The Clearing House Gets Going With Real-Time Payments
The big #banks, working through The #Clearing #House platform which they own, are bringing real-time #payments to the U.S.
Financial Technology
The big #banks, working through The #Clearing #House platform which they own, are bringing real-time #payments to the U.S.
Financial Technology
In the post-financial crisis era, European #banks have sought new avenues for profitable growth. There has been an emphasis on finding ways to grow without taking on the types of trading and financing risk that got so many banks in trouble in 2007 and 2008.
Private banking (or #wealth #management) seems like an attractive area of growth for many banks. The Allianz Global Wealth Report for 2017 points out that the financial assets of households in Western Europe grew by 4.7 percent to a total of EUR 35.3 trillion during 2016, the latest year for which such numbers are available.
The private banking market, however, presents banks with significant barriers to entry. Private banking relationships are “sticky” and are often built on long-term, multi-generational interaction, along with considerations such as reputation and brand image. New entrants may find it hard to take share from established competitors.
But, increasingly, private banking clients have the same concerns as other bank customers do. They travel frequently, are short of time, and have become accustomed to using digital financial services. We noted in a recent report that, among High Net Worth (HNW) and Ultra-High Net Worth (UHNW) customers, 70 percent use digital financial services and 85 percent use at least three mobile devices. More than 40 percent said they were open to using mobile #technology to check their portfolios and receive investment-related information.
Digital solutions—including well-designed mobile apps—can help banks “take the office to the client.” For example, banks using digital solutions can see where clients hold other accounts, or they can readily check whether the client uses other bank services such as business accounts or foreign exchange.
Such solutions will not replace the private banker but can help private bankers build relationships and expand service offerings. More importantly, such solutions have become essential to the kind of hybrid advice and digital wealth management that clients are now seeking.
The wealth management market is both dynamic and competitive. Traditional banks are fighting for share with new entrants using digitally disruptive technologies. In our view, private banks combining investment expertise with new digital and mobile approaches will be well-positioned, not only to keep existing clients but to add new clients who want both connectivity and personalized advice.
In my next post I will look at some of the features of a first-class mobile app for wealth management.
The post Going digital—and mobile—in wealth management appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
#Digital #banking is a popular slogan. DBS in Singapore was the first to win Euromoney’s global award, in 2016, and #Citi won it in 2017 while Francisco González, CEO of #BBVA, another strong contender, was named banker of the year in 2016.
Financial Technology
EXCLUSIVE- P2P is changing, as new entrants like Zelle come into the market, which means payments companies have a lot of #opportunities to hit or miss the #technology. One of the reigning P2P champions, #PayPal, is keeping its approach to this expanding market simple: by remembering that #cash is still king for the majority of […]
Bank Innovation
For years, we’ve heard people proclaiming the demise of the bricks-and-mortar #bank branch, supposedly swept #away by customers’ mass-migration to online and—increasingly—mobile alternatives. But as our latest UK banking consumer survey—Beyond Banking—confirms, there’s still plenty of life in the bank branch. Put simply, customers still want to be able to visit branches and experience the face-to-face contact they enable.
In fact, a major theme of our findings is how highly customers still value #human interaction, and how much they want to have a conversation with a real live person about their major financial decisions. What’s more, this desire isn’t limited to older people. Quite the reverse: As our research demonstrates, the younger you are, the more likely you are to be a regular user of a branch.
Given that this trend is coinciding in with an ongoing shift by younger consumers towards more innovative channels—the likes of wearables, social media and instant messaging—it’s possible that the continued strong usage of branches is a transitory effect. But our study gives no indication of that. And the findings will certainly give #banks pause for thought as they plan out future strategies for their physical branch networks.
So, what does the research tell us? As Figure 1 shows, while use of mobile banking services is surging, branch usage by all customers remains remarkably consistent year on year—and indeed in 2016 edged up to its highest level since this research began in 2010.
A breakdown of the 2016 findings by age (see Figure 2) reveals what many might regard as a surprising outcome—with millennials being by far the heaviest users of branches, tapering down to OAPs as the lightest. While this age profile is probably affected by factors such as millennials’ higher numbers of financial transactions and the fact that it’s easier for them to physically get to branches, the correlation between youth and higher branch usage is clear and undeniable.
And what are customers using branches for? The answer—as Figure 3 shows—is activities like seeking advice, accessing services and fixing issues. Indeed, branches far outstrip all other channels for advice and service access.
What’s more, the use of branches for research and advice is becoming more frequent, with a significant step-up since last year in monthly interactions for these activities (Figure 4). And a comparison with historic data from previous years shows that self-service initiatives in branches are gaining traction, underlining their evolving role as service hubs.
All of this leads us to the million-dollar question: What kind of banking model do customers actually want? The answer, as Figure 5 shows, is a blend of physical and digital channels—a proposition they find much more attractive than a pure digital bank with no branches.
The message is clear: Banks should create strategies that accept and optimise branches’ ongoing future role, while also looking to harness ongoing digital innovation to deliver better service experiences at lower cost. But the shift towards computer-generated services for customers cannot be at the expense of access to human services at their local branch.
In my next blog on our UK banking consumer survey, I’m #going to look at the findings on a key focus area for digital innovation in banking: so-called ‘#robo-advice’. Stay tuned.
[1-5] Source: UK findings of Accenture 2017 Global Banking Distribution & Marketing Consumer Study—Beyond Digital
The post Why bank branches—and human contact—are not going away any time soon appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Good baseball center fielders can consistently catch a line drive over second base. They do that by instinctively running to a spot that allows them to intercept a ball that is moving at a fixed speed in pretty much a straight line. #Banks would love to be able to use that same technique to predict and meet customer needs. Just predict where the customer is #going, and then stand underneath that spot to catch the mortgage application or the account opening. Unfortunately, customer needs in banking are no longer behaving like line drives. Instead, they’re behaving like knuckleball pitches that move fast, but in erratic and unpredictable directions.
Accenture recently examined rapidly changing consumer expectations in banking in our 2017 Global Distribution & Marketing Consumer Study, which gathered the views of more than 33,000 #customers across 18 markets. The results were surprising. For example, customers’ biggest driver of loyalty now is their willingness to trust banks to protect their personal data. Transactional trust used to be consistently high across the banking industry, but now consumers are telling us that it is a point of competitive differentiation, so cyber security is no longer just a hygiene factor, it’s a customer acquisition tool. The survey also showed a paradox around attitudes to branches. While only a minority of customers now cite branches as their top driver of #bank selection and retention, over 80 percent of them (including the vast majority of millennials) still want the option of visiting a branch—an option that involves high operating costs for the bank if it isn’t a primary driver of account acquisition—so banks need to find the ‘branch lite’ sweet spot that delivers the option value without fatally undermining their economics.
One conclusion to draw is that customer expectations and needs in banking are far more malleable than they used to be when you had well-established industry norms like the s-curve describing the relationship between branch share and deposit share in a local market. Their experiences on digital platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Uber and Google are shaping what they expect from their bank and this highly iterative process is leading to rapidly changing priorities. To track and capture these customers, the implication is that banks are going to need to stop trying to act like center fielders and start behaving more like echo-locating bats. Bats’ flawless adaptive behaviours, including ultrasonic pulses, agile flight and head-aim control, allow them to detect and capture free-flying insects in incredibly narrow time windows. Likewise, banks need to understand not just where customers are, but also how to jink and weave to zero in on what they are going to need and when they are going to need it.
While ideally banks should use complete customer genomes to track individual behaviours, our research pointed to three distinct consumer personas—Nomads, Hunters and Quality Seekers—with broadly similar needs that banks can use to shape offerings and #marketing tactics. Within these broad personas there will still be a lot of insects and knuckleballs that are moving erratically, but at least banks will be in the right part of the ballpark to make a play on the customer with an offer or piece of advice that has a higher probability of being timely and relevant.
I invite you to read the key 2017 Global #Distribution & Marketing Consumer Study findings in the full report, Beyond Digital: How Can Banks Meet Customer Demands? It also details the three consumer personas and implications for banks as they seek to understand—and market to—today’s banking consumers.
The post Aim bank distribution and marketing where customers are going to be appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Image source We looked at the 30 #biggest VC #deals in #Fintech for #2016 (courtesy of CB Insights Pulse of Fintech Report) to see where the #InsurTech #puck is #going to. The answer is blindingly obvious when you #look at the 3 out of 30 that we tagged as primarilyRead More
Bank Innovation
Australians have a #love #affair with #property. According to CoreLogic data, Australian house prices have already increased by 6.3 percent this year. On its own, this number is relatively impressive, however it’s the post GFC growth data that tells a rather more sobering or encouraging story – depending on whichRead More
Bank Innovation
A team of six #South African #banks is now conducting experiments with #ethereum’s #blockchain, a process that was bootstrapped by #Whatsapp.
CoinDesk
American Express is taking a page from Square’s book and launching an online platform for small business loans of up to $ 750,000 — but its main target may be #banks. The news came today via Bloomberg, which reported funds could be available as soon as two days #after loan approval.Read More
Bank Innovation
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