P2P payment provider #Zelle processed $ 25 billion in #payments during the first quarter of 2018, the service reported yesterday, a more than 15% increase from last quarter. While this seems to be a good deal higher than the payment volume of its competitor service, Venmo (owned by payments company, PayPal), these statistics come #after several […] Bank Innovation
74% of survey respondents say improving #customer experience is currently their top strategic priority
In Pixar’s Finding Dory, Dory’s father comforts her when she cannot get a seashell out of the sand. He advises that “when something is too hard…there is always #another way.”
#Banks seem to have a similar philosophy these days in turning to digital technologies as a way to work around limitations of their legacy systems and empower their operations to elevate customer experience. Based on our recent survey of 80 #bank operations leaders in North America, three-quarters (74 percent) said that improving the customer experience is currently their top strategic priority, and up to 40 percent of bank spending on digital transformation will be in operations by 2020.
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Faced with a complex legacy IT environment (cited by 38 percent of bankers as the largest barrier to their digital transformation) banks can now combine key technologies available today to upgrade their operations without a major IT overhaul. Leading banks are embracing micro-services, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence and other digital technologies to plug-and-play new customer-facing apps and processes within or around their existing legacy systems. Nearly half (48 percent) of survey respondents said they already use cloud-based applications, with another 27 percent planning to do so in the next year; 22 percent said they are using artificial intelligence, with another one-third (33 percent) planning to do so in the next year; and 16 percent said they use robotic process automation, with another one-third (33 percent) planning to so in the next year.
As banks tap into such technologies to open their business models, make their processes and data more transparent, and integrate with broader ecosystems, the role of banks’ operations organizations is shifting. They are becoming more intelligent, enabling leaner operations and quicker, insight-led decision making. Almost half (45 percent) of respondents said they foresee banking operations’ primary role in three years as achieving straight-through processing through digital technologies and fully harnessing the potential of customer and transaction data residing in operational systems. Doing so will enable banks to extract value trapped inside operations, such as customer data that could be used for innovative new products, services and processes—in essence, bringing the #back#office to the #front#line. It’s another way that banks can do a hard thing: Constantly, consistently improving customer experience and customer journeys.
Singapore is taking another step towards cementing itself as the top #fintech hub in the world. Today the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) said it would #speed up the patent granting #process for fintechs in the country. Singapore, according to a Deloitte study, ranks first along with London, among 44 hubs across the globe. […] Bank Innovation
With #fintech funding on the rise, new #startups that want to make their mark on the financial ecosystem are sprouting up every day. From those that focus on payments or mobile, to the ones leveraging social media, #blockchain, and artificial intelligence, there’s a global hoard of startups that want to muscle into the #banks’ territory […] Bank Innovation
EXCLUSIVE – #Technology services provider Synechron launched a #regtech#program focused on helping its financial services clients on regulatory #compliance issues. The program, which Synechron refers to as its Regtech Accelerator Program, went live yesterday. Although it is called an accelerator, the model of the program is based on Synechron’s #blockchain project (also called an […] Bank Innovation
My colleagues Elena Mazzotti and Francesca Caminitti recently pointed out that #banks collaborating with #fintechs can move more rapidly and more effectively than they could on their own to introduce new products, streamline processes, enhance the customer experience and accelerate growth. It is a good time for banks to re-examine their #technology strategies and explore the investments and #partnerships necessary to get to the next level of digital sophistication.
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Indeed, Accenture analysis has found that banks’ revenues at risk from #fintech competition are typically in the range of two to three percent from lower loan origination, lower net income and fewer customers acquired. On the flip side, banks can gain a potential three to five percent in revenues by collaborating with fintechs, through enhanced customer acquisition, more fee-based revenues, better pricing accuracy and lower cost of risk.
Three major challenges stand in the way of banks’ collaboration with new technology players:
Ability to create open, collaborative environments with multiple players. While fintechs are often interested in collaborating (especially since it takes successful fintechs from 8 to 14 years to become profitable), their culture is generally very different from that of banks, and there is a need to create a new common culture—compatible with the current bank culture—to have significant market impact.
Avoiding development of a “new legacy” by choosing some fintechs (particularly those providing technology services) that will not scale up to serving multiple players. This pitfall can be avoided by selecting fintechs such as Finastra or Avoloq, which have already been identified by incumbent technology players.
Ability to “scale” the “New”. While proofs of concept (PoCs) have flourished over the last two years, we now see the era of innovation labs and digital factories. These initiatives aim in the right direction but are often sub-scale and lack the ability to attract talent, due to limited investments or lack of urgency to scale.
Finally, we could take the discussion one step further and question the current #focus on “fintechs”. Client journeys are going outside the scope of the purely financial, and relationships could benefit from partnerships between banks and players in other industries such as real estate, health, and education. The focus on fintechs may ultimately prove to be too narrow for banks seeking to enter underserved new markets.
#BBVA bank announced today that it has closed a $ 90 million #corporate#loan#deal with their #technology partner, Indra, via #blockchain technology. The bank claimed that the transaction, which would typically take a few days to complete, closed in just a few hours. BBVA used its own internal blockchain system, which is built on the IBM-backed […] Bank Innovation
#Saxo offers access to global capital markets through a platform that investors and investment managers can access through an API. Financial Technology
EXCLUSIVE – By 2020 The Clearing House (TCH) is expecting all #banks and credit unions in the U.S. to be live with #realtime#payments (RTP). Many major banks are already in the midst of the process, TCH’s Realtime Payments Product Lead, Steve Ledford, told Bank Innovation. But as of right now, only seven banks are […] Bank Innovation
One of the U.K.’s largest #banks, #Barclays plc, has partnered with American payments company #PayPal to provide Barclays customers the ability to use their Barclays products in PayPal&8217;s digital wallet to make online payments. The partnership will also allow U.S. consumers to redeem Barclays reward points at merchants accepting PayPal. Another important aspect of this […] Bank Innovation
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