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Omni­um integ­ra­tion for St. Gal­ler Kantonalbank 

Paradigm shift in con­sult­ing with Omnium

The res­ult

Today, Omni­um is the cent­ral tool for provid­ing cus­tom­er advice at St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank. Face-to-face con­sult­ing with Omni­um is stand­ard­ised among advisors across top­ics – i.e. for ana­lyz­ing life situ­ations, the mort­gage busi­ness and retire­ment plan­ning. Third-party solu­tions for the invest­ment busi­ness are also integrated.

The new con­sult­ing pro­cess with Omni­um is highly rated by advisors as well as cus­tom­ers. This is the res­ult of a com­pre­hens­ively sup­por­ted approach.

The ini­tial situation

In 2017, St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank adop­ted a new strategy of goal-based hol­ist­ic advice. The paradigm shift also involves sup­port­ing cus­tom­ers through their live cycle. Based on this strategy, a solu­tion was sought in the mar­ket for implementation.

In spite of gaps in the func­tion­al­ity of Omni­um, the already exist­ing mod­ules, the under­ly­ing con­cepts and the pro­posed approach con­vinced bank rep­res­ent­at­ives. As a res­ult, Brain­group was awar­ded the con­tract with Omnium.

The man­age­ment of St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank did not simply com­mis­sion the intro­duc­tion of a tool for con­sult­ing. It star­ted a long-term change pro­cess to estab­lish the hol­ist­ic goal-based con­sult­ing philo­sophy. Tool-based con­sult­ing with Omni­um as the cent­ral applic­a­tion is thus much more than just an IT solution.

The pro­ced­ure

The entire pro­ject was imple­men­ted in stages — with a clear vis­ion from the very begin­ning. The most import­ant pro­ject stages were:

  • Intro­duc­tion of the Omni­um mod­ule Basic Con­sult­ing with the fol­low­ing objectives:
  1. Focus on the cus­tom­er with con­sid­er­a­tion of their goals and wishes
  2. Provid­ing an over­view of the fin­an­cial situ­ation of the cli­en­tele (entire household)
  3. Devel­op­ment of meas­ures to achieve the fin­an­cial goals of the clientele
  4. Form­a­tion of a basis for deep­en­ing in fol­low-up dis­cus­sions (fin­an­cing, invest­ing, provid­ing for the future)
  • Intro­duc­tion of the invest­ment advis­ory mod­ule, i.e. integ­ra­tion of the exist­ing port­fo­lio man­age­ment applic­a­tion “FIN­FOX Touch” with fol­low­ing objectives:
  1. Real­iz­a­tion of goal-based invest­ment advice
  2. Improved con­sult­ing exper­i­ence due to inter­act­ive simulations
  3. Access to rel­ev­ant information/​documents such as recom­mend­a­tion lists, fact sheets, etc.

  • Intro­duc­tion of the Omni­um mod­ule Pen­sion pro­vi­sion with fol­low­ing objectives:
  1. Rais­ing cus­tom­er aware­ness of risk events such as dis­ab­il­ity, death and old age
  2. Mar­ket pos­i­tion­ing as a hol­ist­ic bank
  3. Gate­way to spe­cial advisors
  • Intro­duc­tion of the Omni­um mod­ule Fin­an­cing with the fol­low­ing objectives:
  1. Assess­ment of a prop­erty value through the integ­ra­tion of hedon­ic estim­a­tion models 
  2. Show­ing the cli­en­tele their viab­il­ity for real estate financing 
  3. Offer cus­tom­ers vari­ous fin­an­cing options and mort­gage products with­in one system
  4. Increas­ing the cus­tom­er exper­i­ence in con­sult­ing through the integ­ra­tion of extern­al addi­tion­al services

The advant­ages

  • The bank has estab­lished a cus­tom­er-cent­ric, digit­al advis­ory approach with Omnium. 
  • Con­sult­ants and cus­tom­ers rate the con­sult­ing exper­i­ence with Omni­um highly 
  • Thanks to well thought-out and con­sist­ent pro­cesses, the bank has cre­ated flex­ible found­a­tions for fur­ther con­sult­ing topics. 
  • The com­pre­hens­ive change pro­gram was widely sup­por­ted by the bank at all levels

Suc­cess-Story St.Galler Kantonalbank

«The con­tinu­ous and hol­ist­ic sup­port of con­sult­ing pro­cesses across all rel­ev­ant spe­cial­ist top­ics with Omni­um as the cent­ral applic­a­tion is an enrich­ment for the con­sulta­tion and inspires our customers.»

Mario Laub­scher, Head of Private Bank­ing Divi­sion of St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank AG

As a uni­ver­sal bank with region­al roots, St. Gal­ler Kan­ton­al­bank has been advising private and busi­ness cus­tom­ers on all aspects of money for over 150 years.

Newly developed «St.Galler Fin­an­cial Con­sult­ing» con­sult­ing philo­sophy
At the time of the eval­u­ation, advis­ory pro­cesses at St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank were heav­ily paper-based. There­fore, the pro­cess of how a con­sulta­tion was con­duc­ted var­ied a lot by advisor. Thus, the chal­lenge was to provide up-to-date and rel­ev­ant inform­a­tion, but also to con­nect emo­tion­ally with the cus­tom­er. In order to live up to our pos­i­tion­ing as advis­ory bank, it was time to devel­op a stand­ard­ized con­sult­ing concept and a cor­res­pond­ing tool, from meet­ing pre­par­a­tion to fol­low-up. The main object­ive was to provide our cus­tom­ers with hol­ist­ic advice and to place their goals and wishes at the cen­ter. The mod­u­lar con­sult­ing solu­tion from Omni­um is con­sist­ently aligned with the new “St. Gal­len Fin­an­cial Advis­ory” and optim­ally sup­ports all aspects.

Win-Win Situ­ation
With the intro­duc­tion of the Omni­um mod­ules Basic Advice, Retire­ment Plan­ning, Fin­an­cing, and Invest­ing, the new advis­ory pro­cess is geared much more closely to the life situ­ation and needs of bank cus­tom­ers. Hol­ist­ic and goal-based advice gives cus­tom­ers a sense of assur­ance, which strengthens cus­tom­er loyalty.

«With Omni­um, we have a stand­ard soft­ware which, in addi­tion to the high level of sys­tem integ­ra­tion with the core bank­ing sys­tem and the rel­ev­ant peri­pher­al sys­tems, also impresses with its ease of use,” says Mario Laub­scher, Head of Private Bank­ing Divi­sion Man­age­ment and Pro­ject Man­ager at “St.Galler Fin­an­zber­a­tung”. “The visu­ally appeal­ing user inter­face, the com­pre­hens­ible cus­tom­er jour­ney and the well-pre­pared cus­tom­er out­put round off the solution.»

Com­pre­hens­ive change pro­cess
The intro­duc­tion of the new solu­tion required St.Galler Kan­ton­al­bank to rethink its advis­ory philo­sophy: away from tra­di­tion­al product sales and toward hol­ist­ic, life-stage-ori­ented advice. Dur­ing the rol­lout, the bank inves­ted heav­ily in the train­ing of its employ­ees. The focus was always on the advis­ory philo­sophy and best prac­tices. Omni­um increases stand­ard­iz­a­tion and of the advis­ory pro­cess and is an import­ant ele­ment in the con­sist­ent imple­ment­a­tion of the bank’s hybrid advis­ory strategy.

Part­ner­ship cooper­a­tion
After a detailed exam­in­a­tion of the tech­nic­al as well as busi­ness require­ments, Omni­um pre­vailed due to the scope of ser­vices as well as the cred­ib­il­ity and authen­ti­city of the employ­ees. Mario Laub­scher emphas­izes: «With more than 24,000 con­sult­ing ses­sions in the mean­time, we look back with pride on what we have achieved. We would like to thank Brain­group for their com­pet­ent support.»