It’s no secret that the 2020 pandemic brought on by Covid-19 led to a boost in various tech adoption trends including digital transformative efforts. Covid-19 forced a change in how different customer segments had to interact with their financial institutions during this time, causing even a rapid shift in how senior users and millennials chose to manage their digital interactions.
Recent research has pointed towards an accelerated use of mobile payment apps, mobile banking systems, tap and pay systems, even app to app transfers, reducing the dependency on traditional cash, checking systems and even ATMs.
While industry leaders often opine that these changing trends are here to stay for the long-term, even in a post-pandemic era, a complete shift to or full dependency on digital systems also demands that banks and financial providers provide a seamless end to end online and mobile experience that replaces the standard branch and visit based model to serve customers.
A few top factors that will help shape digital financial services for the better in 2021:
Creating a Rock Solid Foundation on the Cloud
The right framework is integral to a strong digital savvy process, the increased incidents of open banking partnerships and need for instant seamless financial transactions demands that banks and financial institutes have a secure system that allows 24/7 interaction and access to their financial information and transactions. With the use of cloud infrastructure, financial institutions have the agility needed to not only allow seamless access to central user information, they can gain insights into existing customer interests and challenges while focusing on building better capabilities to suit their future banking and financial requirements.
A strong cloud infrastructure allows financial providers to be more future-ready and prepare for sudden market disruptions like what was experienced in 2020 due to the sudden lockdowns.
Open Banking: to Build Customer Loyalty
Open banking APIs help financial providers deliver users agile and relevant digital banking experiences through which they can then access an array of associated need based services (redeeming vouchers, paying for ride shares, etc) giving customers the ability to manage and transact the way they want for the things they most need,
By allowing users to use their single account for instance to interact seamlessly with other payment gateways makes it easier to retain customers and build long-term loyalty because it gives them the flexibility.
Capitalizing on Data and Insights
Without the power of data, banks and financial providers cannot serve today’s digital customers with the aim of enhancing their end user experience, besides using data to present the most innovative and need-based offerings (that also leads to effective upsells), tapping into the right data and insights can help financial institutions boost customer acquisition rates while giving better viewability on the companies customer base, product use (products that are working/ not working), services that need more boost, etc).
The most successful world institutes use data to pre-empt customer expecations and deliver better capabilities before a competitor steps in.
A Multichannel Transaction Approach
Today’s financial customers need to bank where they want, when they want, using an array of channels and devices (mobile, laptop, internet banking, phone banking, payment apps, etc). This is the time for financial providers to capitalize on better technologies to breakdown the barriers to this modern transacting system. While most banks and financial providers are still navigating the change and demand for digital disruptions brought on by the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, what this also means is that customers now need a more comprehensive experience which is not just digital-only but multichannel and safe for use across portable devices. The right security measures, exchange of information with the proper restrictions in place are needed to support these needs and allow for seamless digital customer onboarding,so that associated services like card issuance, lending, investing and more are never a barrier because of the need to visit a physical branch for paperwork.
While most banks still have a way to go before they can ensure processes that completely limit the need for users to visit branches, the good thing is that today’s tech capabilities still allow financial providers to boost the user experience a step at a time and work towards it.
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The New Normal – No More Branch Banking?
The Covid-19 pandemic has helped put in place a lot of digital banking processes and has set the pace for long term changes, tomorrow’s customers will be those who would not want to be limited by the need to visit a branch and speak to one relationship manager to take care of their transaction needs. The customer of the future will be one who needs their bank available for instant queries and needs 24/7.
