Financial Services industry is at the cross roads of the ‘next era of digitization’ as more and technology advancements stand in queue for acceptance. Banking domain, specifically, has always been open to technology inclusions in their product, services and process activities in its quest to enhance customer experience and thus their bottom lines. Over the last decade, with technologies such as mobile and online banking maintaining the status quo, new innovations are making inroads in an attempt to be part of the existing technology stack.
Some of the major technology disruptions such as Platformification, Big Data, Opti-channel delivery, Mobile Payments, Social Media Engagement and Analytics are ones to look for in 2016. This trend analysis is based on 2016 ‘Retail Banking Trends and Predictions’, a report constructed based on conversations with close to 100 Financial Services leaders.
Platformification
Factors such as speed, performance, cost and convenience of delivery of Banking and other financial solutions to customers are becoming more and more important. This requires integration of services by financial organizations that are accessible to everyone without much hassle on services and solution platforms. Like Amazon offers retail products from various vendors via its platform, time is ripe for all kinds of financial solutions to be available at one single place in an attempt to offer solutions the agile way.
Big Data
The Financial Services sector is investing, and will continue to invest huge sum of their resources on constructing advanced analytical strategies and skills that are necessary to mine massive sets of data that are generated from various customer and process touch points. According to Gartner, a whopping 64% of companies have started to invest on enhancing their analytical strategies via Big Data. Over the last couple of years, financial services companies build their Big Data set ups that required huge investments on infrastructure and others overheads associated with it. It is said that 2016 is the year to implement Big Data, as a value based driving strategy, gaining insights into data and showing results on organization’s bottom-line.
Opti-Channel Delivery
Fully integrated and seamless delivery of financial service has become key to enhancing consumer experience in this space. As digital technology in banking segment evolves, requirement for multi channel service delivery is setting in. Facilitating and empowering consumers to opt for their preferred digital device and physical channel to conduct transactions, in their choice of place and time is what Opti-channel experience is all about.
Mobile Payments
Mobile Payments is attributed to be one of the biggest and most important innovations in financial services. Consumers are widely using mobile payments as a model for their day to day online shopping, banking and other transactions. With easy small cash transactions enabled via Mobile payments, more and more financial services are jumping into this value delivery bandwagon.
Mobile Payments as a mode of payment also offers many revenue generating opportunities to banks such as – Transaction fees, mCommerce, Virtual currencies and others. With continued growth in the number of transactions and opportunities in Mobile payments, 2016 will only see higher investments and efforts from banks in enhancing their m-capabilities.
Social Media Engagement & Analytics
With over 2 billion people on Social Media around the globe, financial services players, like others industries were quick to engage their customers on various social media sites. Social Media offers quick and effective mode to listen to feedback, respond to queries and dispense information. 2016 will continue to see Banks taking competitive advantage of social media to improve banks customer service capabilities by offering better response times and response rates and interpreting the data that is continuously generated on these platforms.
Summary
Financial Services industry will persist to adapt technologies that have the most impact on customer experience; value based financial product/service creation; multichannel reach; and insights into data. Banking and Financial Services technology companies will continue on their path of technology disruptions on banking products, services and processes as they become more a necessity than a choice.