ABN AMRO: fully committed to digital accessibility

As De Nederlandsche Bank concluded from its own research early this year, the growth in online usage and services may be widening the digital divide. And while online banking is ideal for many, there are millions of people in the Netherlands who are finding it hard to keep up.

Jos Niels is one of 2.5 million Dutch people who struggle to read and write. He’s involved with Stichting ABC, an advocacy group for the functionally illiterate. Online tools, he says, can be an additional barrier. Websites are often littered with long sentences, and it’s not always clear what information is important.

“Banks use too many difficult words and a lot of English, too,” says Jos. “I have to read a text three to five times and often find myself clicking through different pages to find the right information. It all takes so much time. Sometimes a text is so complicated that even a highly educated person can’t make head or tail of it. So how on earth am I supposed to?”

Too many English words

Gudy van der Wal-Verbruggen, director of the Financial Care Coaches and accessibility manager at ABN AMRO, admits that the bank has a lot to learn here.

ABN AMRO recently submitted a text to Stichting ABC as a test. Gudy says, “Some of the participants struggled with the term ‘Apple Pay’ and didn’t understand what it was. A table in the letter listing amounts, different weeks and possible exceptions proved to be too much. These insights can teach us a lot as an organisation.”

Other groups, such as the elderly and the hearing and visually impaired, can also have difficulty with online banking or understanding a letter from the bank. That’s why ABN AMRO is working on solutions to enable these target groups to do theri banking. One way it’s helping is by giving them access to over 100 Financial Care Coaches to assist them with their banking if they can’t manage on their own.

Shame

But illiteracy poses other challenges, too. For one thing, the target group is not very visible – you can’t just look at someone and see that they have literacy problems. “Not only will a bank employee not be able to immediately identify the problem, but a client probably won’t volunteer the information either,” Gudy says. “That’s why we often miss signals to respond appropriately.”

Jos adds, “You just want to fit in so badly. Do you have any idea how hard it is to say, ‘Look, I just can’t read this’? Believe me, it’s a nightmare. There’s a lot of shame among the functionally illiterate. One reaction you sometimes get is, ‘You mean you never learned how to read?’ For society as a whole, and that includes banks, improvement starts with recognition and acceptance, accepting that we are the way we are.”

As a result of these findings and other factors, ABN AMRO has started to listen more to these different groups. It’s held meetings with Stichting ABC and has been in contact with the Oogvereniging (Eye Association), Alliantie Digitaal Samenleven (Digital Coexistence Alliance) and a number of senior citizens’ organisations for some time.

Gudy’s philosophy is “keep looking out for each other”: “We have to ask ourselves, how can we make life easier for the vulnerable in our society? And most importantly, how do we make sure clients know how to find us if they can’t manage to do their banking by themselves?”

Tutorials

The bank has taken a first step by publishing a web page featuring easy-to-follow tutorials on a range of topics, such as: How do I get started with the mobile banking app? How do I block my debit card? How do I enable the screen reader? There’s also a tutorial on how clients can schedule a meeting with an adviser to discuss their day-to-day banking needs in sign language. In addition, the bank organises monthly courses on online banking and has published a series of clear and concise manuals. This year will also see the launch of a new webinar on accessibility called ‘A way to bank for everyone’.

Gudy concludes, “By working closely with advocacy groups, key players, experienced experts and employees, we’re making progress in our understanding of groups who need extra help. And by involving these client groups early on, we as an organisation will come to understand what these clients need in order to do their banking. This is our firm commitment: if we continue to listen and learn from our clients and use this new knowledge to inform our strategy, we’ll make ABN AMRO that much more accessible every single day.”