abandoned their accounts”, he said.

The discussion of the business case and the need for leadership continued with Tufts University’s Kim Wilson moderating the CEO panel, featuring Elsa Patricia Manrique Ospina from Banco Caja Social, Jesse Moore from M-KOPA Solar, PostBank’s Stephen Mukweli and James Mwangi.

In the afternoon, the Symposium debate set out to consider whether “microfinance institutions will be the primary providers meeting the financial services needs and expectations of excluded groups in a digitally enabled world”.  With BRAC’s Shameran Abed and IFC’s David Crush on the ‘for’ team, and KCB Bank’s Samuel Makone and Umati Capital’s Munyutu Waigi on the ‘against’ team, a dynamic and sharply contrasted debate ensued. After some real suspense, the audience ultimately decided in favour of the ‘for’ team, that microfinance institutions will be the future of financial inclusion.

To stay in touch or look back on the Symposium on Financial Inclusion that was, find us at @MCFoundation or #SoFI2015.