The following article is just a summary of what is happening in the industry, but if you’re looking for a deeper dive, check out our blog post: What are the banking trends to follow? You will find there a detailed description of each trend and learn how they are affecting banks’ customers and employees.
The recent trends in financial services we highlighted have two main goals:
- Expand banks’ revenue streams.
- Enhance customer loyalty.
To achieve the above, traditional banks must introduce new services and products that will help them grow in the coming years. Choosing the right technologies will make them keep pace with and even surpass their nimble competitors, such as Monzo or Revolut.
1. Mobile apps makeover is blooming
Banks continue investing in mobile apps to constantly investigate, improve, and ensure a seamless and user-friendly customer experience. Some banks are revamping existing applications or building new ones from scratch.
If the application in your organization still leaves much to be desired, e.g. it is slow, struggles with bugs, and has poor in-store ratings, it is necessary to act fast! Having a delightful mobile banking app is more than just a banking trend, it’s a must.
A good, intuitive and engaging banking app combined with the right marketing strategy (here we mean sales pushes, for example) induces users to use the banks’ offerings, which translates into a better organization’s bottom line.
2. Superapps are striking the industry by storm
One of the strongest trends in retail banking is the transformation of mobile apps into powerful platforms offering a wide range of value-added services.
Today, banks that offer nothing more than standard banking services should consider expanding their portfolio.
Assuming that all the banks offer very similar financial products, adding extra value presents an opportunity for them to expand their service offerings, strengthen relationships with customers and what is more run a new profit stream.
Combining the services and products of various merchants is a straightforward approach to developing a superapplication that caters to all consumer demands. This leads to more frequent application usage, which fosters customer loyalty and increases banks’ revenues.
The transformation of a banking app into a superwallet has become a significant trend in mobile banking in Poland and is worth watching.
3. Virtual Branches – the prevalence of the human factor over chatbots
AI and chatbots improve CX, but the current trend is still to provide face-to-face communications with the banks’ advisors through remote channels. Most customers prefer to experience personal touch and the ability to get advice instantly, anywhere, with the help of a human, rather than with the still not perfect chatbots.
In today’s world, people demand quick, responsive service from a trusted source. With Pocket Branch, banks can offer their customers the best of both worlds: the convenience of remote banking and the experience similar to a brick-and-mortar branch. The ability to advise and solve customers’ problems right away is critical to winning the market, and Pocket Branch makes it possible.
In a nutshell:
- It is a virtual branch equipped with a number of tools and features that support customer service and sales of banking products (i.e. problem-solving support, comprehensive service sales and aftersales process).
- It is a tool that supports the back-office operation and improves the banking advisor experience.
- It lets bank clients connect within the application or website with the bank through video, audio, or text chat – all from the comfort of their homes.
Seize the opportunities of digital sales channels and streamline your end-to-end processes to increase profits and improve customer experience.
4. No-code – a way to win the market
What is trendy in the IT industry right now? Certainly no-code. This is a technology that has created a lot of buzz in the IT industry. And there are tangible reasons for that.
There are many no-code/low-code solutions on the market. However, unlike others, our solution – Extentum, is fully dedicated to the banking industry.
Extentum allows business people to develop new features for existing mobile and web applications without having any programming experience – they can create new functionalities in a back office visual editor and present them to the users using dynamic interfaces.
Even better, implementing these new features does not require publishing a new version of the app. So, banks can add new features to natively built iOS, Android applications and/or the web without any extra hassle.
Using Extentum, it is easy to release their developers’ time to focus on more complex tasks while dramatically reducing the time-to-market for simple functionalities or those that must be made available to customers here and now. This means your resources can redirect their attention to more important things and keep up with the competition.
5. Enhanced protection of the app – application shielding
Increased concern for security is one of the emerging trends in the financial industry.
All customers expect their bank provides the highest level of security to protect their hard-earned money. Banks recognize this expectation and partner with external companies to enhance security measures.
Considering what the market offers, Finanteq decided to provide its clients with a runtime application self-protection (RASP) solution from a Norwegian company – Promon.
Application shielding, which is growing in popularity, protects mobile apps against runtime attacks, which are more and more frequent recently. It instantly detects and blocks all threats.
Implementing appropriate mechanisms is the best way to prevent potential threats and avoid severe financial and image losses. This trend will help save a huge amount of money, as application shielding is not worth saving on.
Sum up:
Banks that choose the right direction will profit from technology shortly. The future of banking is bright, but financial institutions need to stay agile and adapt to changing trends and consumer needs. By embracing mobile banking, m-commerce, virtual branches, and no-code banks will increase revenue and strengthen the customer’s relationship with the bank. App shielding also has an important role here – it will decrease fraud and losses, and keep the reputation not harmed.
Contact us today to learn more about how our team can help adapt to changing trends and consumer needs. Together, we can create a solution that will quickly bring tangible benefits to your organization.
