The future of financial services — Highlights from #FSFuture Twitter chat
On June 1 2017, I was asked by Pega and Capgemini to host a Twitter chat titled “The Future of Financial Services”. It was a great success: 60 experts joined the discussion, which generated about 1,000 tweets and retweets and about 16.5 million impressions. Here are the key insights from the chat:
Q1. Providing exceptional customer experience is the key to avoid “commoditization.” What should financial services do to engage better with customers?
Essentially, you must provide a consistent experience across channels with an end-to-end approach (from back office to front office). Even more, financial institutions should not think in terms of channels and should put the customer at the very center of their strategy:
Financial services should be all about personalization, context/location-aware engagement, and self-service. The ability to connect with a customer’s emotions was also cited by several participants. Ultimately, participants felt a well-designed customer experience should be invisible.
Q2. With API markets, developer hubs, and other related technologies growing in popularity, is Open Banking an opportunity or a threat for incumbents? What are the benefits for banks?
Open banking is the creation of Open APIs that third-party developers will use to build applications and services to integrate products and services with those of the financial institution. It is a threat to the banking status quo because new entrants (such as FinTech startups and tech giants) could leverage customer data to offer financial services. On the other hand, it can be considered as a new distribution channel for incumbents and a way to create new partnerships and deliver innovative services:
Participants mentioned two promising implementations: the startup This is bud and the bank BBVA, which recently launched its API market.
Markets are moving at different paces, depending on the local regulations. The second Payment Service Directive (PSD2), which regulates payment services and providers in the European Union, is driving a faster adoption in Europe compared to other regions. The implementation of this directive is not trivial. Firms need to take a strategic view to leverage open banking to maximize value.
Q3. What are the key success factors involved when deploying Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in financial services?
First the difference between RPA and Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) was highlighted:
Participants said the key successes for RPA are prototyping, management buy-in, continuous delivery, system integration, and holistic governance. Additionally, it usually requires extensive workflow mapping to find the relevant points of improvement.
Finally, several participants insisted that RPA was only one tool of many useful for gaining a short-term benefit on the long path that is digital transformation:
Q4. What are the most promising applications of machine learning and cognitive computing in financial services?
Check the answers from the participants & other questions about blockchain, regtech and more here http://finnoworld.com/fsfuture/
