Next Tuesday, FinovateEurope will showcase the best new innovations in banking, payments and financial technology in London. The event, like all Finovate conferences, will mix fast-paced demos (no slides allowed) from handpicked financial technology companies with high-quality networking. It’s a blend that has won rave reviews from thousands of bankers, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, analysts, and press over the last few years.
Is it a sign of economic recovery that people at Sibos 2010 have such a good sense of humour?
Like this speaker at the Mobile Keynote who stated that “mobile banking is about small screen real estate”. Hilarious!
In case you didn’t know yet, mobile is not just a new channel and should certainly not be considered as one. Don’t think that it’s just about taking your products and making them available via the mobile channel just like you did with the Internet channel. No, there are many more opportunities than that.
Mobile is ubiquitous, convenient, location based, highly personal and it is always on. For years we have wanted to know our customers, well now we can. Not only can you access and interact with your customers, you even know where they are.
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Read an interesting blog by Chris Skinner at TheFinanser on customer service in banking and raising the question whether banking has become a utility.
Do customers really want utility banking? For some aspects like payments, I would say yes. You don’t need to go to a bank to make a payment these days. The payment space is really becoming a utility based service and there, quality of service and price are key differentiators. Consumers just want this to work and to be cheap.
However for other aspects in (retail) banking, the key is for banks to realise that they are retail organisations that happen to sell financial products. Innovation should be customer driven and IT enabled and not the other way around as it very often is. Sales and customer service organisations within banks should be tightly coupled, for example linking customer service performance to sales success.
The customer has changed, is more savvy, listens to his peers, … But he/she is still out there, ready to consume, and with a little bit of love, will be happy to buy from you.