Luzerner Kantonalbank sends female customers to the Metaverse

Luzerner Kantonalbank was one of the first Swiss banks to send customers into the digital world of Metaverse.

More and more Swiss companies are venturing into the metaverse. Now the Luzerner Kantonalbank has also taken the first steps. In November, 14 selected female customers served as guinea pigs in a conference room at the Luzerner Kantonalbank. They experienced a lecture in the Metaverse on the topic of pension provision using VR glasses.

The Institute for Financial Services Zug (IFZ) of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) is behind the event. The IFZ wanted to find out whether and how banks can already use the metaverse for customer events or advisory activities, writes co-leader Andreas Dietrich in a blog article.

Since only a few are familiar with the technology, the event had to be held at a common location. To assist the clients in using the glasses. Due to the high bandwidth required to use the Metaverse, the number of participants had to be limited to 14.

Clients prefer physical advice

Technically, the event went off without a hitch, writes Daniel von Arx, media spokesperson for the Luzerner Kantonalbank, at the request of zentralplus. The feedback from the customers was also positive. However, the respondents would like to see certain advisory situations continue to be analogous.

The virtual avatar cannot replace personal counselling, according to the tenor. "From the reactions, we can conclude that clients currently still prefer personal contact or video advice," says Daniel von Arx.

Andreas Dietrich from HSLU recalls an "interesting and good experience". The speaker's voice always came from the "right side" and there was no chatter with the virtual neighbours. The clients did notice, however, that the 60-minute session was more strenuous than a conventional meeting.

LUKB puts Metaverse on ice - for now

"LUKB is not planning another Metaverse event at the moment," writes Daniel von Arx. The purpose of the event was to get a first-hand impression of the developments. The current VR glasses are still "clunky" and too expensive. In addition, the test event showed that the technology has its pitfalls.

Another result of the experiment: "Content cannot be transferred 1:1 from the real world to the virtual world," adds the media spokesperson. In order to exploit the potential of Metaverse, LUKB would have to redesign and redesign the content.

Because of this extra effort, a metaverse appearance does not save costs at the moment. In the future, things could be different. "The more people are on the metaverse, the greater the reach will be to reach customers or potential customers," predicts von Arx. For the Luzerner Kantonalbank, however, he sees "no trend reversal through the metaverse".

Source: Zentralplus