Oriental boosts presence among young people, women
Idalis Montalvo, vice president of marketing and public relations for Oriental.
Oriental Bank has implemented a number of strategies to expand its customer base and increase its market share of young people and women, achieving sustained growth for the past 18 months, company officials said Wednesday.
“We moved quickly and identified the best ways to introduce to both segments our products and services. We made new tools and innovative solutions available in both segments and have had very positive results,” said Idalis Montalvo, vice president of marketing and public relations for Oriental.
The main push came through its “Atrévete” program, focused on the female segment and the creation of a digital strategy to develop relevant content to support the communication of the benefits of the bank’s products and services. The bank has also seen growth in its relationship with 18-to-34 year-olds, a recent brand recognition study by Gaither International confirmed.
“Since its launch in August last year, the ‘Atrévete’ program has been instrumental in growth and recognition of our brand among women. At the end of August, we can confirm an increase of 5 percent in our female customer base,” said Montalvo.
The program was designed with three specific focus areas to provide: capital and resources aimed at entrepreneurship focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and math; education programs to increase awareness of women in the area of finance and banking solutions, focusing on individual client experiences.
In the area of entrepreneurship, the program achieved strategic alliances with partners including Grupo Guayacán and Access America through which capital and resources to local business development, led by women was provided.
For young people, the institution strengthened its presence on digital platforms to explain banking products and their benefits. The bank also joined forces with improv group Teatro Breve to deliver specific messages.
“Because we distinguish ourselves for doing different things, we maximized the opportunity to reach young people with this extraordinary group of native talent using humor as a communication strategy,” Montalvo said.
Meanwhile, Debbie Sabater, senior vice president of individual banking strategy, said the novel communication strategy resulted in a 43 percent growth, or 22,000 additional mobile banking users, from September 2015 to September 2016.
She also confirmed positive growth in the use of online and mobile banking services, as well as ATMs. Oriental’s “People Pay” service, which allows customers to send money to any bank in the U.S. mainland and Puerto Rico, registered an 84 percent growth in registered users from September 2015 to September 2016. Furthermore, there was a 59 percent increase in monthly active users.
Oriental’s mobile deposit service, “FOTOdepósito” showed a 30 percent increase in usage during the same 12-month period, while the volume of deposits recorded by the service jumped by 32 percent, the bank confirmed.
