ABN AMRO: the benefits of a knowledge-basedapproach

Selling a financial product requires more and more knowledge. Customers are gettingbetter informed, requirements within law and regulations are getting tighter. But how toreach your valued clients with those essential facts and figures? Not by squeezing theminto bulky manuals. What is needed is a logical system, and only offering the informationthat is really needed. That’s why ABN AMRO is developing clever ‘knowledge banks’. Theaim: better advice for the customer, based on exactly the right knowledge.

Henk Jonkers

At ABN AMRO, the business approach has aclear focus: how can we improve our custo-mers’ situation? “One way of achieving aconsistent level of quality is a more intensiveuse of standardisation. And making know-

ledge, which might be locked up within the organisation,more readily available”, says Roland Maas, senior businessmanager at ABN AMRO and responsible for the Design &Improvement department. “But unfortunately many know-ledge-intensive processes cannot be standardised easily.Mortgage advice and the administration when somebodypasses away are good examples of this. These are personalmatters which require a specific understanding. Thatknowledge can be found partially within our advisers’heads, but it is also stored inside impressive almanacs,work instructions, intranet applications and the like.Digital sources can be opened up by using their searchoption, but that is not enough. Just think of Google. Try tofind exactly what you are looking for within those 2,000results! Sources may provide us with all the knowledge weneed, in every possible detail, but at the same time they arepoorly accessible and not very customer-friendly.”In addition to this it takes more and more knowledge thesedays to be a good mortgage adviser. “Just think of therequirements for our products as issued by the AutoriteitFinanciële Markten (the Dutch government’s financialwatchdog, ed.) and the Financial Surveillance Law”, saysMaas. “We must be able to explain openly and preciselyhow we came up with a certain piece of advice, or recom-mended a particular product. ABN AMRO’s front office staffhave to be aware of these tight requirements and must beable to apply them.”

Working the knowledge-based wayABN AMRO started investigating a knowledge-based workapproach approximately two years ago. How does it fit inwith the bank’s normal way of operating? “Knowledge is

not a synonym for information”, explains Maas. “We useknowledge technology. We can improve the quality of ourservice by making valuable knowledge available exactlywhere it is needed at the time. This works out as follows.Using a knowledge application has two components. Onthe one hand we use it to design our knowledge-intensiveprocesses, i.e. gathering the required data. We store thesedata inside knowledge banks, using Match™ Developertechnology. This application guarantees a transparent,focused and simple storage of knowledge. On the otherhand the application is able to present the knowledge to thecustomer. In fact this happens within the knowledge bank,without the use of a single software engineer. The lifespanof a knowledge bank is very short. To us that is a big plus.We are able to build a new bank in six to eight weeks. Inthe old days that could easily take half a year.”It is not only mortgages for which ABN AMRO usesKnowledge Values’ Match™ technology. The bank is plan-ning several more knowledge banks, which would enablethe knowledge-based work approach elsewhere within theorganisation as well. “The knowledge application uses logi-cal steps”, says Maas. “Based on the customer’s informa tionit presents exactly the right information. The instrumentalso shakes every single branch of the decision tree.Nothing will escape the adviser’s attention.”

Investigating all options, step by stepFollowing many meetings, workshops and tests ABN AMROstarted using a prototype of the knowledge application lastJune. The bank’s mortgage advisers now use this whenthey meet their clients. In a pilot programme in the TheHague area the advisers now work with the application andare testing its usability. In fact the software ‘guides’ theadviser through the conversation with the customer, explo-ring all options which may apply to the customer’s personalsituation. Is this person aged over 35, with a pension age of65? What will his post-retirement income be? How big is

the risk that he can no longer afford to pay off his mort -gage? A step by step exploration of all the relevant optionsregarding the sale of a mortgage.Ron van der Ploeg, mortgage adviser in the The Haguearea, has been using the Knowledge Values’ application

since June. “Initially I found it all rather complicated”, hesays. “A new application means lot of changes. Many of mycolleagues were quite sceptical. You come across all sorts ofthings. No home insurance? Clicking the ‘i’ symbol on thescreen provides you with an overview of all the risks invol-ved. You get a much more comprehensive picture of thecustomer.” Which is crucial, according to Van der Ploeg, asconsumers are becoming more and more demanding.“Often people already know a lot about our products, aftergathering information on the internet. Such advance know-ledge increases their expectations, when they meet a mort-gage adviser. You have to prove your added value.”

Not a ‘question and answer’ gameSo what do customers think of the new approach? “Whenwe first meet, we tell our customers that we are using anew system, which will more or less guide us through theconversation. Usually nobody objects to that. For the cus -tomer it means that we won’t ignore anything relevant.”When a computer tells you what to ask, a certain skill isrequired to keep the conversation lively. In the words ofVan der Ploeg: “Of course it should still be a real conversa-

tion, not a ‘question and answer’ game. We provide the cus-tomer with an overview of all things discussed andanything upon which we have agreed. This is anotherimprovement, compared with how we used to work in thepast, when it was mainly figures we sent our customersback home with. Now we come up with a summary of theconversation, including all the options we have discussed.”

Precisely the right knowledgeAs already indicated, building a new knowledge bank usingMatch™ takes approximately six to eight weeks. What doesthis involve? “It’s all a bit of a journey”, says WillemWulffraat, management consultant for knowledge-basedwork at ABN AMRO. “We take small steps, with lots of feed-back. Quite often we organise workshops. We invite rele-vant specialists and people who deal with everyday mattersto participate. We bring together professionals such as tax

experts, marketing managers, lawyers and product ma na -gers, and front line workers such as mortgage advisers andour administrative staff. Together they attempt to gather allthe relevant knowledge needed in order to offer mortgageadvice. Existing manuals and work instructions play a role,of course. But by filtering and linking information we makesure that our advisers and customers have access to preci-sely the right knowledge.”

Henk Jonkers is a freelance journalist

This article has been published in

Intellectueel Kapitaal 6-2009, www.ikmagazine.nl

Willem Wulffraat

Ronald Maas