Corporate-banking customers have been slower than consumer-banking clients to jump on the digital bandwagon but are on it now, searching for single-source solutions to meet all their product and service needs under one digital umbrella. Both traditional and challenger banks are in the race to fulfill this quest, but which will prevail?
Has digitization put the bank branch and cash on the extinction list? Not while consumers still demand them. To prosper today and in the future, banks will need to snatch the opportunities digital transformation offers them. Digitization is not a threat but a promise for better customer service that meets consumers where they are.
Banks are currently facing a serious generational divide, and it’s an issue that requires urgent action, lest banks lose out on the customer of the future. For most adults today, the likelihood is that they opened their first bank account in a branch, accompanied by their parents. However, with the acceleration of digital banking, this assurance has dissolved.
Banks need to meet customers where they are at, which today means social media. Personalisation, accessible solutions and relevance are key to reaching Millennial and Gen Z consumers, and banks must amend their strategies to serve these generations of bankers. By aligning their goals with those of social media, banks can stay in the loop.
The past year highlighted the growing importance of digital customer experiences in the financial services industry as COVID-19 continued to accelerate the pace of digitization. Unable to connect in person, consumers turned to digital tools. One survey conducted between late March and early May 2020 reported that between 46% and 51% of adults in the United States increased social media use since the start of the pandemic.
Ever since Open Banking first launched in the UK nearly three years ago, the promise of sharing data to achieve more efficient, personalised banking services has been made a reality. Spurred on by increased customer centricity, banks have acted on the PSD2 mandate to deliver smarter, aggregated services to their respective customer base.
Like artists, brilliant innovations are not always appreciated immediately. Such is the case of the QR Code, invented in Japan in the early 1990s to boost manufacturing and retail efficiency. In the socially distanced COVID-19 environment, this invention is proving indispensable in a variety of transactions and activities, from making payments to reading menus. Partnering with smartphones, the QR Code is proving itself a boon to both commerce and health.
As a host of industry initiatives, innovative technologies and new digital forms of currency emerge, payments are rapidly evolving—with multiple routes emerging that each look likely to lead to a payment destination that is instant, 24/7/365 and fully transparent. With banks seeking to navigate this changing landscape, how is this payment destination being secured? Not with a one-size-fits-all remedy, but through a combination of developing technologies and solutions.
If one word defines the last decade, it is disruptive; but if the events of 2020 so far are any indication, we “ain’t seen nothing yet”. No sector is more likely to be disrupted by the pandemic than banking; however, those that see opportunity in crisis can outmatch this major threat to their bottom lines. Resilience, adaptability and vision are must-haves for banks that choose to lead out of turmoil.
Many of us are now familiar with the concept of software as a service (SaaS)—that is, the licensing and delivery model that enables users to subscribe to use-specific programmes and applications over the internet rather than having to buy them outright and install them on their computers.