Ketsia Lorraine Motlhabane

The study assesses whether the banks’ strategies help to attract and retain or deter tertiary students from their businesses. It aims to highlight the banks’ need to go beyond expectations in nurturing their students’ clientele. The study can be the banks’ stepping-stone into the seemingly neglected tertiary student (TS) market. Using observation method and bank consultants’ interviews, this study probes South Africa’s (SA) major banks’ service time-lag together with student product offers and information accessibility. The study focused on whether different banks’ product offers, costing and service quality do attract and retain or deter student clients. The questions were based on students’ saving/cheque accounts, credit card and loan facilities accessibility.

Findings. Product offers and information were inadequate from branch visits and website searches less informative. Queues time-lag differed from bank to bank, but, overall, unreasonable for TS market with product limitations and generalized information not specific to students’ needs. Further research can be undertaken to gain in-depth understanding of whether urban banks’ strategies for students are distinct to those of semi-rural areas, which was the scope of this study.

Banks services are significant for maintaining students’ profiles, providing traceable trails, of sponsors, families and financial transactions, which will be valuable even for periods beyond their academic life. Many live away from their secured homes, expected to survive with limited resources and time constraint. Nurturing these relationship would prepare students for the financial market demands much to the benefit of all stakeholders.

The purpose of this article is two-fold: to investigate how recurring maintenance fees levied on students’ accounts impact on university students’ willingness to maintain bank accounts and therefore begin creating the necessary credit profiles. Credit profiles provide financial history that is useful for banks and other lenders to evaluate clients’ credit worthiness. Many students in South African universities are ignorant of this requirement and usually make choices detrimental to their accessing current and future financial products. The banks’ service quality and students’ expectations need to be harmonized at some point.
The study was exploratory in nature, using expressive statements on banking costs to expose common causes of financial burden, the best and worst case scenarios of utilizing banking products including benefit accrual from their use. Pre-intervention data was collected using questionnaires N=60 conveniently sampled financial management students. The post-intervention data was collected from the same students N=55 using similar questionnaires where five students did not show up. The study also assessed financial management tutorial influence on students’ decision making after being exposed to banking market demands and their costs. SPSS was used to analyze data collected.
Cheaper once-off cardless services were found to be popular with students receiving money, citing its reasonableness and depositor charger rather than recipient shoul¬dering transaction costs. Students confirmed their satisfaction with saving costly re¬curring bank account maintenance fees, earning 0% interest on credit balances. Bank account holders increased in post-intervention compared to pre-tutorial with better understanding of client’s profile value for accessing credit. Other students remained reluctant to maintain bank accounts despite future economic benefits. Bank account maintenance fees discourage students from maintaining bank accounts. Maintenance fees may aid banks user cost recovery but losing clients to competing cheap cardless products may be more costly.
The study contributes to relationship management in banking sector. Research debate focused on bank selection criteria based on established key quality factors and service. Little scholarly investigation exists on reasons for annulling bank accounts, replaced with once-off cardless services that is gaining popularity with university students over maintaining bank accounts. Highlighting what is critical to students, the paper may influence banks policies and developers to design innovative products suitable for university students market. Affordability and incentives are key attraction points for clients, mainly university students operating with limited resources. Loyalty prospects can surpass immediate recovery derived from maintenance fees.