Banks today face various challenges due to rapidly evolving market dynamics, technological advancements, changing customer expectations, and regulatory requirements.
Multi-headed challenge areas.
Digital technology has disrupted the banking industry, compelling banks to undergo digital transformation. This transformation involves modernizing legacy systems, adopting advanced analytics, implementing robust cybersecurity measures, and providing seamless digital experiences.
Customer expectations. Customers now expect personalized, convenient, and frictionless banking experiences. They demand omnichannel access, quick response times, and tailored solutions.
Thirdly, the Fintech companies have emerged as agile competitors, leveraging technology to provide innovative and customer-friendly financial solutions. Fintech firms offer services such as digital payments, peer-to-peer lending, robo-advisory, and mobile banking, often with greater speed and efficiency.
Lastly, as Banks operate in a highly regulated environment, they face compliance challenges such as A.M.L., KYC, data protection, and cybersecurity requirements. Compliance with these regulations demands significant resources, including technology investments, stringent risk management practices, and continuous monitoring.
What is the way ahead? C.L.E.A.N.
Addressing these challenges requires banks to be agile, innovative, and customer-centric. It calls for strategic investments in technology, partnerships with fintech firms, effective risk management, compliance frameworks, and a customer-first mindset. By proactively addressing these challenges, banks can position themselves for success in the dynamic and increasingly digital banking landscape.
At Maveric, these practices are C.L.E.A.N. – Co-creators, Lean, Evolve fast, Agile, and Next-gen tech. This blog elaborates on how these create a difference in retail, corporate, and wealth management.
Co-creation.
Co-creation goes beyond traditional product development processes, where banks design solutions based on their insights and assumptions. Instead, it involves involving customers and other stakeholders in ideating, planning, and developing products and services. By leveraging the collective intelligence and diverse perspectives of customers, banks can create solutions that are better aligned with customer expectations and preferences.
Two Examples of Co-Creation in Banking
- Innovation Labs and Hackathons: Banks are increasingly setting up innovation labs and organizing hackathons to engage customers, employees, and external stakeholders. These events bring together diverse talent and expertise to collaborate on solving specific challenges and developing new banking products and services.
- Customer Feedback and Surveys: Banks actively seek customer feedback through surveys, focus groups, and online platforms to gather insights on their preferences, pain points, and expectations.
Lean Practices in Banking
From value stream mapping, standardized work, kaizen events, Just in Time inventory management, Error proofing, Gemba walks, and visual management, the lean practices in Banking have come a long way since Toyota popularized the concept of Lean in manufacturing. These are just a few examples of how lean practices can be applied in the banking industry to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance customer value. By adopting lean principles and techniques, banks can optimize their processes, improve operational performance, and deliver better customer experiences.
Evolve Fast.
The third lever in Maveric’s CLEAN methodology is Evolve-Fast. In today’s rapidly evolving banking landscape, developing quickly is crucial for banks to remain competitive and meet customer expectations. Here are some key strategies that banks can adopt to evolve rapidly –
- Embracing digital transformation, modernizing legacy systems, adopting advanced technologies, and reimagining customer experiences.
- DevOps Methodologies: DevOps methods like – iterative development, quick feedback loops, and continuous improvement help to promote collaboration between dev and ops teams, ensuring faster delivery, reduced time-to-market, and higher quality.
- Collaborate with Fintechs: Banks can collaborate with fintech firms through partnerships, accelerators, or investment programs to leverage their expertise and accelerate innovation efforts. This collaboration helps banks tap into new technologies, enhance customer experiences, and drive rapid innovation.
Agile Banking:
Agile practices allow banks to respond more quickly to changing market dynamics. These methodologies, borrowed from the software development world, aim to make banking organizations more responsive, flexible, and customer-centric. Agile methods enable banks to adapt to changing market dynamics, rapidly deliver innovative solutions, and enhance customer experiences. Here are some examples of agile banking practices – agile project management, cross-functional teams, minimum viable products (M.V.P.), Continuous Integration and deployment, Customer-centric design thinking, and an Agile culture and mindset.
Next-Generation Banking
The banking industry is continuously evolving, driven by emerging technologies that can transform how financial services are delivered. These emerging technologies have the potential to reshape the banking industry by enhancing customer experiences, improving operational efficiency, enabling new business models, and driving innovation. Banks that successfully leverage these technologies can stay competitive, deliver superior services, and meet customers’ evolving demands in the digital age. The list – includes A.I., ML, R.P.A., IoT, Cloud Computing, Open Banking and APIs, BD&A, Biometrics, Identity management, and Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology (D.L.T.).
Conclusion
The C.L.E.A.N. set of practices in Maveric is crucial for Banks to foster a healthy stream of innovations for their customers. The industry is experiencing a wave of innovation driven by technological advancements, changing customer expectations, and evolving regulatory landscapes. By embracing these innovations, banks can stay competitive, deliver superior services, and adapt to customers’ changing needs and expectations in a rapidly evolving industry.
About Maveric Systems
Starting in 2000, Maveric Systems is a niche, domain-led Banking Tech specialist partnering with global banks to solve business challenges through emerging technology. 3000+ tech experts use proven frameworks to empower our customers to navigate a rapidly changing environment, enabling sharper definitions of their goals and measures to achieve them.
Across retail, corporate & wealth management, Maveric accelerates digital transformation through native banking domain expertise, a customer-intimacy-led delivery model, and a vibrant leadership supported by a culture of ownership.
With centers of excellence for Data, Digital, Core Banking, and Quality Engineering, Maveric teams work in 15 countries with regional delivery capabilities in Bangalore, Chennai, Dubai, London, Poland, Riyadh, and Singapore.
