Digital, the new normal in banking
Challenges in times of change, where waiting for the “normal” is wasting time that we don't have.
The changes we have been through in the past few months have strongly conditioned any strategy or plan being implemented. The digitalization of banking accelerated, not due to a strategic vision, or due to a natural evolution of the business model, but due to an external “disruptive” factor that imposed the need for this new “normal”.
We dare to affirm that the digitalization of society and the financial sector took a leap of five years in five months. We are not referring to new “technology”, but to its adoption on a day-to-day basis, in the way companies do business and in the way consumption takes place.
Digital channels in banking are no longer complementary channels to be the possible way of interacting with customers and closing deals. In this new reality, the future has become today, and digital transformation programs that are expected to be executed in years have the objective of being executed in months. Within this non-option (because it was not an option) to adopt digital, banks continue to need to differentiate themselves.
At Asseco PST, we believe that this differentiation takes place in the digital aspect due to each bank's answer to three main questions: convenience, personalization, security.
In convenience, aspects such as easiness of first access to the bank, available channels, easiness of authentication, user experience, complementary products and services, “live” customer support, notification and proactive advice are crucial.
However, whenever we try to help a customer, we may incur in an excess or a shortage of interaction, and there we enter the subject of personalization, with two distinct dimensions. The first: letting the customer configure their interaction with the bank in the way that suits him best, home page, concept of “favorites”, organization of “menus”, control of their finances, personal alerts, savings mechanisms, etc. The second: the bank inferring from the customer's behavior the issues on which it must notify, advise, adapt user experience, and refine processes (the latter dimension closely related to data analytics and AI).
Finally, security, where the explanation is simple. The interaction must be secure, otherwise we will experience financial losses, damage to credibility and, even more difficult to restore, the loss of customer confidence.
In conclusion, there is no point in waiting for the “old normal”. It will not return. This "new normal" may set back a little, but we anticipate that this wave (which came accelerated by the pandemic) will be part of a "set" with bigger waves (as in surfing), and the following ones will be increasingly structural and business modifiers. Who sells, how they sell, to whom they sell, what means they use to sell, are questions that will have answers in continuous evolution.
This wave must be surfed quickly, while preparing institutions for the next waves that will be more demanding in operational and regulatory aspects of financial activity.
