Although banks have been in financial services longer than anyone else, they have a thing or two to learn about customer service from the mammoths in the retail sector. Retail subscription services are taking off, promising to deliver combinations of products conformed to the needs and likes of customers, whose preferences are well known from data analyses. What similar steps can banks adopt in their drive to augment customer satisfaction?
Many of us struggle with the concept of carrying on a rewarding conversation with a chatbot, but recent improvements in artificial intelligence are making this technology increasingly more valuable to banks around the world. From helping banks to offer targeted customer products and services, to tightening the security of credit transactions, to cutting costs while improving employee engagement, AI’s contributions to making customer service better are too important to ignore.
There are enough new terms floating around banking to make one’s head spin, and along comes greenfield bank. This refers to the growing trend among incumbent banks to create standalone digital banks that are as agile and innovative as the fintechs and neobanks. After considering how difficult and expensive it is proving to be for banks to break out of their legacy-infrastructure moulds, this approach makes a lot of sense.
Financial markets are among the fastest-moving markets around. People and organizations need to know where their money is, what it’s doing for them, and whether it’s at risk, on a moment-by-moment basis. Yet banks and other financial services organizations are often well-established, even venerable, with their names and reputations a vital tool in their ability to prosper.
Chief financial officers’ talents are too often lost to mundane, routine tasks that do not add much value to their important positions as their CEOs’ main advisers. Fortunately, technological innovations are removing much of the burden, freeing CFOs to fulfill their roles as prime movers and shakers, guiding their companies to new heights. Cloud technology, enterprise resource planning and artificial intelligence are proving to be time-saviors for today’s busy CFOs.
With all of the new developments in banking these days, it’s easy to lose touch with what really matters: the customer experience. To enhance their customers’ journeys and earn their loyalty, research shows that bank staff need to develop effective communication channels, listen and then learn what matters most to customers. What’s important to them may not be precisely what bank employees expect.
Banks once were the movers and shakers of the financial world, but in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, mired in new regulations, many have lagged behind rising fintechs in technological innovation. What fintechs have discovered is artificial intelligence’s considerable contribution to meeting customer needs and maximizing operational efficiencies. Now that the regulatory climate has eased, banks are catching up and employing carefully implemented AI to help them achieve their customer-centric goals.
With federal regulators becoming more receptive to large deals, bank merger approvals have sped up under the Trump administration. Although the anticipated merger activity volume has slowed relative to early 2019 projections, the fact remains that attention to detail in the execution of these combinations has never been more important.
A persistent problem in Africa is the financial-inclusion deficit. With 11 million citizens in South Africa alone being either underbanked or unbanked, the need to gather them into the banking fold is urgent. Recognizing this imperative, innovative teams such as Nedbank’s Retail and Business Banking have prioritised customer-centric digital avenues to reach more customers, entrenching themselves as the money experts who do good and give clients back the gift of time.
Artificial intelligence is infiltrating almost every industry, including banking, and automating tasks in ways that outperform humans. But is this cause for nail-biting or rejoicing? A lot depends on how intelligently artificial intelligence is first viewed and then put to work by humans. Banks worldwide, such as Alawwal bank in Saudi Arabia, are proving that this powerful technology, if exploited smartly, will be transformational for banks and customers alike.