Google And Amazon Favor Fed Role In Real Time Payments
If #banks are worried about big tech players getting into #payments, they have a right to be — #Google and #Amazon, among others, would like access to Fed faster payments.
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It’s Not Time (Yet) for Mobile Mortgages, Unison Says
EXCLUSIVE — While more and more consumers are flocking to #mobile banking, users are still reticent to go to mobile for more complex financial transactions, like applying for a mortgage. However, while users might not be ready for a new mobile mortgage experience, that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready for a new kind of mortgage, […]
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Too Many Fintechs, Too Little Time for OCC
The Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which held office hours through its Office of Innovation in New York last week, might be in over its head. The office received a large volume of meeting requests, but could conduct meetings with only a fraction of those applicants. “It seemed that the OCC was surprised with […]
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Is It Time for FIs to Give Up on PFM?
Is PFM dead? If not, financial institutions should kill it, and move on to financial management features that will really help customers, according to a report on the subject released this week by financial consulting firm Celent. Report authors Dan Latimore and Stephen Greer make the argument that #banks shouldn’t be focusing on PFM, so much […]
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Curve Rolls Out ‘Financial Time Travel’
Ever walk away from an impulse buy cursing yourself for using the wrong card? There’s an app for that now–well, a #fintech. #Curve, a London-based fintech that currently allows users to aggregate multiple bank cards together using one physical card and a mobile wallet, is rolling out what’s been dubbed as its “#Financial #Time Travel […]
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Why bank branches—and human contact—are not going away any time soon
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.
Figure 1: How often do you use the following? (% Regular use)[1]
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.
Figure 2: How often do you use the following? (% Regular use)[2]
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.
Figure 3: How often do you use the following for each type of service? (% Regular use)[3]
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.
Figure 4: How often do you use the following for each type of service? (% Regular use)[4]
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.
Figure 5: Would you be interested in using the following banking models?[5]
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.
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Ch-ch-changes—It’s time to address cybersecurity threats in banking
David Bowie’s guitarist Carlos Alomar recently described the challenge of playing with a genius who was a musical chameleon throughout his long career. “David Bowie’s music is a moving target. Just when you think you’ve got the bullseye, it shifts.”
Read the report
Many #banks could say the same about striking the right balance between delighting customers with frictionless digital experiences and keeping their data safe. As bank business models evolve from walled gardens to having to compete on the open digital savannah, it’s getting harder to strike that balance. Business model changes are creating proliferation in both internal and external points of data exchange. The integration of digital and branch channels; ecosystem platforms that expose APIs to partners; the shift from data centres to cloud storage on third-party servers; and a workforce that increasingly includes a wide array of contractors are just some of the new data interfaces that are being created.
As these points of exchange proliferate, banks increase their information security risk. Criminals are still liable to attack banks because “that’s where the money is”, but bank robbers have been joined in the digital world by angry social media mobs, geo-politically motivated state actors, ‘ethical’ hackers seeking radical information transparency, and many other types of #threats that together have created an information security arms race. It’s no surprise that the target of the hackers in the first season of the hit TV show ‘Mr. Robot’ was banks.
Accenture recently survey 275 security executives to hear their views on the state of #cybersecurity in the #banking industry. The survey showed that most are confident about their ability to protect their assets and their customers from fraud, malware, and a host of other security breaches. Some 78 percent of the executives reported confidence in their cybersecurity strategies, 76 percent said cybersecurity is now embedded in their culture, and a full 93 percent believe their cybersecurity capabilities can protect their customers’ information.
But the survey also indicated that this confidence may be misplaced. Our research found that these same banks face an average of 85 targeted breach attempts per year—a third of which are successful. The stakes are also getting higher, with recent breaches of international payments systems creating multi-billion-dollar downside risks. If banks are to retain their customers’ trust, this gap between the reassurance projected by management and the reality of multiple successful breaches a month needs to be closed—and quickly.
It starts with better threat assessment and a dynamic prioritization of investments against emerging risks. It also means building a strong risk culture and supporting it with appropriate controls and tools that build resilience and defence in depth. Continuous attack simulations from white-hat hackers can also provide valuable insights into the maturity of a bank’s security program and its readiness to parry the continuously evolving set of threats.
Just like David Bowie, cybersecurity threats keep changing and evolving, so the Carlos Alomars of bank information security need to ensure that they can keep up.
To learn more about building better cybersecurity in banking, I invite you to read our High Performance Security report: Solving Banking’s Cybersecurity Conundrum
The post Ch-ch-changes—It’s time to address cybersecurity threats in banking appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
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Core Transformation Happens One Product At a Time
With all the “neo” and challenger #banks promising the speed and efficiency of smartphone banking, traditional FIs now more than ever feel the pressure to reinvent their antiquated systems. Transforming the banking #core is possibly the costliest and the riskiest undertaking for any financial institution. To reduce this risk, banks should take a #product by product […]
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China And Hong Kong Doubled Fintech Investment In 2016, Passing US For The First Time
#China and #Hong #Kong saw greater #fintech #investment than the U.S. –$ 11.2 billion to $ 9.2 billion while leaving Europe in the dust with $ 2.4 billion.
Tom Groenfeldt – Financial Technology -
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Move Over, Blockchain—It’s AI’s Time to Shine
A hedge fund that gives away all of its data to people it doesn’t know and still stays private. A virtual lab for smarter business solutions. Smart sales conducted from a smartphone with its own virtual assistant—these are all artificial intelligence projects expanding right now, and these are just theRead More
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