Some New Year predictions – starting with the customer

Financial services will become more reliant on customer experience

With the rise of open banking in 2018, there will be an even greater emphasis on Financial Services (FS) organisations to use customer experience as a means of differentiation in an increasingly level playing field. The end consumer will gain even greater control and access to their own data, and third party tools will start to break down the siloes between different banking groups. If Financial Services organisations want customers to continue to consolidate services within their one group, they will have to do more to win their loyalty through outstanding customer experience

Finding the right balance

We should expect them to continue to find the right balance between security, simplicity, convenience and innovation. Many of the above aspects are in direct competition with each other – for example, the quicker and more frictionless (i.e. the more convenient) you make a payment system, the more susceptible it is perceived to be open to fraud and security concerns. As consumers of other products outside the FS world continue to benefit from greater innovation and in a lot of cases simplicity, FS organisations need to follow suit and keep up, while at the same time allaying security fears that inherently come with the industry.

FS organisations will stretch the limits of CX

In my opinion, further blending a personalised experience with an increasingly tech and mobile heavy experience will become crucial for FS organisations. If these companies can find the right balance between the convenience of technology, with the personalisation of the human touch – especially needed on low frequency, high-value purchases –  this is where they will excel.

 From Ross Durston, MD Financial Services, Maru/edr:

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Banks need to overcome the ‘digital’ obstacle:

Thanks to the rise of digital channels, online accounts and investments in banking apps, banks have already successfully transferred many customers online, which has helped to bring an element of personalisation to the banking experience. But in their move to digital, banks face a key obstacle in that they don’t get to see or interact with their customer very often now that the majority of banking is done remotely and online. Their challenge is to map key customer journeys through their business to identify real moments – or “hotspots” – where they cannot fail. Doing this will also help banks to better understand where they have an opportunity to differentiate themselves.

Steve Brockway, Chief Research Officer, Maru/edr:

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Security by design

Google’s discovery of a flaw in the architecture of Intel and other chipmakers’ products highlights the urgent need for security vigilance when designing technology. Time and time again, we see how failure to design in security from the beginning, whether into software, hardware, or firmware, puts our data, our health and our privacy at risk.

“GDPR-like ‘security by design’ has not been the default position to date and we must take steps to make it so. It is therefore imperative that organisations make targeted investments in people, process and technology, to ensure we truly are secure.

“Google is an excellent example of this, undertaking independent research is to find flaws in technology whether hardware or software.  In parallel, Sonatype has continuously invested in research to discover vulnerabilities in millions of open source software components, which comprise 80-90% of a modern enterprise application. These investments make it possible to quickly disseminate actionable information to help control and remediate these issues while keeping innovation moving at DevOps-native speed.

Derek Weeks, vice president and DevOps Advocate at Sonatype

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