Drivers of key performance indicators achievement and its mediating effect on salesforce intention to retain in the banking industry

Personal selling has become a core strategy of banks’ competitiveness.The key success of personal selling is the imperative role of the salesforce in delivering quality sales of banking products and services and achieving individual Key Performance Indicator (KPI). KPI is a new performance measurement adopted in modern banking. Hence, this was a maiden study to identify the drivers for KPI achievement in Malaysian banks, namely individual competencies (performance orientation, affiliate interest, job quality, commitment to work, agility, adaptive selling, planning, communication and learning) and perceived organizational factors (articulate visionary leader, high performance culture and teamwork). Malaysian banks face great challenges to retain the salesforce in sales job. Hence, this study also examined the impact of individual competencies and the organizational factors to retain the salesforce. The novelty of this study was the investigation of the mediating effects of KPI achievement on the relationship between individual competencies, organizational factors, and salesforce retention. Data was obtained through questionnaires to 190 members of the salesforce who were attached to eight domestic banks in three regions. Multiple regression results show performance orientation, agility flexibility and teamwork have significant impacts on KPI achievement. Meanwhile, performance orientation, affiliate interest, commitment to work and all organizational factors significantly influenced the salesforce’s intention to retain. The results support the Herzberg Motivation Theory that the ability to perform well and the synergy of teamwork in banks increase the salesforce’s KPI achievement and the intention to retain. The result of the hierarchical regression analysis shows that KPI achievement fully mediates the relationship between performance orientation, teamwork and intention to retain, which supports the Expectancy Theory. The findings of this study provide statistical evidence of KPI drivers and the important role of KPI and the intention to retain. The findings also indicate practical, theoretical and policy implications to relevant parties

The mediating effects of key performance achievement in sale force retention in Malaysian commercial banks

Erosion of revenue due to intense competition have forced the banks to create sales culture as a new transformation in the banking sector. Banks are now recruiting staff with selling skills and abilities to perform their selling activities,whose performance is measured by Key Performance Indicator(KPI). Dueto the competitive nature of the banking market and high performance culture, highly competent sales force is accounted to deliver great sales service.This service quality serves as a differentiated strategy to capture the market and increase bank performance.The critical issue is the low retention rate of the sales force especially top sales force in the banks. This paper investigates the mediating role of KPI achievement on the relationship between leadership, teamwork and high performance culture with retention of the sales force.Using hierarchical regression analysis, responses from self-administered questionnaires obtained from the sales force of all Malaysian local commercial banks were analysed. The results showed that KPI achievement fully mediated the relationship between high performance culture, teamwork and the banks’ sales force retention.This mediation effect indicates that the sales force perceives that having achieved their KPIis an important reason for them to retain in the same ban

Determinants of Sales Force Performance in Banking Sector: A Case of Malaysia

Globalisation, deregulation, technology, competition and new customers’ needs influence the banks to adopt marketing approach in promoting their product and services to generate income. In this aspect, personal selling which focuses on selling skills of banking employees becomes a very important banking function. This study intends to investigate the relationship between the determinants namely teamwork, learning, leadership, communication and, high performance culture and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Inspite of the importance of KPI in measuring performance of salesforce, there is a lack of published empirical findings to explain the influence of these predictors on KPI achievement in banking sector.This study reported that the model explains 0.21 percent of the variance in KPI achievement. In which teamwork and high performance culture are found to be positive and significantly related. This new finding appears to imply that bank should cultivate and promote teamwork and high performance culture to ensure KPI highly achievable and enhance banks profitability

Mortgage selection and consumer confusion in the Malaysian mortgage market

The study aims to investigate the criteria used by mortgage consumers in deciding their mortgage choice. To achieve the objective, questionnaires were distributed to mortgage consumers who took up mortgage between year 2007 to 2011.The results show that consumers perceived interest rate as the most important factor in determining their mortgage choice. However, the lowest interest rate is not the ultimate determinant factor, interest rate be considered in isolation. Consumers also need to take into account the ability to service the monthly repayment and the amount is a function of the loan tenure. Ultimately, the ability to service the monthly repayments would determine the eligibility to obtain a mortgage. Therefore, consumers’ confusion is related to the level of interest rate since interest rate is not the sole determinant of mortgage choice

Financial Health: Examining the Ability of Malaysian Household in Servicing Their Debts

This study is motivated by the persistent increased in household debts among Malaysian. The increasing trend of household debts raised concerns about the ability of the households to service their debts; especially when bankruptcies rates among Malaysian increase rapidly. Hence, this study seeks to examine the ability of the households in servicing their debts by looking at the association between loan features and types of household loans, and the post-loan debt service ratio. Using estimated logit model, the results show that household loans are associated with different loan features, which also indicates the ability condition of the household to service their debts. The post-loan debt service ratio shows that borrowers of certain types of loans have difficulties or less ability to service their debts. Further, the socio-demographic factors present the association of the borrowers’ characteristics with types of household loans. The results show that the ability to repay debts is different between gender, races, education and employment. The study is conducted on households in three northern states of Malaysi

Household Indebtedness in Malaysia: A Survey Evidence

Increasing trends in using debts as a mechanism to fill the gap between income and expenditures among Malaysian households motivates this study. This study provides a survey evidence on the indebtedness of Malaysian household, particularly in the types of loans which Malaysian households frequently involved in, whether the debts become a financial burden to the households and whether Malaysian households have any alternative source of income as a financial backup for their main income. The survey shows that most Malaysian households having debts in hire purchase loan, debt service ratio of less than 60% and most of them have no alternative source of income. The survey was done on households in three northern states of Malaysia

Consumer mortgage information search and information disclosures practices in Malaysia

The objective of the study is to examine consumers’ mortgage information search in deciding the choice of mortgage provider.The housing loan taken by Malaysian household has contributed about 45% of the total household debt.This implies that buying a house is the single, most expensive and major decision that any household has undertaken. Moreover, determining mortgage choices is complex for potential house buyers as mortgage market in Malaysia is exacerbated by various mortgage packages offer by conventional, Islamic financial institutions and non- financial institutions.Previous studies provided evidence that buyers must consider many factors before they derived at their most desirable mortgage package. Findings from this study revealed that housing developers and mortgage lenders are the most sought after medium by mortgage consumers when they search for mortgage information. Top four criteria perceived as critical by mortgage consumers are loan tenure, monthly repayment amount, interest rate (or profit rate in the case of Islamic financing) and margin of financing.The findings also showed there is fair disclosure of information to mortgage consumers in Malaysia

Factors Affecting Consumers’ Cashless Payment Behaviours Admist the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 lockdown has caused many to shift to online shopping and increased the use of cashless payments. However, the statistics from Bank Negara Malaysia show that both the amounts of cash circulation and cash withdrawals from automatic teller machines (ATMs) in Malaysia still continues to rise. Hence, this study examines the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer behavioural intention to use cashless payments. This study applied the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model to examine the factors affecting consumers’ behaviour in adopting cashless payment with the COVID-19 pandemic acting as the moderating variable. The findings show that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence have significantly affected consumers’ behavioural intention to use cashless payments except for facilitating conditions. The findings demonstrate that COVID-19 has significantly moderated the relationship between four variables (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions) on the behavioural intention to use cashless payment. This study further shows that the majority of respondents will have a high propensity towards the use of cashless payments in the future and always try to use cashless as their primary payment method. In brief, the pandemic has switched consumers’ behaviour and accelerated the adoption of cashless payment in Malaysia. Practitioners and cashless payment providers can use these findings as a guide to encourage consumers to integrate cashless as their preferred means of payment. This change could help Malaysia successfully transform into a fully cashless society

The Characteristics of Household Loans in Conventional and Islamic Banks in Malaysia

The high debts among Malaysia’s households and the dual banking system in Malaysia motivates this study to investigate the characteristics of the household loan in the conventional and Islamic banking institutions. The loan characteristics are vital as it serves as ‘red flags’ of loan default in the banking institutions. As conventional banks and Islamic banks are under different banking concepts and principles; normally accompanied by different loan policy and strategies, this study provides insights on the loan characteristics of the banking institutions. Using the estimated logit model, the results give information on the exposure to risk of default of the banking institutions. The results may be useful in the formulation of the lending policies of the banking institution