Bank of Cyprus goes from physical to digital

Shifting customers from physical to digital

Bank of Cyprus is the oldest and most recognizable banking institution in Cyprus, providing a wide range of financial products and services mainly for personal customers, but also for large corporates, international customers as well as wealth banking & investments. The Bank operates through a total of 98 branches in Cyprus.

With a history spanning over 120 years, the Bank has been keen on spearheading the digital banking revolution for its customers, focusing heavily on delivering digital transformation by adapting to changing customer behaviour.

“We’re moving towards digital transformation and digital channels. Our aim is to have our customers doing their banking online instead of visiting physical branches”.
Christos Theodoulou, Senior Digital Officer, Bank of Cyprus

Creating a new digital business model

Companies in the financial sector face challenges that increasingly require digital solutions. These challenges include:

• Declining branch traffic while consumer expectations are on the rise.
• Surging competition from non-traditional players like Amazon, Google etc.
• Rising regulatory pressures that are compressing margins.

Bank of Cyprus recognizes that its competitive edge depends on providing successfully innovative and competitive consumer technology. Also the Bank realizes that it needs to invest in its own digital transformation in banking - that is, equip its employees with the best tech and tools needed to do their job in the best possible way.

In order to meet consumer demands and match today’s pace of innovation, the Bank is looking to implement digital transformation in an effort to keep company competitive, albeit at varying speeds.

The Bank has embraced the digital age of banking with Optimizely enabled online platform. Digitalizing interactions with customers comprises of sharing relevant, detailed information about its products and services to the numerous customer segments it serves.

The mission of paving the way for online banking comes with challenges that the Bank is masterfully navigating. To sway customers away from physical branches, the Bank has introduced lower rates and free-of-charge product offers only accessible online.

“We are upgrading our Corporate Website to offer visitors an enhanced experience (user-friendly, visually compelling website). We also aim in providing customers with all the necessary information about our products and services in a clear and simple way”.
Christos Theodoulou, Senior Digital Officer, Bank of Cyprus

Architecting a purpose-driven siteBank of Cyprus organizes its site in a smart way, through a content hierarchy based on page template types. This design helps eliminate pages that are not of value and reduces content duplication. As a result, this ensures a smoother experience for customers as there’s no need to seek through heaps of pages for specific information.

This architecture also supports the Bank’s customer acquisition techniques. The Bank is attracting younger demographics who view digital banking as standard and are more accustomed to digital lifestyle tools.

Without ignoring traditional routes to market and those who are not digitally savvy, the Bank employs campaigns to promote digital channels including digital payments. The team is on a journey to provide relatable experience for each individual visitor, avoiding generic content, and helping serve the right information to the right segment of people.

In the future, Bank of Cyprus will focus its website on personalization including getting to grips with understanding customer user profiles more in-depthly.

“Through the website we want to safeguard the new philosophy of the Bank”.
Christos Theodoulou, Senior Digital Officer, Bank of Cyprus