User eXperience in Banking
The banking sector is facing a phase of decline. The top management of many traditional banks are well aware of this, but many do not have an effective strategy forward.
For several years now, the customer experience has been in a state of constant transformation due to the increasingly pervasive offering of services through digital channels and digital interfaces that increasingly replace the traditional face-to-face experience. Fintech companies are accelerating this transformation towards an increasingly pleasant and tailored user experience in banking. In addition, fintech services often address the needs of specific customer segments that many traditional banks have missed or where the size of target customers is sees as too small to be of interest to the bank.
The evolution of User eXperience for banks
The speed the user experience in financial services is evolving at is so significant that I believe that by mid-century the following will be the norm:
- 24-hour multi-device access to structured data/information and advanced interactive tutorials;
- Banking and investment services offered as a quasi-commodity, provided by aggregators and a multitude of specialty players often at modest cost but with a wide choice of additional and highly customizable functionalities;
- Credit lines provided by P2P aggregators that use fintech to instantly assess creditworthiness through real-time access to a multitude of customer data and information across financial and non-financial providers;
- Diversified offering of insurance policies that can be customized according to specific customer risks analyzed by sophisticated machine learning algorithms and issued instantly and with risk-based pricing that is transparent and in line with competitive offerings;
- Availability of a wide choice of multi-device apps, with functionalities tailored to the needs of customer niches;
- Pervasive presence of a highly secure digital infrastructure that enables personalized interactions and allow each individual to monitor their own personal data and authorize or deny access to external parties for a time chosen by the user;
- Ubiquitous distributed monitoring capabilities of suspicious activity that can prevent almost all fraudulent activities on on-demand and in-app services
- Support in the choice of financial and insurance products/services provided by independent advisors or bots managed by artificial intelligence systems, also accessible via social networks.
The role of banks
In this context, what role will banks play? Will they still be needed? The answer is not obvious. The bank could evolve – or transform – into a marketplace of services where both the bank and specialized third parties offer financial services as-a-service, through customizable multi-device digital interfaces, available around the clock.
But how are the traditional bank’s core activities positioned? What role do they play? CRM, branches, risk functions, compliance, finance… where do they fit in?
Probably more than thinking about the “Bank of the Future”, top management should look beyond it and imagine their future not within the bank.
For a deep-dive on the user eXperience and banking in 2050 please contact us or book a call.
The CleverAdvice Team
