Financial institutions are looking for new approaches to move their products toward more personalization that will, in turn, improve customer acquisition and retention. To nurture digital-native customers and bring more into their customer base, these institutions are turning to digital-first solutions and the cloud.
The demand for personalized, digital experiences
Surveys indicate that the most satisfied banking customers are those that feel their financial institution values their wellbeing above all else. Increasingly, consumers expect their bank or credit union to demonstrate their commitment through action, providing a host of products and services designed to support individual financial goals.
The last decade has seen a rapid proliferation of third-party resources like these. Customers can seamlessly see money as it enters and leaves. They can even take advantage of specialized tools that help them put the lid on spending and save for the future.
Since satisfaction with many third-party services is quite high, these specialized tools may have an easy entry into traditional financial products and services, should they decide to take it. To understand the impact on the market, we can look at digital-first banks.
Cloud-based new product development
While new digital products will help curb customer defection from traditional financial institutions, developing the type of top-tier offerings that consumers are willing to use is an arduous task. Development timeframes are lengthy, and forty percent of new products don’t catch on with customer demand, leaving the organization to cover the costs. To halt a potential mass exodus to digital-first natives, traditional financial institutions are prioritizing the acquisition of digital-first products and services, using the cloud as the avenue toward accelerated success.
The cloud supports bank and credit union software acquisition efforts by first transitioning the financial institution to an open core. The process is fast and seamless and provides financial institutions with a potentially endless array of products and services.
The versatility begins with the plug-and-play nature of application programming interfaces or APIs. APIs provide a secure, but open, digital layer on which third parties may build new digital-first products.
Platform providers ensure that each product is tested and vetted for use within the bank and credit union environment before releasing it to the industry. Then, once a financial institution is connected to the API, it can easily adapt any of the associated new products. Just as easily, financial institutions can unplug from any product that isn’t meeting the needs of customers or members.
This approach eliminates many of the risks associated with new product adoption by putting the financial institution into a “fail fast” mode. Should a product fail to engage consumers, banks and credit unions are free to “unplug” the product and start again on a new solution.
The future of customer-focused financial services is in the cloud
Innovation is an integral component of a financial institution’s personalization strategy. By taking advantage of cloud-based offerings, banks and credit unions can enter an ecosystem of features, tools, and integrations. In such an ecosystem, financial institutions can easily customize their product stack to the needs and wants of their customer base, providing for a more personalized banking experience.
As consumer demands for personalized service continue to escalate, the cloud will pave the way toward a new ecosystem of banking partnerships, allowing financial institutions to continuously scale to meet the needs of customers and members.
Source: https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/
Global iTS is a leading Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM Partner, headquartered in the UK. With 300+ clients, successfully proven implementations, an excellent support system by our experienced domain specialist, and a good track record of customer retention. Also, it has a strong foothold and customer base across other GCC countries (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, and Qatar).
Global iTS is mainly into the specialized requirements in Financial Services and Insurance sectors focusing on Digital Transformation journey in Retail Banking, Commercial Banking, Insurance Providers, Private Equity, and Investment Banking by bringing Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, and Robotic Process Automation technologies and enhanced their productivity and profitability. We bring in over 15 years of international expertise to digitally transform any aspect of a client’s business.
