A bank that is accessible to everyone
BNP Paribas Fortis intends to be the Bank for everyone, so it follows that the Bank must be fully accessible to customers with special needs. In fact people living with a recognised disability account for some 15% of the Belgian population.
Our aim is to ensure that our customers are able – as far as possible – to carry out their banking transactions on their own and in a user-friendly manner. The Bank of course also has to take into account the cost and technical feasibility of any given solution. Clearly we cannot do absolutely everything, but the key word remains ‘independence’.
A bank also for customers with special needs
The goal of the ‘A bank also for customers with special needs’ initiative is to improve the Customer Experience of this group of BNP Paribas Fortis clients. This should increase their overall satisfaction, that of their family, friends and carers and, by extension, the satisfaction of other customers as well. In fact by taking into account the specific needs of customers with a disability we also in many cases improve the experience of our other customers.
With this in mind, we have developed a number of special products and services and adapted others, while keeping unchanged those that were already well-suited to customers with special needs.
Some of our achievements
This short film shows what BNP Paribas Fortis means by ‘being an accessible bank’, and highlights what has already been done to achieve this goal.
Sharing knowledge
US-based non-profit organisation Springboard Consulting has awarded BNP Paribas Fortis its 2016 ‘Disability Matters Europe’ award in recognition of our ‘A bank for customers with special needs as well’ programme. BNP Paribas Fortis is the first Belgian company to receive this honour.
This seems to us a good reason to set out in a succinct document all the knowledge and experience we have acquired in our efforts to improve access for people with physical disabilities. We are also currently preparing information relevant to people living with a mental disability.
The purpose of this initiative is to give other firms and organisations a clear overview of our ‘A bank for customers with special needs as well’ programme. And it is equally important for us that everyone who reads this document should give us any suggestions they may have. Having received an award for our efforts to improve accessibility we are certainly not going to rest on our laurels in this area. So we are counting on your ideas and suggestions to help us go on making improvements.
Click hereafter to download the brochure ‘How to improve the service to customers with special needs’.