It's Time for Banks & Credit Unions to Embrace Change

As I travel across the country, visiting financial institutions in the midst of their annual planning cycle, it is like a trip down memory lane. While the technology and distribution channels have changed, banks and credit unions are still faced with the many of the same strategic challenges we talked about 20 years ago.

As a long time banker and friend, Michael Bencic said, "Improving the customer experience, embracing change, deriving value from data, building strategic partnerships, leveraging technology, ensuring privacy and security, cutting costs and generating fees is like deja vu all over again."

I agree. While the details behind these goals have changed, why have the overarching themes stayed the same? Is it because the planning process usually begins with broad financial requirements and many involved in the process simple dust off last year's plan and hit the restart button? Or is it because, despite a lot of talk around embracing change, the industry (and the regulators) frown upon the potential risk associated with innovation and doing things differently?

In a new report just published by KPMG entitled, Reshaping Banking in a Dynamic Business and Regulatory Climate, the author emphasizes the importance of getting out of 'survival mode' and embracing change, creating new strategies, crafting new infrastructures and focusing on the customer. While there is no denying the importance of each of these issues, this report is not much different than similar reports I read in the 1990's. The primary difference is that the risk of ignoring these issues has far greater implications.

Dusting off last year's planning document and making small alterations is not enough. It will take more than simply finding ways to 'do more with less', cost-cutting and operational improvement. According to Brian Stephens, national leader of KPMG's banking and capital markets practice and author of the report, "There must be acceptance among the entire leadership team that the rapid, unpredictable, and profound change we are witnessing is structural -- not cyclical." He continues, "The debate in not about the need for change, but what changes should be made."

As in the past, the issues that must be addressed are many. The difference is that today, while the issues may look similar to the past, the issues are more interconnected than ever before and the environment where these changes need to be made is evolving at breakneck speed.

The KPMG report provides a perspective into the following critical areas as banks and credit unions plan for 2014 and beyond:

• Culture of embracing change – In today's environment, change is constant, so banks must be nimble and innovative. "Banking leaders must choose to adapt and evolve, or risk irrelevance," says KPMG. "In the future, when banks look back on this time of change, an organization's resilience will not be measured by how much adversity it endured throughout the financial crisis and this period of recovery; rather, it will be measured by how well it adapted to it." The challenge is a tradition of rigid internal resistance to change and a consequent inability to execute. The change in culture must come from the top, starting with the board and senior leadership. And it must me more than just words.

Top 10 Mobile Banking Mistakes

There’s plenty of great information out there for consumers about the dos and don’ts of mobile banking—password protect your device, use caution with what apps you install on your phone—but there are also plenty of mistakes financial institutions make when it comes to mobile. 

Let’s look at what may be considered to be the top ten.

By Danny Tang, Worldwide Channel Transformation / Front Office Solutions Leader, IBM Global Banking & Financial Mkts

10. Not going for 100% mobile banking adoption  The adoption rate for mobile banking should be 100% of those customers who have a mobile phone. And yet, many banks choose to limit themselves by requiring users to activate in online banking or enroll at a local branch. This reflects the fact that mobile is still an afterthought for many banks.

9. No Balance Between Security vs. Usability  Can’t we have both? It’s remarkably easy to lose your mobile phone, which makes it especially important for banks to safeguard user information. While banks should absolutely secure mobile banking beyond just ID and password, it shouldn’t be impossible to use, either. Does it really make sense to ask users who their favorite teacher was in elementary school, or require everyone to carry another device just to log in to mobile banking on their smartphone? Risk-based authentication, geolocation, biometrics—these and many other technologies are available to help banks find the right balance between security and ease-of-use.

8. Cutting Corners in Education  Should we assume that all smartphone users are smart? This is especially true for security. No technology today (that I know of) can prevent a user from writing down his/her ID and password on a paper attached to the back of the phone. An educated user is your best defense against fraud and loss of privacy. If you teach customers the value of security features—and how to use them—they’ll be happy to see those authentication layers instead of cursing at them.

7. No Consistency in User Experience Across Platforms  Does your Android app look like it’s from a different planet than your iPhone app? People shift between platforms, and lack of consistency is confusing—and annoying. Banks should invest in a MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) to help teams ensure a consistent user experience between environments. A MEAP such as IBM Worklight can enable write-once-deploy-across-many-platforms that both saves cost and improves user satisfaction.

6. The “X2 Button” Tablet App  If your iPad app strategy is to tell users to push the X2 button, you’re missing an opportunity to provide customers a richer banking experience. You’re also providing an interface that’s downright clunky. Tablets aren’t going anywhere soon, so don’t waste the screen real estate your clients have paid a premium for—invest in a tablet-friendly user experience with dedicated features such as spending analysis and retirement planning.

Optimistic Forecast for FinTech Providers

A new report, being released today by the William Mills Agency, reveals that spending by financial institutions is recovering as the economy and industry rebounds. The tenth annual ‘Bankers as Buyers’ study shares indepth insights and research from more than thirty individuals and organizations regarding what technology, services and solutions banks and credit unions are expected to invest in 2013. 

This report is a compilation of viewpoints from many of the most influential research and fintech support institutions in the country and is available as a free download here.

In this year's report, IDC Financial Insights projected that technology spending is expected to increase to $57 billion, with much of the spending expected to occur in the ‘second tier’ of financial institutions ($1 billion - $10 billion) as opposed to the largest banks.

"As technology continues to be central to customer interactions and an improved customer experience, we are constantly reminded that technology in not a banking department, but is everywhere . . . including in the hands of consumers”, states Scott Mills, president of the Williams Mills Agency. “Demographic and behavioral changes, combined with changing technology preferences and the need for improved trust and brand loyalty will force banks and credit unions to evaluate the role of technology in the delivery of services", adds Mills.

Additional findings of this year’s ‘Bankers as Buyers’ report include:

• A total of 14,210 financial institutions make up today’s depository landscape, which is down 3.7 percent from 2011 according to the FDIC and CUNA.
• While much of the focus on payments technology is on mobile, organizations are also looking at improvements in online payments, ACH, P2P and prepaid cards to attract customers.
• Mobile banking gained a stronger foothold in 2012, as FIs strived to meet increasing consumer demand for anytime, anywhere financial services.
• Consumer mobile banking is now used by 33% of mobile consumers according to Javelin Strategy and Research.
• According to the 2012 KPMG Community Banking Outlook Survey, 47 percent of responding institutions identified regulatory and legislative pressures as the most significant barrier to growth over the upcoming year.

New Smart Card Geared to Convenience and Safety Conscious Consumers

As banks continue to innovate around the use and rewards structure of both debit and credit cards, the penetration of smart cards in the United States has lagged other countries. That may soon change, however, after Pittsburgh-based Dynamics, Inc. won the first prize ($1,000,000) 'DemoGod' award at this week's Demo tech start-up conference in Silicon Valley.

Leveraging a programmable magnetic stripe that can be changed at any time (but still able to be read at today's magnetic stripe POS readers) the MultiAccount card can carry different card accounts on one piece of razor thin plastic.

Banking on Social Sites Unlikely

According to a new research report by Forrester, Banking On Social Sites Is A Work In Progress, while social networking sites have a 30-day active population of more than 400 million users of which more than half visit on any given day, that love doesn't extend to banking through social networks. In fact, more than 70% of online households surveyed showed little or no interest in accessing their accounts through social sites like Facebook. Not surprisingly, the reasons for the lack of interest revolves around privacy and security concerns more than anything else.

So, while the majority of large financial institutions continue to look for more ways to leverage social networking's ability to engage customers, resolve problems and ultimately build loyalty, the reach of these sites beyond stronger interactive communication remains to be seen. At the very least, consumers will need the stronger security guarantees, authentication and more that is already afforded customer who use online and mobile banking.

Now's the Time to Build Retirement Dialogue With Your Customers

In yesterday's post, I discussed the significant deposit growth being experienced by major banks and the opportunities and risks that can be associated with an economic environment of uncertainty. An often overlooked opportunity for account acquisition and relationship growth is delivering on consumer's retirement needs.

Now is the best time to reach out to customers and prospects in your market area and position your institution as the safe and secure place to place their retirement assets. And with retirement assets approaching $20 trillion, the opportunity is significant.