Exclusive Trusted Magazine Q&A with Faheem Ali, expert in digital transformations & FinTech
How Can Banks Seek Digital Transformation Via Fintech Collaborations?
There is a greater emphasis on opening and onboarding new clients swiftly, using data-driven personalized communication, and developing new digital banking products and services.
Financial Institutions (Banks, Microfinance, Insurance, etc.) are working to modernize digital financial experiences by partnering to an increasing degree with fintech industry and third-party solution providers. These collaborations are improving the speed and scale of innovation, often replacing core providers and saving money compared to creating solutions internally.
The partnership can take serval forms, such as:
Operational technology partnerships - involve several third-party partners to transform processes such as new account opening or loan origination.
Customer-oriented partnerships - enhance various customer-facing aspects of their institutions. Customer-oriented partnerships can also improve agility in serving customers.
Front-end banking partnerships - offer the opportunity to reach new or broader customer segments than the financial institution may be able to reach through established channels.
From your opinion, what are the Digital Banking Transformation Trends for 2023?
Digital transformation remains a high priority in the banking industry for a number of reasons. The primary one is that it can help banks to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations. But the question is:
What stage are financial institutions in their digital banking transformation journey?
What are the digital banking transformation priorities for 2023?
What stands in the way of updating back offices for improved top-of-glass experiences?
Financial institutions have made significant progress in their digital banking transformation journeys, but the level of maturity varies. As we are in 2023, one of the biggest underlying trends is the continued growth in the use and customer expectations around digital banking. As more and more consumers embrace smartphones and other mobile devices, banks are increasingly focusing on developing mobile-first strategies and offering services optimized for mobile users.
The focus of digital transformation revolves around the customer journey and the need for increased engagement in a safe and secure environment.
A trend that is receiving a great deal of attention, but is still very challenging for organizations to embrace and deploy, is the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning.
Overall, these areas of focus and components of success indicate that the digital banking space will continue to evolve and change in the coming years. Banks that are able to adapt to these changes and leverage emerging technologies will be best positioned to succeed in this increasingly competitive market.
What do you think are the Top 5 Customer Experience Trends for 2023 and Beyond?
Financial institutions can no longer use the excuse of the pandemic when delivering less-than-desirable customer experiences. More than ever, customer service is both a differentiator and growth accelerator. Customers want a simplified and streamlined experience – on the channel(s) they prefer, at the time that is most convenient to them.
Trend 1: Omnichannel Experience Strategies. Prioritize customer engagement by providing a seamless experience. customers expect service agents to know who they are and their queries.
Trend 2: Humanized Digital Experiences. Although focusing on making shopping online faster or simpler for customers is important, brands must also take an experiential approach by building new ways to interact with customers on a human level - states MIT Sloan Management Review
Trend 3: Increased Personalization. Personalization has little impact until companies change their internal operating model to be agile, focused on important customer KPIs, cross-functional, and driven by rapid decision making.
Trend 4: Increased Support of Self-Service. Customers want to resolve as many issues as possible on their own, through self service methods as opposed to speaking with a customer service representative. On top of more traditional self-service solutions, augmented reality (AR) can become a bigger component of self-service options as consumers seek more immersive ways to interact with brands and their products.
Trend 5: The Emergence of the ‘Total Experience’. Many organizations have successfully transitioned from being project-focused to product-focused. However, to be competitive today, they must transition yet again to become experience focused – Gartner
Despite a significant economic downturn, many companies have decided to invest in customer experience tools and as a result are predicting an increase in their budgets.
While not significant, but these trend counters many other areas within organizations.
