What does the bank of the future look like?

By Gaia Lamperti

At a time when we are seeing the rise of embedded finance, Big Techs exploring financial services, and increasing demand for customer-centric digital products and services, where is the banking industry headed?

Trying to offer an answer to that, strategic advisor Pacemakers and digital product consultancy Elsewhen have joined forces to deliver the concept for Bank of the Future (BOTF), a vision of a transformative, customer-centric platform revolutionising the way we use financial products.

Brought to life by leading Cloud-native BaaS platform Vodeno, BOTF automatically takes the best course of action for the customer, based on insights from their behavioural data gathered via APIs, online spending, and location services. BOTF aims to become a trusted and transparent, invisible financial companion to help customers hit their goals.

“The reason why things are the way they are today, is historical and depends on how banks think about themselves and what they choose to prioritise,” commented Elsewhen’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer Leon Gauhman. “We look at old problems with fresh spirit and fresh eyes to see new opportunities for customers.”

BOTF provides customers with their own real-time, automated personal bank that acts in their interests and responds to their needs around the core functions of spending, borrowing, and saving or investing. This way, many day-to-day banking decisions are taken automatically by the bank, based on customer preferences and historic behaviour.

The blueprint of BOTF is founded on the three phases of the banking innovation process: Adapt, Evolve and Transform. As the firms believe that FinTechs are already delivering on the ‘Adapt’ and ‘Evolve’ side, their project aims to power the next step, the ‘Transform’ phase, for a number of innovative core banking platforms and solutions.

“Looking at the banking industry’s profoundly transformational situation we said – Ok, how does this actually represent itself into the customer needs?” Alessandro Hatami, Managing Partner at Peacemaker, told IBS Intelligence. “We realised that what banks are doing today is just adapting propositions to new technologies and it’s not that distinctive, they keep using the same back end and the same engagement model.”

By contrast, BOTF will focus solely on customer needs and outcomes through seamless UX, natural language interfaces and automatic recommendations, a model that challenges the traditional banking ecosystem. “It’s time to do better. The Bank of the Future is a prototype of the first car when everyone else is focussing on building faster horses. It’s a concept superior to the existing banking models,” Hatami added.

But the three firms do not want it to remain just a concept and they are seeking progressive organisations keen to adopt the BOTF model in order to revolutionise the way consumers use financial services.

“We believe consumers should have access to the best banking products and services, anytime and anywhere. Modern cloud-based technologies make this promise a reality, and we built our Cloud Platform to be one of the most comprehensive banking platforms with the mission to offer embedded financial services to FinTechs, established businesses and brands,” explained Vodeno’s Chief Commercial Officer, Tom Bentley. “The Bank of the Future concept is a very compelling vision of a customer-first future, and we are excited to have our platform be the engine to make it happen.”