Bridging the Digital Gap in Banking

Blog: The Tibco Blog

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Today’s banking customers know what they want—a digital experience they can take on the go, frictionless and fast. Traditional banks can be slow to offer these experiences, and there are many digital alternatives ready to deliver and shake up market share.

TIBCO’s Vice President of Solution Consulting in APJ, San Zaw, and Paul Howell with the Asian Banking and Finance Podcast recently discussed how banks can use today’s technologies to bridge the digital gap between customers’ new expectations and banks’ current capabilities to humanize the banking experience.

Check out some of the highlights from their conversation and listen to the full podcast for a deep dive into the world of banking transformation.

Paul Howell: What’s the state of the banking industry in a post-COVID world?

San Zaw: I’m starting to blur the lines when I switch between digital apps and work. Switching between YouTube, Netflix, Work, Zoom, Salesforce—all the different apps—but you know, the profound effect that has had on us from the usage and consumption point of view, it’s raised our expectations. Due to the non-stop exposure to these digital services for work and entertainment, consumers are starting to expect that same Netflix-like seamless experience, and banks want to emulate it as well. Customers want a seamless and personable experience. That’s why humanizing is so important in these digital touchpoints. That’s what we’re seeing so far.

PH: What are some things that industry watchers should be looking out for in this new normal?

SZ: Customer intimacy is a key challenge. Customers are starting to expect that every engagement is a unique, personal, differentiated experience. Two years ago, this was new, this was some competitive differentiator, but now this is table stakes. And to give that seamless experience you can’t do it alone, unfortunately. It’s an ecosystem based on how relevant you are to that customer’s lifestyle. Customers these days are now quite a hardened bunch. They’re not easily pleased. It’s not, you know, showing some fancy user interface or unique little experience. They want more from their engagements with companies.

PH: What can banks and fintechs do to reach their goals while also having some level of speed-to-market?

SZ: I couldn’t stress this enough. It is truly a first mover’s game. Speed-to-market, time-to-market, we call it different things—and “agile” is becoming the modus operandi to deliver a minimum viable product. It is super important to get developments out quickly. But most of our time-to-market has been focused on APIs and microservices. I think the industry has embraced open source technologies and tools really well. They have embraced methodologies like DevOps to accelerate delivery. But now the next step is about the data equation. The AI-ML equation. This is the next frontier. And now organizations have three moving balls in the air (APIs, Data, and AI/ML) to juggle. So being able to take a pragmatic approach (a pragmatic mix of in-sourced coding, leveraging partners where necessary, and augmenting with ISV services) is going to be an important differentiator to be agile and fast-to-market.

Start Your Data-driven Journey Today

Zaw concludes, “Get that data. Don’t let anything stand between yourself and the data. The technology is there today. There’s no reason why you should wait a few hours or even a day, just to get the data you need in your hands and apply analytics, AI, and ML in a self-service way.”

Banks can use today’s technologies to bridge the digital gap between customers’ new expectations and banks’ current capabilities to humanize the banking experience.
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If you’d like to learn more from the experts, listen to the full podcast between Zaw and Howell—and then check out TIBCO’s Solutions for Digital Banking.

The post Bridging the Digital Gap in Banking first appeared on The TIBCO Blog.