From cloud to customer experience: Building the Bank of the Future

Customers want banks to support their digital lifestyle

A recent MasterCard survey for Insider Intelligence confirmed what many of us know from our own personal lives: consumers want better digital services from their banks. More importantly, they are prepared to leave banks with poor or non-existent digital services and switch to more tech savvy competitors. Banks that fail to respond to this rapid shift in consumer habits will struggle to compete.

VeriPark works with clients to address that challenge by building the Bank of the Future. Ultimately that means helping banks achieve all six maturity levels in the diagram below. Let’s look at those six maturity levels in more detail.

The six maturity levels for the Bank of the Future

1. Built on cloud technology: big tech increasingly releases new functionality on the cloud first, then on-premises. In time we predict that the new functionality will be on-cloud first and on-cloud only. That is why we believe the Bank of the Future must be built on-cloud and, in our case, that means using Azure and other cloud-based services.

2. Connected journeys: the Bank of the Future focuses on its value proposition to the end customer. Its aim is to be a customer experience (CX) driven bank. Every discussion is about the CX journey. Traditional banks focus on systems first before working out which journeys they can offer. The Bank of the Future flips that by devising the journey before choosing the systems that support the journey.

3. Service banking: a CX driven bank with a 360-degree view of the customer can start thinking about developing an API farm for internal and external use. Once that API farm is in place, you can use open banking frameworks that are increasingly available in countries around the world. These enable you to offer customers a broad set of financial services functions in collaboration with other providers.

4. Platform banking: this maturity level is a single technology layer that connects providers to create a unified ecosystem of services. A major disruptor bank has achieved this by leveraging our VeriChannel platform to create a digital ecosystem that connects dozens of fintech service providers, all incubated within the bank's own campus. These fintechs offer the bank's SME customers a range of functions, including:

• Invoicing 
• Ledger 
• Balancing and reconciliation
• Know Your Customers. 

5. Intelligent banking: the next maturity stage is to start using AI, particularly tailored copilots. However, you need to have achieved the earlier maturity levels before you can take full advantage of this emerging and rapidly evolving technology. With AI, you can start providing real-time, contextually relevant services and on-demand help at every customer touchpoint. In time we expect AI Copilots to become everywhere, not just helping your customer facing teams to provide engaging services but also to sell appropriate new products to customers. Furthermore, they will be consistently on brand.

6. Primary Financial Institution: this is the pinnacle of the maturity pyramid for the Bank of the Future. In this world, any bank customer will feel like the only bank customer because of how they are treated and the way the bank works with them and suits all their needs.  Effectively, from the customers point of view, intelligent banking creates a segment of one, what VeriPark calls the omni-banking client. 

Meet your omni-banking client

Take Zubair, who most banks would previously have treated as a multi-segmented client. He is a corporate banking client representing a large company, a retail banking client for his personal finances, an entrepreneur with his own SME, plus a high-net-worth individual using private banking when it suits him. His banking CX would vary considerably depending on which ‘persona’ his bank identified him with. As well as being frustrating for him, it created an incoherent feel for the brand. 

Now, when Zubair connects with the Bank of the Future, he doesn’t have to deal with multiple relationship managers or keep mentally switching between segments. He doesn’t have to visit different branches or log into different systems or call different numbers. Instead, he now just connects with his bank – one organization in his mind with him as the sole customer – that’s it. 

The Bank of the Future recognizes him with his multi-faceted needs and serves him accordingly. That means he can move seamlessly between his different banking personas whenever he wants. As a result, Bank of the Future becomes not just his preferred bank, but his Primary Financial Institution (PFI) for all his financial needs.

Our Chief Industry Officer, Financial Services, Zubair Ahmed, has written an article about the new “Omni-banking client” segment, which you can read on our blog. 

What does a Primary Financial Institution look like?

Two years ago, we began discussing how VeriPark could help banks become their customers’ Primary Financial Institution (PFI). Many bank customers have several banks in their wallet or on their phone and the way they use them is based on what they find valuable. How can one bank become valuable for everything so that customers choose it every time? 

We started envisioning the way people use their mobile, a device that many people have become completely attached to and now consider an essential part of their daily life. Those most wedded to their phones tend to have numerous applications for financial products and services on it. What we imagined, and then created, was a single super app, built on our VeriChannel architecture. 

We don’t even call it an app; it's a device that could be the device of choice for all your customers. 

It’s an onboarding device that enables people to go from non-authenticated enquirer to authenticated registered user in a few minutes. It’s a payment device, savings device, financing device, insurance device and investment device. And it’s all available through one icon on their phone. 

It will not only help your customers manage their savings, but it will also suggest better ways to use those savings. It will help them manage their personal debt, either to be debt free or to borrow at more competitive rates. It will help them budget and plan and even offer advice on strategies to improve their financial management. 

Most importantly, for the Bank of the Future to become their customer’s PFI, it is also a lifestyle device. It doesn’t simply offer a better way of banking, it also offers a better way of managing your life, including things like car, home, travel, even your health. These digital lifestyle services are the future of banking, where the bank works behind the scenes. 
People generally don’t to want to think about banking. They want to live their lives and turn their dreams into reality. The dashboard on your bank’s digital lifestyle device will help them do that.

Let’s look at arranging a trip. Previously, you might have booked flight tickets with your bank credit card on an airline app and then booked your hotel or your car hire on another app. Now, you can do that all through one super app from your bank, rather than switching between different apps. While it might carry your bank’s brand, it doesn’t feel like a bank because it intuitively becomes part of your daily life. This enables bank brands to create a unique proposition and a real competitive advantage. 

6 Essential Questions to Future Proof Your Bank