BFC Bulletins Monthly News Digest
Tags Customer Experience Digital Banking Operational Efficiency
Today, customer experience is measured by how much friction is removed, with the new standard being asking Alexa to order an Uber (which arrives in near real-time). For financial institutions to evolve to this new reality, they need to shift their focus from just the experience to also include consumers’ desires. The path towards this future starts with capturing more information and enabling richer transaction data in real-time. This means modernizing not just end-to-end, but changing the heart of the financial institution to offer consumers faster, easier and cheaper ways to bank.
Despite clear indications that this is the future of banking and the relative small cost of launching new, innovative platforms that have the capacity to grow into full-scale banking operations, many financial institutions are reticent to move forward. These institutions suffer from a vicious circle where their mindset is limited by their core system’s abilities and the state their core system is dependent on their mindset. New entrants, offering streamlined services at a fraction of the cost, have presented these institutions with a serious challenge – one that some financial institutions seem ready to compete with by using their bloated and outdated core systems. It’s a bit like trying to compete with Netflix’s billions of hours of on-demand streaming by using a billion VCRs.
It is likely that in just 10-15 years, the idea of banking will look completely different. The most fit financial institutions will be those that adapt the fastest with business models that are agile and drive operating efficiencies at any scale. Those that begin evolving their business model now will have the highest operating leverage to continue innovating and further outdistance their peers. Today our phones, TVs and even lights know more about our behavior than do financial institutions. In ten years’ time, that will not be the case.
