Service quality provided to non-European high net worth individuals (HNWIS) by banks, legal and accounting offices in Cyprus

Abstract

Service quality leads to customers’ satisfaction and gives a competitive advantage to the firms/organisations against their rivals. Furthermore, service quality by firms in a country gives a competitive advantage to the country against rival countries as well. The global financial crisis has affected Cyprus too. The National Strategy plan for economy recovery is included as a main point the attracting of direct foreign investments by nonEuropean High Net Worth Individuals in the island. Banks, Accounting and Legal offices in Cyprus cooperate together in providing full services to them for their corporate and wealth management needs. The aim of this research is to investigate if Banks, Legal and Accounting firms in Cyprus concern about providing a high level of service quality to non-EU HNWIs and examines the ways of implementation based on the five dimensions of SERVQUAL model.It also researches the impact of different ethnicities on service quality expectations and illustrates how this matter is treated by the firms examined. The study also investigates the priority of importance of the different service quality dimensions and emits new service quality dimensions found important for this industry in Cyprus. After studying different service quality models and different ways of research through literature review and academic resources, this research adopted a qualitative methodology. It was conducted through face-to face semistructured interviews with the managers of ten firms and organisations involved. The conclusions of the study confirm that Banks, Legal and Accounting offices in Cyprus do concern about offering high level of service quality to non-EU HNWIs however the whole infrastructure of the industry has been built mostly on Russian speaking customers’ needs. The firms are performing well in the five dimensions of SERVQUAL and ethnicity matters are taken into consideration with a different approach treatment. Responsiveness is found to be the most important dimension after reliability based again on Russians’ demand for quick service while flexibility and transparency emitted to be new important dimensions apart of pricing.