In the polished boardrooms of the financial sector, the balance sheet is often treated as a holy scripture. Because we, financial sector professionals, have long been trained to view value as something tangible, like cash reserves, loan portfolios, and real estate holdings. The traditional mind wants to consider it the final arbiter of an organization’s health. A calibrated lens through which we view our performance.
However, after more than two decades in this industry, I have come to a different conclusion.
As accurate as they are, balance sheets are often incomplete. The true solvency of a financial institution today is found in the accumulated reservoir of customer trust and the friction-free fluidity of their journeys.
We need to retire the outdated notion that customer experience (CX) is a “soft” discipline. This misconception usually stems from the difficulty of measuring a smile or a sigh of relief. However, standing in 2026, the economic impact of these human reactions deserve to be taken much more critically.
Fred Reichheld and the team at Bain & Company taught us about the economics of loyalty years ago, and the math remains unassailable. Especially in the NBFI space, where cost of funds is often higher than traditional banks and margins are tighter, the retention cost curve functions as our lifeline.
Acquiring a customer is expensive; acquiring a skeptical customer is exorbitant. Only when we view CX through the lens of lifetime value (LTV), do we see the reality.
A frictionless experience increases the “asset value” of the customer. On the other hand, a confusing interface or a punitive tone in a collections call creates a liability, not just the risk of churn, but the creation of a detractor who will actively devalue our brand in the marketplace.
If your app crashes during a repayment, that is a withdrawal. If we preemptively warn a customer about a fee, that is a deposit. When the balance is high, customers forgive our mistakes. When the balance is low, they leave.
This is trust economics, and it correlates directly to our bottom line. Thus, we must treat every interaction as a deposit or a withdrawal from the age-old bank called “trust.”
The NBFI sector has the privilege, and also the burden, of being the first formal financial touchpoint for many customers. Here, conventional onboarding methods often end up forcing users into fast and intuitive thinking immediately.
They are hit with jargons in default font size 5. The complex KYC forms and intimidating legal texts create anxiety leading to friction, and friction kills conversion.
The job instead should be to design choice architectures that facilitate inclusion. This means simplifying the cognitive load. Breaking down a 20-field form into five friendly conversational screens. It implies using sludge audits by systematically removing the barriers that make it difficult for people to do what is good for them.
We must also consciously look out for and avoid the infamous “customer centricity” trap. Because, let us be honest with ourselves, customer centricity has become the most abused buzzword in our industry. It is so palpably taped to our wallboards and printed on our mousepads that it became trivial enough for us to forget why it was needed in the first place.
Most institutions mistake symbolic gestures for structural change. Sending a birthday SMS is a symbolic gesture. Restructuring your loan approval process because the data shows users are dropping off at the income verification stage is structural change.
Therefore, attaining true customer centricity can (and will) be painful. It might require us to reduce short-term revenue streams because it feels predatory and hurts long-term retention. It might mean giving the customer bad news immediately rather than hiding it in the fine print.
If your customer centricity strategy doesn’t occasionally cost you money or force you to have uncomfortable conversations with the product or risk teams, you are probably just dealing in marketing fluffs.
A lookout for future-fitness also demands us to remember that we now live in the era of “instant” responses. Instant approval, instant disbursement, instant gratification, instant settlement of disputes. However, speed without clarity can be a disaster.
Consider a customer applying for a business loan. They would certainly prefer an approval in five minutes. Consider the alternatives too -- an instant rejection with a generic “policy decline" message, versus a 2-hour wait that results in a rejection with a clear explanation: “We couldn't approve this amount because your debt-to-income ratio is currently X. If you pay down Y, you will likely qualify next month.”
The first interaction, though fast, feels arbitrary and dismissive. The second, though slower, is respectful and advisory.
My personal experience tells me that customers are generally willing to wait if we practice informed-waiting. Transparency buys us time, and so if you tell a customer why they are waiting, where they are in the queue, and exactly what is happening behind the curtain, their anxiety drops.
At IDLC, we are integrating financial literacy as a part of our CX improvement as well as building our brand. For years, the industry approach to literacy has been limited to publishing dry articles or 20-page “How to” guides that nobody reads. The future of financial literacy is experience-led, and we are working on building financial health through the product designs itself.
Our objective is to use positive friction to make users think twice before taking financial decisions. When our CX becomes the teacher, it empowers the customer to make better decisions, which leads to better repayment rates, which leads back to a healthier balance sheet for us.
Part of the millennials and gen-z young professionals make up most of the next generation of wealth creators. They grew up in the shadow of the 2008 financial crash and came of age during global instability. You cannot blame them if they tend to view banks and NBFIs with a default setting of hesitation.
You cannot win this generation with authority. Instead, they value credibility and peer-like engagement. They want a financial partner that talks to them. This influences everything from the CX’s tone of voice to our channel strategies.
If we hide our contact number, they assume we are abandoning them. If our FAQ page is evasive, they assume we are hiding fees. They will not believe our billboards, but they will believe a Reddit thread about our customer service.
Our service retention and recovery protocols are our most potent marketing assets, and we must play accordingly. This very balance sheet of customer experience, measured in trust, clarity, and ease, will tell us if we can survive the next decade.
Naz Hussain, Head of Customer Experience, IDLC Finance PLC
