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Mike Adamson is Local Manager for Metro Bank, which started in 2010 and now has 40 stores (not “branches”) across London and South-East England. They are a community bank, working closely with local people, and plan to have 200 stores by 2020.  Mike managed to rivet his audience with his talk about his ongoing experiences at Metro Bank, their innovations over the past few years and the difficulties associated with being a challenger bank in a country where the other High Street banks have all existed for more than a century.

He spoke about how the customer is at the heart of everything they do, and the various ways they are willing to go beyond the call of duty and what could normally be expected in seeing to customers’ needs and desires, citing such examples as a welcoming attitude to dogs and the provision of dog bowls as well as consistently opening their doors early and closing them late as the situation calls for.

Mike interspersed these examples with comparisons between other banks’ rigidity and typical ways of doing things and Metro Bank’s attempts at innovations. The talk highlighted not only the challenges of competing with much larger businesses but also the inherent advantages of being smaller and more agile than your competitors.

Based on a report by Christopher Bomfim