DTCC Looks For The Next Market Risk, Or Risks
#DTCC knows the markets have #risks, but it doesn’t expect history to repeat itself, so it surveys the horizon for potential problems.
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New private banking frontiers: mobile apps, convenience & personalization
In the first blog in this series, we discussed how #banks seeking to expand their presence in #private #banking and wealth management should employ digital solutions to provide customers with the #convenience and #personalization they have come to expect from other companies with which they do business.
#Mobile #apps are an essential part of such an integrated private banking strategy. Rather than an “add-on” feature, they should be a central element in providing exclusive services to people with premium needs. These services can range from personalized financial advice (delivered at the frequency the customer desires) to digital feeds of financial media tailored to customer needs.
A first-class mobile app should be:
Secure & private
The app should have two-step authentication and may incorporate a biometric login such as voice, facial or thumbprint recognition, as well as data encryption and fraud protection.
Innovative
The app may connect the customer with the private bank via a chatbot or may enable voice-controlled, hands-free interaction. It may aggregate all the customer’s accounts with that institution or with other institutions.
Robust
It should provide the customer with a portfolio overview and interactive tools for portfolio analysis and personalization, using both human and #robo-advisory capabilities. The app should support trading, brokerage and foreign exchange transactions as well.
Interactive
Through the app, the customer should be able to interact with client services via live chat, through call-backs or through other apps such as WeChat or Whatsapp. The app should also enable direct contact with the financial advisor via direct messaging, direct dial or video conferencing.
Personalized
The app should notify the customer of product and service offerings, provide tailored market and economic research and offer educational content using interactive tools and gamification.
Of course, the question now is not whether private banks should have a mobile app—but how to develop an attractive, value-added offering. Human interaction is still essential to private banking, but wealth managers using mobile apps in concert with other digital technologies will have more time and better insights with which to cultivate their customers.
The post New private banking frontiers: mobile apps, convenience &038; personalization appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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The art of Open Banking regulation
Taking Europe as a blueprint, other jurisdictions are now using #Open #Banking as an accelerator to meet their own specific goals, which include increasing competition, reducing costs, fostering innovation and addressing consumer rights.
Some of the most prominent regulations globally include:
- PSD2 in the European Union
- CMA Open Banking in the UK
- HKMA Open API in Hong Kong
- Australia Treasury Open Banking
- Other countries in Asia Pacific (e.g. Japan, Malaysia), North America (e.g. US, Canada) and Latin America (e.g. Brazil, Mexico) are currently investigating Open Banking regulations.
In some cases, the regulations are moderate and favor the banking industry, while others more aggressively favor competition, which could potentially threaten #banks’ existing business models and revenues.
To some degree this depends on which of the multiple levers regulators use to achieve their specific goals, including:
- Target group: Are all banks regulated or a selected set of banks?
- Product scope: What banking products are targeted? The more products are affected, the more banks will have to find strategies to defend their existing business or take a leader position by innovating themselves.
- Use cases and access types: What type of use cases and access operations can be performed on the regulated products? Banks could lose their role as the trusted gatekeeper for customers, particularly where regulations require banks to open their networks to allow third parties to initiate transactions.
- Cost of usage: What are the costs for third-party providers to use the APIs? Most regulations require banks to open up access for free: in such cases, banks need to find ways to monetize Open Banking.
- Level of openness: Who has access to the APIs? In some cases, regulations allow TPPs to register with the authorities once and gain access to banks’ APIs without any contractual agreements or bank-specific registration processes.
- Level of market involvement: Who is involved in designing the #regulation? Are banks’ concerns and ambitions taken into account?
- API standards and infrastructure: Who is designing API and security standards and building the central infrastructure for the market? This is vital: multiple standardization initiatives could lead to fragmentation of standards and directory services.
How should banks act now?
As Open Banking rolls out worldwide, regulators are watching developments closely to learn best practices and implement a regime that will best meet their goals. However, too much regulation could threaten banks’ revenues and jeopardize their financial stability—which is not in regulators’ interests.
The art of Open Banking regulation is in finding the right balance between regulation and market dynamics. Banks in both regulated and unregulated markets should join forces now to take the lead in self-regulating rather being forced to act.
Read my complete article at Finextra for more insights and share your views.
Accenture at Sibos
We’ll be discussing Open Banking and other topics at Sibos. Come see us at our booth and join us in the conversation around enabling the digital economy. Keep up to date on all the latest from us around Sibos right here on the blog.
The post The art of Open Banking regulation appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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Retail payments: 5 crucial market shifts
I always like to start from the beginning. So, let me begin my blog by introducing myself. I recently joined Accenture to lead our North America #Payments practice. After more than 30 years in financial services—much of it working with companies across the #retail and commercial payments value chains—I am no stranger to change.
But in today’s era of digital payments, it is not just velocity of change but the scale that brings with it both opportunity and peril. It is exhilarating, but can be overwhelming. My focus is helping payments players make sense of it all, so they can harness the potential of digital payments to drive their businesses forward.
Retail payments is in the thick of digital disruption. That should be no surprise. Digital is reinventing daily life fast—how we watch, listen, talk, shop, travel, ride and connect. It is a powerful and profound force of change. One that is ubiquitous for everyone. The combination of consumer demand, evolving technologies and retail #market dynamics is creating a new future for retail payments with digital payments at the core.These are the five #crucial market #shifts to watch:
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Mobile jumps on the S-curve
Remember when you joined Facebook or made your first online banking transaction? I bet you did it from a desktop computer. I also bet that today, you check social media and bank from your smartphone. This is the trajectory of digital #technology adoption. All roads lead to mobile. While US consumers haven’t embraced mobile payments with the gusto we expected considering their smartphone obsession, a tipping point is near. Accenture research shows that 64 percent of North American consumers plan to use a mobile wallet in 2020—a 39 percent rise in the user base in three years.1
This is a pivotal moment for payments players. Should they double down on the inevitability of mobile as THE consumer access point or move more deliberatively? History offers a cautionary tale. From Blockbuster and Napster to Borders and Polaroid, there’s a graveyard of companies that took a wait-and-see approach to digital disruption. Digital economies tend to scale toward natural monopolies with most markets consolidating into a handful of winners—Amazon owns nearly half of the US e-commerce market.2 I expect this consolidation to occur in mobile payments too. That’s why payments players should act now to create mobile payments experiences that capture consumer’s hearts—and wallets.
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The great vanishing act
Consumers want payment transactions to disappear. Uber, Amazon and countless online subscription companies have shown that making a payment can be seamless and convenient. So much so that the payment becomes invisible. Consumer interest in frictionless payments is palpable driving recency, frequency and monetary value to digital payment savvy retailers. Consider that visits to US restaurants where payment is by mobile app jumped by more than 50 percent over the last year.3 I expect this interest across all retail categories to gain momentum fast.
But the payments industry has work to do to meet consumers’ expectations. Today, the payment transaction is often the speed bump—actually, the rush-hour traffic jam—in the retail experience. Research reveals that consumers loathe complex checkouts. In fact, they will not stand for them. Eighty-seven percent of online shoppers abandon their carts due to complex checkout. And over half (55 percent) would not just leave their carts, they would never come back to that retailer’s site.4 The time has come for payments players to make invisible payments a visible priority.
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RIP, channels
Traditionally, companies were built in a linear fashion with stores, call centers, online and mobile—a maze of departments, functional areas and channels. These silos reflect organizational structures and internal complexities, not consumer mindsets and behaviors. Put simply, channels are about companies, not consumers.
When consumers interact with payments companies and merchants, they want to learn about a product, buy a product, or service a product. They want to do this on their own terms. And in the digital era, they have countless options to do so. For payments players to be truly customer-centric, they have to stop being product- and channel-centric. They must kill channels as we know them, driving integration and absorbing complexity to provide simple, streamlined experiences to consumers. Integration must be so seamless that channels stop existing. Rest in peace.
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Recognize. Remember. Recommend. Reward.
The three Rs of education are reading, writing, and arithmetic. The four Rs of the customer-centric business model: recognize me regardless of my entry point and device, remember my history of interactions, recommend relevant products and services, and reward me for my loyalty. There’s been a wake-up call for payments providers in recent years related to these four Rs. The old days of focusing purely on payments transactions are no more. After all, the digital economy is an experience economy. More and more, the customer (and merchant) experience is becoming a critical differentiator in retail payments.
As payments players develop customer experiences beyond the transaction—such as providing advisory or expense management services, offering a single view of account information, or curating real-time rewards and deals through partner networks—they should look to digital powerhouses that excel in customer experience. Amazon is a leader. The company recognizes and remembers consumers every time, recommends products they will love, and rewards them. The benefits are mutual. Amazon Prime members spend about $ 1,300 more each year than non-members.5
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Security&8217;s silver lining
There is not a more serious or consequential issue for payments players than security. Without it, nothing else matters. A day does not seem to go by that there isn’t news of a breach. As cutting-edge as their technologies are, even digital-born companies like Facebook and Google are not immune.
There is a silver lining in this storm for traditional financial institutions. Security is never absolute, and criminals are always getting better at being bad. Protecting data is central to the industry. It always has been. Compare this to the fact that digital competitors have built their business models on packaging and selling data, not on protecting it. The clarion call for payments players is to double down on security, to keep innovating to protect data while it is stored, and while it is in flight. Tokenization is the gold standard now. Expect biometrics and continued migration to multi-factor authentication to be the next wave.
In future blogs, I will explore these market shifts in detail and how new players are taking advantage of them. In the meantime, I hope to see you at Money 20/20 where Accenture will share more insights on what’s next in digital payments.
1 Accenture, “Driving the Future of Payments: 10 Mega Trends” 2017
2 Ingrid Lunden, “Amazon’s Share of the US E-Commerce Market is now 49%, or 5% of all Retail Spend” 7/13/2018
3 NPD Group, “In a Slow Market, US Restaurant Operators Step it Up by Offering Consumers Digitally-Enabled Convenience” 3/13/2018
4 James Melton, “Getting the Online Checkout Process Wrong Can Be Costly, Research Shows” 8/13/2018
5 Beth Braverman, “Amazon Prime Members Spend More on the Site— a Lot More” 7/7/2017The post Retail payments: 5 crucial market shifts appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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How will data shape the future of banking?
Guest blogger Tara Brady discusses how #data-driven value creation can help #banks #shape their #future.
The digital revolution and mobile #banking have transformed the way people interact with their bank. This trend is set to continue, with new figures revealing that mobile transactions are set to rise by around 121 percent between 2017 and 2022, and average branch visits are set to drop from seven to four per year by 2022.
Traditional providers have also been faced with the emergence of challenger banks (such as Monzo and Starling), which are striving to capture the attention of millennials with their agile, digital offerings. The territory of the high street stalwarts is being encroached on by the likes of PayPal and Apple Pay, which have disrupted the payments market, traditionally an area that banks have dominated.
Customers or fans?
New entrants have energised their customer base to something often more akin to a fan club, often incorporating gamification principles to encourage customers to use their digital platform, with the ultimate aim of improving their customer retention and online customer experience.
Driving this is the principle of personalisation, and the ability to customise, which promotes a sense of ownership in the game through self-expression. Having experiences that deliver delight, preferably packaged into social media-friendly personalised snapshots, is what drives many consumers.
As brand loyalty diversifies and consumers want more personalised experiences, these techniques become a great way to attract and retain customers. Personalisation allows businesses to understand why their customers do what they do, and that they share their values.
Data is king
However, what is underlying this ability to personalise and drive delight is data. Data has quickly become king. The value of the UK data market is set to hit £1.1 billion ($ 1.58 billion) in 2018, making it the second-largest data market in the world and the biggest in Europe. No longer just a by-product of transactions and interactions, customer data itself has become a valuable commodity that can be used to give insights into customers’ tastes and habits. Learning how to interpret and influence those tastes and habits is one of the keys to unlocking the power, and the value, of data. Being able to offer customised products based on the trends, demographics and insights derived from the data, as well as providing the platform to bring all these services together, is where providers like Atom and Monzo have raced ahead of the field, finding unique ways to gamify the data they collect.
Whilst data is king, not all data is created equal. The key is deciphering how best to use it to play to your strengths.
But it is not just these challenger banks that can harness the value of data—retail banking as a sector is uniquely placed to ride this wave of value creation. Purely in terms of reach, whilst 78 percent of UK adults use Facebook, a full 97 percent have some kind of banking product. So the opportunity is there.
The evolving banking ecosystem
As a result, the retail banking industry is beginning to broaden in unprecedented ways. This is partly due to multitudinous new and evolving technologies generating, among other things, completely different access to data. All this is spurring increasingly serious conversations around how the future of banking will be shaped. The key to long-term success will be a move away from the monolithic banking model, towards an evolving ecosystem that encourages competition but also supports success for all. And data represents a major monetisation opportunity in this changing environment.
It’s critical though that banks play to their strengths rather than forcing themselves into models within which they don’t truly fit. Established banks do not need to emulate the personalisation and game-logic of the challengers to make a success of this new marketplace. That said, without banks taking a different path and creating different offerings, the ecosystem won’t be able to function. Banks need to understand their natural fit within the future banking ecosystem to give themselves the greatest chance for success and ensure the strongest foundation upon which to build a data monetisation strategy. The potential benefits of a successful approach are ample, but starting from a shaky foundation could bring this tumbling down early on.
What kind of bank do you want to be?
Our new point of view, which discusses this topic and asks “What kind of bank are you?” and &8220;What bank do you want to be?&8221; provokes an inward look at your place within the future retail banking ecosystem. To read the report in full, please email [email protected].
Tara Brady
Senior Managing Director
Financial Services, UK & Ireland
The post How will data shape the future of banking? appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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Using Blockchain To Record Asset-Backed Securities
Asset back #securities is ripe for #blockchain with just a few #banks active in the market and outdated #record-keeping on paper and Excel.
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SnapCheck Named Best Payments API by API:World
Digital check solution #SnapCheck, a graduate of INV #Fintech, this site’s sister accelerator, was #named #Best #Payments API (application programming interface) by API:World, the largest global API conference. SnapCheck will receive the award during a special ceremony at the San Jose Convention Center tonight, Sept. 10. SnapCheck allows companies to transition from checks to realtime secure digital […]
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SnapCheck Named Best Payments API by API:World
Digital check solution #SnapCheck, a graduate of INV #Fintech, this site’s sister accelerator, was #named #Best #Payments API (application programming interface) by API:World, the largest global API conference. SnapCheck will receive the award during a special ceremony at the San Jose Convention Center tonight, Sept. 10. SnapCheck allows companies to transition from checks to realtime secure digital […]
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Beyond plastic: Payments in a connected world
Guest blogger Jeff Crawford, Senior Manager with extensive experience in digital and mobile #payments, discusses how the Internet of Things and #connected commerce introduce new payments opportunities for existing players and new entrants.
Gone is the #world where a watch just keeps time and a refrigerator simply preserves food. From wearables and smart speakers to smart appliances, connected cars and #beyond, the Internet of Things (IoT) has gained the attention of consumers and businesses alike. At its most basic level, IoT is the network of “smart”, connected devices or products that enable new forms of communication and new experiences. The global IoT market is estimated to grow to $ 2.9 trillion with 20 billion connected devices by 2020.¹
IoT devices, combined with emerging payments capabilities, facilitate a connected commerce experience, providing consumers with a convenient way to transact by incorporating shopping and payments functionality into devices. For example, Amazon has enabled its customers to make purchases via its Echo devices using Alexa voice commands. Through the Groceries by Mastercard program, consumers can purchase grocery items through their Samsung refrigerators and have them delivered by the program’s grocery delivery services partners. Ford and ExxonMobil maintain a partnership to allow consumers to make Speedpass+ fuel payments through their in-car infotainment system.
The physical device is only one component of the infrastructure required to support IoT payments. It also must include a user interface, which is often a screen, but may also be a button, voice interaction, or geo-location. The IoT device must establish and maintain connectivity to a back-end platform that receives the data; this connectivity may be supported via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or LTE. Payment credentials must be tokenized and maintained in a secure environment, either locally or in the cloud, and security is embedded through advanced authentication, often in the form of biometrics (such as voice command).
IoT payments require a coordinated effort through the device manufacturers, payment providers and #technology integration partners. Visa and Mastercard are seeking to accelerate IoT payments engagement and enablement as part of the companies’ respective digital payment readiness programs, Visa Ready and Mastercard Engage. Both efforts have focused on facilitating secure payments across the value chain and connecting IoT device manufacturers to financial institutions. Discover and American Express have also linked payment tokenization platforms and security protocols to third-party products (namely, wearables) to enable their cardholders to take advantage of IoT-based products and services. Such market activity represents a logical progression for payment networks to push new use cases for their tokenization offerings.
As expected with any new payments technology, IoT payments have a heavy focus on security. Large chip manufacturers (including NXP and Intel) have entered the space, providing secure elements to store payments credentials. Other entrants focus on innovative methods of enhancing payments security. MagicCube, which names Visa² and Mastercard among its partners, offers device manufacturers a trusted execution environment (TEE) security platform to provide payments security in lieu of a secure hardware element or software-based encryption.
It was not long ago that consumers, issuers, processors and networks were responsible for maintaining and securing only a single payments device: the card. As smart phones, refrigerators, watches and cars, among other things, become payment devices, card volume should start to migrate from the physical card to digital payments via IoT devices. Issuers must focus on developing strategies to ensure their cards remain top-of-wallet for consumers who make IoT purchases. Card networks are likely to continue facilitating partnerships with device manufacturers to optimize use of the emerging technology.
For traditional card processors, there may be an opportunity to enhance the processing of solutions with features to support device management. For example, card processors might use a data field that tracks the device (card, phone, watch, refrigerator) and authentication method used to make a payment, thereby increasing the opportunity for more insightful customer analytics. There may also be opportunities for alternative, non-card payment mechanisms (real-time payments, #blockchain/distributed ledger-based, and such) to take hold. We expect IoT payments to remain a key source of value, innovation and growth for both traditional payment providers and new market entrants.
I invite you to read more about Accenture’s capabilities and offerings in the IoT and Connected Commerce space.
Special thanks to David Cencula, who also contributed to this blog.
1 https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3598917
2 Visa is also an investor in MagicCube
Jeff Crawford, Senior Manager, Payments
The post Beyond plastic: Payments in a connected world appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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Interbank Blockchain Stellar Receives Boost as Lightyear Buys Chain
Competition and consolidation are heating up in the #interbank #blockchain space. #Chain, a startup that raised more than $ 40 million from the likes of Fiserv and Citigroup, has been acquired by #Lightyear.io, a company that works on the #Stellar interbank blockchain, the companies announced today. Chain and Lightyear will combine to form a company called Interstellar. […]
Bank Innovation
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