Banking on Relationships: A Relationship Manager's Pivot to Success

 

Ravindra manahar

MBA- II Semester

Batch: 2023-25

ravindra.manahar2025@sibmnoida.siu.edu.in

Relationship Managers play a central role in Indian Banks by acting as a link between the bank and its customers. Their foremost responsibility is to build and maintain strong bonds with clients of both individual and corporate customers.  They are trained with understanding with monetary needs of their clients. To extend their task, they provide personalized financial advice, solutions and products in relation to their client’s requirements.

Relationship Managers are the backbone of the bank, which makes them responsible for acquiring new customers for the bank. They manage the financial portfolios of clients, thereby analysing their financial situation, risk appetite and future endeavours and thus recommending unique investment products, loan options and various banking services.

Relationship Managers remain active by promoting their additional services like insurance, credit cards, mutual funds, loans etc. They leverage their understanding of client’s needs to offer relevant solutions that enhance customer’s banking experience. When coming to problem resolution, they liaise with relative departments within the bank to ensure customer satisfaction. They remain at par with the current trends in the market of the banking sector and share relevant insights with their clients to remain updated.

For a relationship manager, building a strong network is very much essential. For this, they attend industry seminars and meetings at zonal levels. As far as compliance is concerned, relationship managers ensure that all client interactions and transactions adhere to regulatory requirements and internal bank policies. They are risk managers as well. They understand the client’s risk appetite and suggest appropriate strategies to mitigate risks.

Building and retaining long-lasting relationships and providing exceptional customer service, are vitals of relationship managers in their job. Now, coming to the fact, the challenges faced by a Relationship Manager are sometimes daunting. These could be digital transformation, product complexity, market volatility, customer expectations, workload and targets, and changing customer behaviour, to name a few. Banks offer a wide range of financial products and services, and these can be complex for customers to understand. Relationship Managers need to simplify and explain these features effectively. In the words of Amit, Relationship Manager at ICICI Bank,’’ These days customer expectations are rising, fuelled by their experiences with other industries technologies advancements. Relationship Managers need to meet these higher expectations for service quality, response times and convenience. We often have demanding sales targets and are expected to handle a significant number of clients. Balancing the workload while providing quality service can be stressful. Also, with a growing preference for self-service and digital interactions, relationship managers need to adapt to these changes while still offering value through expertise.’’

Judging all the parameters in the job of a Relationship Manager, we can say that Relationship Managers are the pivot of the Bank.