20 BANKING TRENDS OF 2017 AND A DIGITAL NAVIGATION REPORT TO UNLOCK THEM
After recently attending the Digital Banking Conference, hosted by American Banker, we had a lot of ideas swirling in our heads about the current state of banking, core themes, changing roadmaps, and where we fit into the newest initiatives, much of which are backed by APIs. So we gathered the 20 most recurring banking trends seen and heard around the conference, and found they could generally be sorted into four larger initiatives: I. Security & Governance, II. Open Banking, III. Customer-Centric, and IV. The Future of Banking. In this blog, we’ll briefly cover the strategics behind each section, but to get the full story, you’ll want to Download our Digital Navigation Report.
Reading the diagram: The smaller dots are the 20 banking trends, which can be seen as achievements on your timeline with the right strategy, and the larger dots are milestones that will help to push you into new territory. You’ll find that certain initiatives unlock others immediately, or set them up nicely down the road in true alley-oop fashion when another achievement is unlocked — after all, great strategy comes from having the foresight to align your tactics to set off multiple goals.
I. Transcend Omnichannel to Get Customer-Centric
Trends 1–7 fit under the Customer-Centric category: 1. Banking is a verb, not a noun., 2. Millennials are tricky to target., 3. Older generations are down with digital too., 4. Digital onboarding: make it a priority., 5. Offer “experience” over product., 6. The concept of giving back time., & 7. CRM for custom CX (Customer Experience).
Getting customer-centric is about changing your paradigm; If you build it, they might not come; so you must go to them. Our customers use ignite to manage APIs as API Products so that they are visible, manageable, ownable and accountable. The strategy here is to interact specifically with the apps your customers use, so choose a model that allows your brand to appear locally to them. If you’ve already taken care of security, governance, set your business up for open banking by exposing your data through APIs, and built out not just a series of endpoints but a customer-centric “experience” for your clients — you’re already on the right path.
II. The FinTech Fight is Over; Open Banking for the Win
Trends 8–12 fit under the Open Banking Category: 8. Third-party interaction: Get ready to Plug & Play., 9. Achieving a Shared “Ecosystem”., 10. Banks Inspiring a Culture of Innovation., 11. Diversification for Growth., & 12. Global Compliance Trends.
FinTech is already here. At first it was a blip on the map, and within no time it had the big banks shaking in their boots. Now the S curve is settling in and — the truth is, it’s looking like big banks and FinTech have a lot more to gain from each other if they work together. But a true culture of innovation starts on the inside. ignite brings Business and IT together in the early design stages to innovate over powerful search-and-discover views of your enterprise’s full capabilities. From that point, it’s plug and play.
III. The Future of Banking
Trends 13 through 16 fit under Banking Trends of the Future: 13. AI., 14. AR/VR/IoT., 15. Chatbots and Voice Recognition., & 16. Big Data for a Clear Roadmap.
Our most accomplished customers have a similar success story. They use our self-serviceable platform to ‘Plan’ and ‘Design’ from a core capability perspective. This design-first approach automates much of the “Build” phase with tech-agnostic code templates and artifacts, which are then automatically pushed into “Run” through ignite, or the runtime manager of your choice. From here, live data from all of your digital products and their environments report directly back with all of your expected versus actual KPIs in one dashboard, making sense of all of your data-in-motion for a clear roadmap.
IV. Security & Governance
Trends 17 through 20 involve Security & Governance: 17. Speed with Control., 18. eSignatures., 19. Multi-Factor Authentication: Biometric., & 20. Auditing in a digital world.
In the digital age, everyone wants to go fast — but with banks, security is of the utmost importance. How to maintain speed with control? We help our customers take the resources that made them great and transform them into building blocks for integration: business capability building blocks, as we like to call them. And they are the key to offering speed with data governance and security. The real pivot happens when you’ve exposed your data and mappings in one place so that when changes are made, they’re made across the board and sent directly to products in motion.
And that concludes our list of 20 digital banking trends! Being aware of your marketplace is vital to keeping an updated roadmap. Want more about digital banking strategy?
