Honey, I shrunk the banker

Barclays hopes to change the rules of mobile banking with help from a smaller-than-life bank executive.

She's my pal, she's my gal." Most young men long for one such person in their lives. In this 40-second television commercial, as a young 20-something man reaches out to silence his alarm clock, he finds a young lady executive fulfilling that role for him, and more.

But something is unusual. This lady is small, really small "" like a miniature in your showcase that came alive when you were not watching. She's so tiny that she stands on his finger. But he cannot do without her. The lyrics "she's my pal, she's my gal," become the background musical score.

When he needs to check his financial status, the lady picks up a pen, several times her size, and neatly writes out a "mini" (what else did you expect?) statement. When he needs to transfer funds to his father, the young lady takes a wad of notes on a trolley, down the escalator to his pleasantly-surprised father.

Soon, she's dragging a bunch of giant-sized papers marked "bills" by her boss. Work done, the little angel flashes a thumbs-up sign with both her hands. The tasks for the day accomplished, it's time to put the lights out.

As the young man puts his head on the pillow, the lady makes her way to the cellphone. Her bed of roses is actually the keypad of a fliptop mobile phone. And, who's she?

"A banker on your phone," says the voiceover as the visuals show "Hello Money", a mobile phone banking product introduced by Barclays, the UK-based financial services provider. The words "No SMS or GPRS required" flash on the TV screen.

So what's the big, okay small, deal? Barclays is not the first provider of mobile banking services in India. Then, as an international bank, it's also a late entrant. Its presence in India is also restricted with just four brick-and-mortar branches across the country. Compare that to ICICI Bank's 955 branches.

But all that could change in April 2009, with a deregulated Indian banking sector. Barclays certainly wants to be on the consumer's top-of-mind when that happens. Hence, the bank had to do something, not just fast, but also differently.

It was conventional wisdom in the banking industry that any service that was convenient, accessible and secure would be accepted by consumers. Mobile banking was certainly one such service. But, was it also cost effective?

Barclays decided to use technology to drive costs down. While other banks offered mobile phone banking services, their subscribers had to get either a GPRS connection or send an SMS to do transactions.

A GPRS connection typically has a fixed monthly rental cost anywhere from Rs 199-Rs 599 plus additional usage charges if users exceed the allotted free downloads. An SMS transaction could set users back by Rs 3 per SMS.

Instead Barclays decided to provide its account holders easy-to-access, yet low-cost way to do mobile banking "" access through just a hash (#) and star (*) keys, that are found in all mobile phones.

At Rs 30 per month "" the cost of a ringtone "" users can subscribe to "Hello Money" services. "Also it's very secure because there is no data stored on the handset," says Sheran Mehra, head-marketing, Barclays.

Another reason was the market potential, she says. With barely 34 per cent of its population engaged in formal banking, India has the second-highest number (about 135 million) of financially excluded households in the world. Mehra adds, "The intent of launching the service was to be a mass player and drive financial inclusion."

Barclays attempt to lure the financially excluded through mobile banking services might sound a tall claim. But consultants support the view that mobile phones can revolutionise banking in India.

According to a report, "The next billion consumers. A roadmap for expanding financial inclusion in India," by The Boston Consulting Group, "In India, the mobile handset could do for banking exactly what the personal computer did in developed markets: provide mass improvements in accessibility, ease of use and transaction costs."

There are an estimated 91 million households that could qualify as the next billion customers (with annual incomes of Rs 40,000-180,000 per household) in India.

According to BCG, in this segment there are more mobile connections rather than bank accounts "" 46 million bank account holders compared to 59 million mobile phone subscribers.

"Consumers are likely to become mobile phone subscribers before they become bank customers, given the relative growth rates of these industries," the report adds citing examples of Kenya and Zambia where telecom companies like Safaricom and Celtel respectively allow banking transactions through their networks.

Though, regulation might come in the way of a similar situation in India, banks are definitely not taking chances.

Barclays' advertising agency, McCann Erickson, began working on a campaign that would both sell the concept of mobile banking as well as create a mass appeal around the product.

To project the "bank with your phone" image, the agency considered formats like a bank emerging out of a phone amongst others. "We finally decided to show the phone as a banker. Showing a bank could make the concept unhuman," says Govind Pandey, president, McCann Erickson.

He adds that the agency decided to use the little wonder in order to show that the bank could perform various operations in a "simple and charming way".

Before the commercial went on air, the bank launched an out-of-home advertising campaign in strategic locations like airports, malls and so on to popularise its transaction number *598*1# that gives consumers toll-free access to the bank.

Mehra claims that the campaign got the bank about 5,000-6,000 trials per day. The bank also tied up with retail points like the mobile store to put up kiosks in the store and show demos to customers and so on.

Soon, the bank might even look at introducing phone caller tunes based on the "she's my pal..." jingle. Barclays executives say that that it will take the competition at least eight months to catch up and launch a similar technology.

That gives the bank enough lead time to capture consumers ranging from the affluent to a cab driver. "You could even pay your taxi fare through your mobile phone in real time if the taxi driver has a Barclays account," say bank executives. At present, though, much like the little wonder in the ad, this seems to be the stuff fairy tales are made of.