The New Wave of Smart Banking: Digital Banking

Banking industry is witnessing rapid changes since the past decade and with the evolving customer behavior, banking industry needs to restructure their business model thoroughly. Banks need to be ready with the personalized solutions for all customer requirements even before they sense it.

Today, as the banks review at their business models to become more efficient providers of innovative services, it is pertinent that future bank needs to be digital, collaborative, adaptive and manifest experience for customers across touchpoints to access those services. Industry expert Brett King also says “Banking is no longer somewhere you go, but something you do”.

The core of digital banking evolves around Omni-channel, mobility, payments and social media, as well as analytics in real time. These elements are also evolving and maturing as the industry players become more familiar with their potential.

Today, when we talk about omnichannel transformation happening in banking vertical, the focus is not limited to providing multiple platforms for ease of transactions but, building a steady experience by interacting across various channels which can, not only fulfill customer’s needs but also foresee the customer’s wants and likes.

Similarly, Banks are investing in mobility solutions to deliver simplified, convenient, and collaborative services while staying connected. Challenge here is to safeguard all the customer interactions while delivering responsive mobile experiences. Biometric and behavioral analytics are extensively being used as new augmentation methods to plug gaps in cyber security.

Payments is another area where Banks these days strive to deliver efficient and convenient payment mode to create customer stickiness as this is directly driven by rising customer expectations for real time transaction with mobile/tablets/PDA devices. Digital and mobility solutions have helped the banks in achieving this and technology will further impact how the cross-border payments are processed.

Most banks are already using social media for effective communication of their products, services to the customers and even they further incorporate several recommendations and feedback for much effective product/service. The next logical progression is to leverage social media as a platform contributing towards company’s turnover rather than just an engagement tool. In-depth analysis of customer profile in terms of his behavior, interests, emotions etc. will help banks to treat social media as wallet. It will allow them to make purchases, lending, circulation of money can happen via social networks. But all this social media linked banking success will only be possible with the analysis of BIG DATA.

While most of the banks struggle to counter the digital disruptions, a few progressive ones are already riding the digital wave by leveraging AI and related technologies to:

• Building complex algorithms based on multiple factors.
• Deliver Embedded Experiences by re-designing interactions, interfaces to deliver services via technology layer.
• Enable Smart Infrastructure like Smart banks, smart apps to handle, mobile banking etc.

In this highly competitive era, as financial world is getting re-defined with shift in focus to customer-centric approach, Banks and Fintech needs to join hands resulting in successful  business partnerships that can offer values at various level with the new set of rules and providing innovative products.