Banorte is aiming for even more customer-friendly advances in the digital frontier.
Board chairman Carlos Hank González told reporters before the 85th Banking Convention that its customers increasingly are turning to remote services, driven in part by the global pandemic.
In response, Banorte – already an industry leader in digital banking – plans to allocate 10% to 13% of its income to technology enhancements.
“We are no longer talking about the customer choosing between different financial products, but about the creation of services that are exactly adapted to their tastes, priorities and needs,” he told the Excélsior newspaper.
He said, Banorte invests 13 billion pesos, or more than USD $650 million, annually in digitizing its processes for the bank’s 11 million clients.
Of those, 6 million are making transactions through digital banking, and more than 4 million already are doing so on their mobile phones.
Carlos Hank González
“We believe that digital banking allows us to get closer to customers, not only to understand them better, but also to give them access to financial services wherever they are,” he said in an interview with Milenio, a major national newspaper in Mexico.
His outlook on Banorte came as the 85th Banking Convention opened March 24 in Acapulco, a high-profile event that included a headliner speeches by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador; Ban Ki-moon, the former secretary-general of the United Nations; Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada; and other financial leaders.
Carlos Hank González said to Excélsior that customers are demanding more hyper-personalized attention, tailored to “their tastes, priorities and needs.”
“What we are doing is understanding very well what each person likes, we are also giving ourselves the opportunity to know their needs to make them specific offers,” he said.
He also said Banorte will play a major role in promoting the development of the country and help Mexicans emerge from the pandemic. That will include the bank continuing to finance those wanting to “start a micro, small or medium-sized company, to be able to buy a house or buy a car.”
Banorte CEO Marcos Ramírez agreed, telling El Financiero newspaper that the coronavirus crisis pushed banks to become more creative and more resilient.
“We hope to turn the economy around more,” he said. “This learning will let us know that we can work on hybrid models, that both our clients and we adapt to adversity and were able to overcome it.”
Carlos Hank González has long been a digital champion at Banorte. In 2018, Banorte became the only bank to offer credit line increases through digital banking.
In June 2021, Banorte and Google Cloud joined forces to accelerate the bank’s digital transformation and develop key actions, such as cybersecurity focused on threat detection.