How to build financial loyalty when the system is broken…

Never been much of a cat person?

It’s a tough one.

The financial system buckled fast. Institutions on their knees in a heartbeat.

So, the one question on many financial marketers lips; how to we rebuild lost trust and loyalty.

Fast…

Well, Great Eastern (a financial brand in Singapore), took a somewhat novel approach, when some investment funds they were running nosedived some 40-80% .

Rather than saying, ‘sorry, here’s 40% of what you paid us’, and move along swiftly, the brand decided that 18,000 customers who took the product between 2005-07, could get all their money back, plus a nominal amount of interest (between 3.5 and 4.9% per annum).

At a time where corporate losses hit the press daily, this will cost the institution some $250 million.

But what they stand to gain in terms of goodwill and brand equity cannot be undervalued, at a time where some of the ‘safest’ and most reliable institutions are losing customers in their droves.

They exhibit all the signs of understanding the long game. And isn’t the long game what we are told investing is all about?

If I were to invest over here, I  know who I’d be recommending…

Iain Morrison is a senior marketer in the British Tourism Industry, currently working in Singapore. And would advise Blighty’s financial institutions to take note!