Banking Central | Why have big bank CEOs gone silent?

The bosses of mid-sized banks are only a tad more accessible.

In the old days, bank chief executive officers (CEOs) were more friendly and accessible to the press. They were happy to take calls or respond to text messages whenever a reporter reached out. Those days are long gone.
The communication strategy of top bank CEOs has changed in recent years. They have become more guarded and remain somewhat cut off from the media, leaving their communication specialists or subordinates to do the talking.

In particular, the CEOs of large private banks aren’t very forthcoming with the press today. The bosses of mid-sized banks are only a tad more accessible. Smaller banks, however, are much more open about letting their CEOs talk as they need visibility.

Enter the comm specialist

Why do most big bank CEOs shy away from the press, even during the announcement of quarterly results? It may well be a PR strategy to avoid bad press and controversies on contentious issues. That change may perhaps be the result of learnings from past blunders by their predecessors, who used to shoot from the lip, and create all sorts of bad press.

“It’s better to keep silent rather than shooting your mouth off and inviting bad press,” said one senior corporate communication official who has spent decades at a well-known bank.

“The CEOs of banks now think: ‘let my numbers tell the story rather than my going out and talking to the press’,” said another PR industry executive, who has spent over a decade with the communication divisions of leading banks.

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This new strategy has worked well in two ways. One, it limits ‘quotes-based’ coverage in the press and keeps the reportage down to basic numbers and ‘harmless’ or ‘safer’ (to borrow PR lexicon) details. Secondly, nobody now really knows what the thinking is within the top management and that keeps everyone guessing. For fear of going wrong, reporters keep reporting the basic facts and numbers. And that’s exactly what the comm specialists want.

But a key factor that has played a role in this ‘behavioural’ change of CEOs is their media training by consulting agencies (or crisis management teams). They are coached on how to approach ‘problematic’ reporters (the ones who typically ask tough questions on difficult topics such as certain transactions or developments between the bank and the regulator).

That’s a reason why many bankers who were approachable earlier have stopped talking after being promoted to a certain level. I know one bank CEO who was earlier rather eager to be quoted regularly, and even used to call reporters to offer his comments. All that changed after a certain point; the CEO is now invisible, and only available to the press under the strict supervision of the communication team. This isn’t an isolated case.

Once a bank grows beyond a certain size, this change kicks in, with communications divisions taking over interactions with the press. There are dedicated spokespersons in each bank authorised to talk to the press. “Keeping information out of the press is also a great PR strategy. Sometimes, no news is good news,” said another PR executive long associated with a bank.

The other reason is the fear of the mighty banking regulator. Banks are extremely cautious about what their top bosses say to the media on the record and what repercussions those comments may have on the institution. No one wants to be on the wrong side of the Reserve Bank of India. That fear is somewhat justified considering the regulator's close monitoring of the news.

In the digital age, when every spoken word is recorded and archived for future reference, backtracking from statements (a skilled art many bank CEOs used to practise in the past) is now nearly impossible. So, what’s the better alternative? Staying mum.

(Banking Central is a weekly column that keeps a close watch on the banking sector and connects the dots on its most important events for readers.)