The chief commercial officer of online digital bank Fidor Bank has spoken of the bank’s success retaining customer favour through its community management practices.

Speaking in an international keynote presentation at the FST Banking Summit in Sydney on 9 May, Fidor Bank chief commercial officer, Gé Drossaert, said customers would respond better when rewarded for their loyalty and involvement with their bank.

Drossaert said the online bank, which was founded in 2009, used a community engagement platform to encourage customers to be involved with the bank, its processes, and with other customers. Customers are engaged through involvement in Fidor Bank’s social media sites and online chat and commentary platforms which allow bank members and outsiders to join its community engagement platform and accredit ‘status’ based on their involvement.

The primary motivation for open communication came down to the nature of digital and online, which Drossaert championed as the most simple and effective method for banks to stay engaged with customers.

“Community for us is our way of communicating with our customers,” he said.

“Anything we do, anything we give should be instant fulfilment. We want our products to be immediately consumable.

“If we don’t add value we are not relevant.”

Speaking in Sydney yesterday at the Banking Summit, Drossaert said community engagement had the potential to bolster interest which could then be channelled toward a specific business of bank.

“Bankers need to understand that traffic is an asset, traffic is important and when you have traffic, you can direct it to your business,” he said.

Fidor Bank was acquired by mutually-owned French lender Groupe BCPE in December 2016 and has a network of more than 350,000 customers across the UK and Germany.