Forensic brand guidance agency TransgressiveX (TX) has launched a Banking, Financial Services and Insurance proposition, having enlisted a team of senior global financial services marketers. Sarajit Mitra, former Global Head of Marketing & Customer Experience at HSBC Global Banking and Markets, leads the TX proposition, and is joined by a heavyweight international team of former marketers and insights specialists. TransgressiveX, based in Kensington and operating worldwide, is led by prominent consumer psychologist Nadim Sadek, former Global CEO of Millward Brown’s Qualitative network, and Worldwide Commercial & Strategy director of Research International.

Says Mitra; “Traditional banks need to reform, and quickly. Rapid fintech innovation is transforming and lowering the once massive barriers to entry for banking from smaller and newer entrants. Whilst digitally-enabled challenger banks are emerging from within banking, out-of-category brands, mobile and social platforms and transaction processors cannot be ignored.” Early challenger banks like Metro Bank focussed on access and convenience through bricks and mortar. The newer ones are offering the convenience of digital access to financial products potentially appealing to tech-savvy and millennial customers. Mitra says; “New banking propositions largely revolve around making access to banking convenient. Customers are unimpressed. Like an ATM is expected to pay out cash on demand, customers expect 24hour online banking access, and simplified on-boarding and transaction processes. So what PULL does a financial services marketer need to generate that ‘wows’ customers, to make them switch? According to TX, “Consumers are disappointed that today’s banking does not recognise consumer needs. Banks can improve Seduction and Pull, through themes like facilitating the needs of students embarking on highly skilled careers, or the end-to-end needs of start-up entrepreneurs. Persuasion and Push to showcase a bank’s collective expertise in international markets would appeal more to the SME exporter, than simply marketing export finance.” So while challenger banks are well placed to win consumer trust lost by their high-street counterparts in the banking turmoil of the past decade, we question the ability of digital delivery propositions alone succeeding in the absence of a real connection with consumer needs”.

TX offers better measures, measured better, to give commercially valuable direction to future marketing investments. TX provides a highly accurate guidance system to create the greatest inclination to interact amongst customers. Its tools measure a brand’s powers of seduction and persuasion and provide a score showing its competitive power, strengths, weaknesses and opportunities. The agency has scored a number of impressive new business wins since inception and was recently voted among the 100 most disruptive UK companies, ‘which every marketer should know’.

Says Sadek; “One can clearly see the cost-benefit of a mobile-only delivery mechanism to the bank, but is access and convenience banking really enough of an exchange of value for consumers to actively consider switching from the high street powerhouses? We can help challenger banks develop stronger propositions that offer clear differentiation, through communications that should be seducing and persuading habitually sceptical customers. The winners will have aspirational propositions like entrepreneurship, achieving social mobility, sustainable investments and by offering end to end services along the various life stages of both a venture and a life today.”

TransgressiveX was established with one of the industry’s most senior leadership teams; Nadim Sadek, Founder of Sadek Wynberg Research; Global Leader of Millward Brown’s Qualitative Network; Worldwide Commercial & Strategy Director of Research International; and creator of multi-category, Mobius award-winning brand Inish Turk Beg. He is joined by Carol Reay, (CMO Odgers Berndtson; CEO, Great Ormond Street Hospital; Deputy Chairman Grey London; founder & MD Mellors Reay Advertising), Andrew Wish (CEO Research International; CEO Astra-Zeneca (SA); and Global Top 10 account director TNS),Iain Hamilton (CMO Kimberley-Clark Europe; MD Mayborn Group PLC), John Blake (MD Research International; Global Insight Director Bacardi, Cadbury, Kraft, Avis), and Chris King (CEO KB49; Global Account Director at Grey Worldwide; Proctor and Gamble), and Sarajit Mitra (former Global Head of Marketing and Customer Experience at HSBC).