As banks and financial institutions plan for their future, different viewpoints must be considered before preparing a technology roadmap. In our latest interview, Manish Pandey, Senior Vice-President and Head of Banking JIFFY.ai, outlines the three dimensions institutions must consider when moving their banking platform to the future:
- The customers’ point of view
- The employees’ point of view
- The Financial Institution’s point of view (POV)
“Of course, there are several different direct dimensions banks must consider when preparing their platform for the future, but everything starts with the customers and employees,” says Pandey.
The Customers’ POV
Financial institutions want to address their customers’ needs quickly. Therefore, they must adopt modern technologies that will enable them to respond to their customers’ needs and broaden their market. These technologies must also power their employees to become effective and productive when delivering customer expectations. For example, technologies needed to support initiatives like open banking and embedded finance are no longer ‘nice to have’, but solutions customers expect.
The customer ‘asks’ are simple: Meet me where I am. This means providing customers with personalized services and solutions to meet their needs wherever they are today. When planning a product roadmap to elevate the institution’s technology for the requirements of the future, customers should not be viewed as Generation X, Y, or Z—but as individuals with specific life goals and financial needs.
In addition, all customers expect to interact with their financial institution anytime, anywhere, which can only be delivered digitally. Customer demands are not unique to banking; these have increased in the retail segment for instance, pertaining to unique shopping experiences, and even digitalized services. The Retail industry has mastered the art of fulfilling customer needs ‘anytime, anywhere, anyhow,’ as they have come to terms with the concept as a must-have customer expectation when doing business.
The Employees’ POV
The second aspect is the employees because they participate in everything the banks are trying to do today, tomorrow, and in the future. When updating their technology, the institution must address the challenges and concerns about the effectiveness and efficiency of their employees.
Bank employees are dealing with a lot of technological silos and bad data inconsistencies, which makes it extremely hard for them to be effective in terms of customer service. Add to that swivel chairing between technologies, which erodes customer experience.
The banking technology platform of the future must equip employees with insights to generate customer information, stay intelligent, and be proactive in front of customers. Employees expect the technology to empower them by removing the silos and creating a seamless workflow to get to the data—which, in turn, enables them to have value-added customer conversations, leading to additional services and product sales.
The Financial Institution’s POV
“Embedded finance and open banking will see a lot of activity in the next few years. So, from the bank’s perspective, it is time to prepare their product roadmap to deliver these solutions to customers soon,” Pandey says.
The third dimension is the financial institution, or the bank. To grow, they must acquire more customers. Therefore, they must adapt to the changing dynamics, especially with their financial technology. FinTech firms enable the bank’s competition to come from any corner, challenging, threatening, and eating their market share.
“Financial institution and banks must be able to adjust to the market very quickly. They should adopt innovative technologies that enable them to respond to market needs and empower their employees to become effective and interact with customers anytime, anywhere. These interactions include in-person, phone, mobile app, or computer—customers must be able to reach your employees faster through their preferred channel and technology,” Pandey adds.
However, our challenge today is that institutions deal with a lot of legacy technology. Legacy technology does not communicate with the ecosystem, operates in silos, data sits in different pockets, and those pockets do not interact.
Creating the Banking Platform of the Future—Today
The banking platform of the future should allow banks and financial institutions to address the challenges spanning all the areas mentioned above. The solution to modernizing legacy technology is AI, according to Pandey.
“By modernization, I don’t mean the financial institution should replace everything in their tech stack—that will not happen. There are cost and time factors, and they must continue to run because they cannot shut down to migrate information from legacy systems to modern technologies,” Pandey says. “AI is a technology that can manage systems, legacy solutions, and fresh solutions while enabling institutions and their employees to do business faster and easier. It creates a seamless, frictionless user experience without having to shut down.”
Modern Banking AI platforms are not only about ‘looks and feels,’ but also how it operates while opening an account, or processing service requests such as changing an address or ordering a replacement card. This experience must be centered on the employee and customer journeys first, to be modernized to address current and future expectations.
On the other hand, the look and feel of a modern platform allows employees and customers to achieve the process outcome very quickly without going through several different clicks. As open banking and embedded finance evolve, institutions must start planning for their future by catering to these requirements.
JIFFY.ai’s AI-powered, no-code platform enables financial institutions to unify, simplify, and modernize their legacy technology systems to meet the demands of their customers, employees, and organization, and prepare better for the future.
“JIFFY.ai’s solution to modernize the legacy systems of financial institutions seamlessly bridges old and new technologies with AI sitting on top,” Pandey adds.
