The financial services industry is changing rapidly. Considering the development of cryptocurrency, stablecoins, NFTs, and more, the undecided future of money and investing provides an exciting new era for the financial services industry, though it also comes with its own set of challenges. Financial institutions have a unique opportunity to shape the future of the world and drive change through digital solutions and emerging perspectives, but they must also adapt to industry standards in order to remain competitive. They face the huge challenge of accomplishing a difficult balancing act: adapting to industry changes while maintaining their company culture, driving in revenue, and hiring the best talent for their organizations. These challenges reflect just how essential digital transformation in financial services is to success.
Achieving Digital Transformation in Financial Services
With so many challenges facing industry leaders, it’s important to look at trends and adapt to changes—not only to remain competitive but also to identify possible business opportunities and lines of business. Navigating a space with so much change and opportunity can be overwhelming. However, creating a strategy based on goals, data, and trends can help form the foundation of a successful business model that guarantees long-term wins for any financial organization. Let’s dive into four trends organizations should keep in mind as they identify their goals and business strategies for 2022.
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Opportunities for Greater Digital Engagement
One of the biggest trends reshaping the financial services industry is the widespread availability of digital tools and processes. For example, more people are opting for mobile or online banking than ever before. According to research completed by Finance Digest, over 80 percent of the top 10–15 percent of earners manage their finances through apps. Historically, banks have been expected to provide in-person support across the country. Now, it is becoming clear that many customers don’t require local branches; in fact, nearly half of survey respondents reported they would consider a completely branchless digital bank. Fostering digital transformation in financial services could serve as a significant opportunity to provide better engagement with customers through remote support.
Supporting both local branches and digital spaces while attempting to stay ahead of change is no easy feat—especially with tight budgets and the need to improve customer experiences. The good news is that the availability of excellent systems and tools can improve backend processes and create better workflows for staff, as well as provide greater opportunities for digital engagement with customers.
Not only are new chances for digitization available to customers, but they are also open to financial institutions—and they should take advantage of them. When processes are as clear and consistent as possible, organizations can prioritize the customer experience and build in regular check-ins to ensure that they’re achieving predetermined goals. Adopting digital solutions can help support these initiatives without spreading an organization too thin.
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Mounting Customer Expectations
As we’ve touched on briefly, customer expectations are changing. They are also rising as innovative products and services have raised the bar for financial institutions everywhere. This is why it is especially important to prioritize banking with purpose and the customer mindset. Customer expectations of inclusivity and accessibility, for example, have grown with the shift in awareness toward societal issues. Customers want to support organizations that care about making the world a better place. By communicating their sense of purpose, financial institutions can grow with this expectation rather than being hampered by it.
Similarly, it will become essential for the financial industry to adopt a customer-centric approach. While banks have come to provide a layer of personalization, there is an excellent opportunity for all financial institutions to upgrade their services even further through the use of customer data. By collecting customer data and driving new initiatives, they can begin to arrange every step of the customer journey, leaving them empowered to meet every customer where they need them.
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The Power of AI and Machine Learning
Another trend in financial services that can help organizations provide better customer support is the availability of AI and machine learning. Adopting these technologies can empower financial services organizations to understand their customers more effectively, improve back-office operations, and even access more reliable fraud detection and security capabilities. Whether you already have AI solutions or are just beginning to adopt them, technological growth will continue to be a huge trend throughout the year.
Financial institutions will need to develop an AI strategy to ensure that they are taking full advantage of the automation and using it to improve practices in their operations. That way, they’ll be able to analyze progress and improve with their investments. With technology continuously changing, staying up to date on its evolution and adapting processes in response could be one of the greatest challenges throughout the year. However, it can also be one of the biggest opportunities for organizations seeking growth and success.
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Defining the Human Factor in a Digital World
As technology continues to evolve and take the center stage of development, all financial services companies will also need to consider the human side of digital transformation. While digital transformation in financial services will offer excellent opportunities for growth, institutions will need to define a symbiotic relationship between talent and technology that enables end users and sets them up for long-term success. Between hiring the best talent for their organization to continuing to grapple with challenges like security, end-user enablement, and continuous improvement, financial services companies have a lot to consider when it comes to defining this balance.
One of the biggest challenges that financial services organizations must face when it comes to people and technology is recruiting and maintaining the best talent. Not only are many people resigning from their positions and looking for new opportunities, but big enterprises are also fighting for the best talent from the same pool of people—across all industries. Financial services companies must find the best talent that not only marries the digital and human side of technology themselves but also empowers the rest of the team to do the same. And they’ll need to offer greater benefits, a strong company culture, and unique offerings in order to do it.
It’s clear that today, everything is about using the latest technological advancements to improve processes and provide the best customer experience possible. The financial services industry is no exception. In fact, they face the unique challenge of navigating mounting customer expectations that require consistent engagement—both in-person and remotely. These trends reflect an exciting chance to prioritize digital transformation in financial services, helping organizations drive effective change, greater revenue, and long-term success.
Keep Up With Trends with Crossfuze
Want to know how you can leverage ServiceNow to address these challenges and more? At Crossfuze, we provide our customers with end-to-end ServiceNow support to empower their workflows and drive continuous improvement in their organizations. Reach out to us at LetsTalk@crossfuze.com to learn more.
