FNB CEO, Jacques Celliers, says, “For 184 years, our sense of care has been vital to our efforts to help millions of individuals, families, and businesses realise their dreams and aspirations. Our efforts to transition beyond banking are still deeply rooted in our promise of helping customers with advice they can trust, solutions that are easy to use and safe, and a brand that is relevant at every life stage. Our journey to help customers navigate life is similar to the versatile Acacia tree, that has been deeply rooted within our brand and continues to grow and thrive withstanding the test of time.”

Reimagining advice

“We aspire to be a trusted partner helping customers, their families, and their businesses thrive and achieve their goals through positive changes in financial behaviour. To this end, we want to make it easy for our customers to free up cashflow through best value for money solutions that make their money go further to realise their investment and insurance needs in line with their goals. We want to help customers through various life stages for themselves, their families and their businesses, and to ensure we advise them on the right solutions for their needs,” explains Celliers.

Reimagining user experience

The FNB App, Africa’s first banking App, has been redesigned to offer even more intuitive help through its ease of use and a safer digital experience. Customers can now personalise their FNB App by customising its home screen and selecting frequently used or preferred features. Customers can also view a snapshot of their transactional accounts, credit, investments, insurance, and value-added services. In addition, the search function has been improved to help customers find services much quicker. Similar enhancements are being made to the internet banking channel.

FNB has also introduced Money Protect, a new and industry-first benefit of free insurance cover for certain fraud-related losses when using interfaces such as the FNB App and ATMs. The benefit demonstrates FNB’s commitment to helping customers transition to safer digital interfaces.

“We continue to facilitate our customers’ journey from analogue to digital and digital to platform. We’re excited to see millions of our customers embracing the migration to more accessible, user-friendly, and safer interfaces. Our digital interfaces have become a one-stop shop for customers’ financial and lifestyle needs, with over 3 billion transactions and 1.6 billion digital interactions over the past 12 months. Likewise, we recognise that fraud is a reality in our society, and we are continuously enhancing our measures to assist millions of our digitally active customers in mitigating these risks,” says Celliers.

Reimagining payments

FNB Pay is now the payments umbrella in the FNB App. With a few taps, customers can now split a bill and those who run businesses can receive contactless payments easily and safely on their android smart devices, without the need for a separate point-of-sale device.

Reimagining our iconic brand

FNB is also refreshing its iconic brand to become more versatile and resonate beyond banking and financial services. FNB Chief Marketing Officer, Faye Mfikwe, explains the brand’s evolution by acknowledging that change is important to staying relevant to customers. “The refresh helps us to create a versatile brand look and feel that aligns with our accelerating transition to helping customers beyond banking into lifestyle and business solutions categories,” she says.

“We intend to embark on this journey while remaining deeply rooted in our brand heritage and brand promise of ‘How can we help you’. At the heart of our evolution is the appreciation of our responsibility to keep up with the step change in customers’ needs and the global transition to a platform era. We believe that our efforts set us apart as a formidable provider of advice-led financial and lifestyle services, underpinned by exponential help,” adds Mfikwe.

Celliers expresses a similar sentiment by saying, “Our platform journey continues. Whether our customers need help navigating life, making every day easier, or realising their dreams for a better tomorrow, we are invested in helping them realise their goals,” he concludes.

According to Faye Mfikwe, Chief Marketing Officer at FNB, the bank’s new #TheChangeables brand positioning represents its acknowledgement of the importance of change as a catalyst of personal, business, and economic growth, and highlights its commitment to being an effective agent of change. She describes “#TheChangeables” as passionate, strong, and resilient African people and businesses, with whom the Bank wants to partner in creating even more positive change across Africa. 

“Despite the many challenges Covid-19 brought, the pandemic also casts a very bright spotlight on the courageous, resilient and adaptable African spirit,” Mfikwe says, and this spirit resonates so strongly with FNB that we felt compelled to embrace it and position it at the very core of who we are and what we do as a bank, in South Africa and across Rest of Africa says Mfikwe.

Her sentiment is echoed by CEO of FNB Retail, Raj Makanjee, who says, “In the spirit of #TheChangeables, we are constantly refreshing our solutions and service models to align with the step change in customers’ needs while upping the ante on our competitive advantage. In support of this we have also refreshed our bank cards across our personal banking offerings. We pride ourselves on putting customers at the centre of our financial solutions and the changes we are implementing demonstrate our commitment to value-based banking including giving customers up to 3 times their monthly personal account fee back in value from eBucks, FNB Connect and the embedded value in our offerings.”

FNB states that #TheChangeables is not a move away from its well-established brand purpose of helpfulness. “Rather, it is the next step in delivering on that purpose. #TheChangeables is far more than just another brand campaign,” says Mfikwe, “it’s the tangible representation of a value system that recognises the journey that every person and/or business is on, and our role in providing the solutions they need to progress even further.”

“The year 2020 taught us all that there really is no need to fear change, but that we should instead embrace it as a highly positive force in our lives,” Mfikwe concludes, “and #TheChangeables not only celebrates the willingness and courage of change agents to do exactly that, but it also asserts FNB’s total commitment to supporting them through our platform based solutions as a trusted enabler of change and the preferred Bank of #TheChangeables.”

Find out more about the campaign here.