6th May 2023
See What we can doIn today's digital age, the banking industry is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional banks are facing increasing competition from fintech startups that are leveraging the latest technologies to disrupt the industry. As a result, many banks are beginning to realize the importance of thinking like tech companies to remain competitive. By embracing innovation and leveraging technology, banks can improve their operations, enhance customer experience, and gain a competitive edge in the market. At the same time, the bank could learn a lot from tech companies, which are known for their innovative and agile approaches to product development. One of the key aspects of the tech company mindset is the ability to quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market trends. They are constantly experimenting with new ideas, testing them with customers, and iterating until they find the best solution.
Today, technologies provide various platforms to bring innovation to firms. Further, advancements in technologies would sustain the growth of the firms economically in terms of reduction in time, effort, and price of production. Hence, these days it is necessary for the Bank to adopt technologies as it has to maintain a larger database of customers, secure their identity and manage all the activities. These accelerated the pace of adopting technologies and consumers are increasingly demanding more digital services from their banks. As a result, banks are under pressure to adopt new technologies to remain competitive in the market.
The drivers behind the adaptation are mainly convenience, strengthening security, customer experience, enhance efficiency, and reduction in cost. Well aware of the increase in the usage of smartphones, consumers are now used to being able to access information and services anywhere at any time. As a result, they expect their banks to offer them the same convenience. This means being able to access their accounts and perform transactions from any place. Customers want to be able to check their account balances, transfer money, and pay bills quickly and easily, without having to visit a physical branch. By adopting new technologies, banks can offer their customers the convenience they are looking for. Further, with the increase in cyber threats, consumers are concerned about the safety of their personal and financial information. They want their banks to take the necessary steps to protect their information from being hacked. With the advancement in security technologies, such as biometric authentication and encryption, banks can reassure their customers that their information is safe and secure.
Increasing in implementation of digital banking enhances customer satisfaction and experience with the bank. Through digital banking, banks could offer their client personalized recommendations and services based on their financial needs and goals. In addition to that, they could provide customized products and services based on the customer’s preferences. By automating their processes, banks can reduce the time and resources required to perform various tasks. This can lead to cost savings, which can be passed on to customers in the form of better rates and fees.
Over the past few years, conventional banks have faced tough competition from fintech startups that have leveraged the latest technologies to deliver innovative financial services to customers. As a result, banks have been accelerated to adapt to the digital age and embrace new technologies to sustain in the competitive market. In this process, they have learned several valuable lessons from tech companies.
Tech companies are known for their innovation and the ability to quickly adapt to changing market conditions. Banks have realized that innovation is critical to staying ahead of the curve and meeting the evolving needs of customers. Recently, they have been investing heavily in skilled tech professionals to create new products and services that are aligned with changing customer expectations.
Collaboration is key to driving innovation and staying ahead of the competition. Banks have realized that they need to collaborate with fintech startups, tech companies, and other players in the ecosystem to create new products and services. One of the main benefits of bank collaboration with fintech companies is the ability to quickly and efficiently implement new technology solutions. Fintech companies often specialize in specific areas, such as mobile payments or online lending, and can provide banks with ready-made solutions that can be easily integrated into their existing systems. This allows banks to offer new services to their customers without the need to invest in expensive research and development.
Banks have realized that they need to invest in robust cybersecurity measures to protect customer data and prevent cyber-attacks. They need to collaborate with cybersecurity experts to identify vulnerabilities and implement security measures to protect customer data. Banks also need to educate their employees and customers about cybersecurity risks and best practices. This education can include training on how to identify and avoid phishing scams, the importance of strong passwords, and the risks of using public Wi-Fi networks. Banks can also provide customers with resources, such as fraud monitoring and alerts, to help them detect and respond to potential cybersecurity threats.
Finally, banks have learned that digital transformation is a continuous journey, and there is always room for improvement. Tech companies are constantly innovating, and banks need to do the same to stay ahead of the curve. By adopting digital banking technologies, banks can provide their customers with convenient and efficient digital services that rival those offered by fintech companies. The advantage the banks have over fintech companies is their existing customer base. Many customers still prefer to use traditional banks for their financial needs, and by offering digital banking services, banks can retain these customers and attract new ones. Digital banking can also help banks reach a wider audience, as it allows them to offer services to customers who may not have access to physical bank branches.
Technologies are constantly evolving and tech companies are making ways to adapt to it. For instance, Data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are advanced unique platforms to gain insights about their customers and improve their products and services. The banks need to work on these areas to leverage the power of data analytics and AI to gain a better understanding of their customers and deliver personalized services. By analyzing customer data, banks can learn customer behavior, preferences, and needs, and use this information to create distinct products and services which has a competitive edge too.
Banks are making their way to utilizing technology to attract a large customer base. The role of leading executives in the bank is evolving. Modern CTOs are faced with the challenge of balancing the delivery of innovative solutions with the need for high performance and reliability, while also ensuring compliance and minimizing risks. In order to achieve these objectives, observability plays a crucial role in enabling CTOs to build a robust infrastructure, drive banking innovation, and gain a 360-degree real-time view of their systems.
Tech-adapted banks are using their advantage of being able to create services from scratch to redefine the customer experience and innovate faster than conventional banks. They are hiring top developer talent to build apps and services that prioritize the customer while leaving the modernization of core banking and systems of record to conventional banks. This allows next-generation banks to focus on developing more intuitive and reliable systems of engagement, delivering a simpler and more engaging service experience without having to work against technical and architectural debt or inflexible legacy IT architectures. Observability is a critical factor in driving innovation across the software lifecycle for banks. By using data-driven insights and software telemetry to identify and fix issues and friction points, CTOs and their teams can focus on continuous improvement. The importance of observability for innovation is widely recognized, with almost all leading executives expecting to increase their observability in every financial year. CTOs make the correct strategic decisions and know where to make the right technology investments that drive continuous improvement for the whole organization.
The banking industry is undergoing significant changes, and both conventional banks and Tech banks are striving for growth. However, as companies grow in size, their IT stacks become more complex, requiring scalable software architectures that can manage growth while meeting regulatory requirements. While conventional banks need to modernize their core banking infrastructure and adopt new cloud platforms, digital disruptors can design and build their systems with these factors in mind. Nevertheless, tech-adapted banks need regulated banking licenses to expand their service portfolio, and without them, they will hit a growth ceiling. CTOs of legacy banks and fintech start-ups need observability to build a strong and reliable infrastructure, boost banking innovation, and provide 360-degree real-time visibility. By having full visibility of software telemetry, CTOs can manage end-to-end service digitalization across the entire stack, making risky yet essential operations like cloud or SaaS migrations, or adopting new microservices and API-based software architectures safer and faster. Furthermore, observability helps banks comply with operational resilience regulations, making it a crucial component of any modernization or scale-up strategy, whether on the cloud or on-premises.
By providing real-time telemetry data from a central platform, observability enables CTOs to take a comprehensive view of their entire IT stack, identify and resolve errors before they affect customers, and enhance the end-to-end customer experience. According to a survey of IT decision-makers, observability plays a critical role in digital transformation, improves digital experiences for end-users, and safeguards organizations against financial and reputational harm while facilitating business growth. Furthermore, observability is highly valued by ITDMs across the financial sector, with 91% considering it crucial throughout the software lifecycle and 25% seeing it as a means of achieving cost-effectiveness, while 27% highlighting its potential to accelerate deployment speed. Through observability, CTOs can also offer real-time business-level visibility to all stakeholders, enabling them to understand how software and digital services impact business performance.
The rapid progress of financial technology in the last decade has elevated the role of CTOs, especially within fintech companies. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift toward digital adoption, marking a new era for the industry. This has placed CTOs in a prominent position, enabling them to establish themselves as key leaders in the financial sector. Observability can assist them in fulfilling regulatory obligations, mitigating the risk of downtime, and focusing on business growth and innovation. However, observability's business impact transcends the technical aspects as the FinServ industry is also a competitive landscape for recruiting and retaining top talent. Providing cutting-edge technologies that simplify workloads and encourage innovation is crucial for attracting and keeping skilled workers. Facilitating faster and smarter work processes through observability can provide FinServ organizations with the impetus they need to outperform their rivals and develop state-of-the-art platforms. Collaborative work is crucial for innovation, and observability can help bring teams together.
The banking industry has undergone a significant transformation in recent years, with the rise of technology changing the way financial services are delivered. Many banks are now recognizing the need to adopt the ways of tech companies to stay relevant and competitive in today's digital age. Banks can also learn from tech companies when it comes to innovation. Tech companies are known for their culture of innovation, constantly pushing the boundaries to create new and better products. It is recommended that bank could adopt this mindset by encouraging a culture of innovation within their organizations. In conclusion, banks could develop a culture of innovation and agility that enables them to sustain in the market and deliver the products and services that customers looking for.