A research by Celent in the name of SunGard, a software and global technology service company, shows that Bank Readiness Index (BRI) for Indonesia is inferior to other 3 Southeast Asia countries: Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. BRI is used to measure bank readiness level in fulfilling customer’s need.

In the research which was done on March-April 2012, Indonesia got 231 points of 1000. The number is below Malaysia (285), Philippines (236) and Thailand (263). The research also involved 4 countries in the Middle East: Kuwait (305), Qatar (340), Saudi Arabia (248) and Uni Emirate Arab (245). From those results, this research generally concluded that banks in third world countries are still having difficulties to fulfill their customer’s needs, especially in the social media and mobility.

Of the 1.073 customer in the 8 countries surveyed, most of them are active online facility and mobile device users. But unfortunately, only 34% of banks in Southeast Asia and 17% of banks in the Middle East own banking service app for tablet while the mobile banking service they offer is still very basic.

Other than the issue of mobile app, the research is also highlighting the utilization of social media by bank. 90% of customers who use Facebook regularly, at least in a week, half of them state that they are willing to share about the banking service they got to the social media.

This phenomenon is only seen by 21% of banks that were surveyed and those banks developed and applied the social media utilization strategy. From 102 banks surveyed, only 13% has comprehensive social media program and only 38% watch over the development and conversation in the social media. While 76% banks are agree that innovation in mobility and digital technology are the keys to open opportunity for the sake of building a more personal relationship with the customer.

Bob Meara, Celent’s analyst, mentioned in the press release of the research that bank needs to take advantage of customer’s trust to handle the change of customer’s habit and better engagement strategy to maintain customer’s loyalty in the future.