Top Three Trends in Banking and Financial Services

In this post, my colleague at Canon Business Process Services (Canon), Serdar Ercetin, BPO Advisor with a special focus on banking and financial services (BFS), shares his thoughts on technology and business process trends in the industry. Serdar points out that many organizations including BFS companies continually face two critical objectives: contain costs and comply with strict industry rules and regulations. Maintaining effective data security and privacy continually challenges both of these goals. As a solution, companies often leverage advanced technology systems and services. In this context, following are the top three trends and priorities that Serdar believes companies want managed services providers to focus on offering in the next few years.

1. Customer Empowerment and Omni-channel Services

BFS companies are heavily investing in services that run on mobile platforms to address their customers’ “omni-channel” service demands. Providing such services on a whenever and wherever basis, requires making back- and front-end business processes more efficient and less costly. Challenged by financial technology startups, traditional BFS companies are either investing in these startups or establishing their own internal eco-system to improve the overall customer experience. Today’s customers expect consistent service during each encounter, whether that means processing an insurance claim on time, or fixing a billing or credit card issue. In order to provide the best experience, BFS organizations are working towards blurring the operational lines separating front-, middle- and back-office operations by streamlining systems to enable straight-through processing. Today’s consumers are more informed, tech-savvy and engaged, and therefore more demanding than past generations. They want answers and a resolution quickly and through diverse channels that include text messaging, chat, social media and self-service. Therefore, BFS companies have been and will be changing the way they engage with customers.

2. Business Process Management and Automation Solutions

What is driving the growth for BFS companies in the business process management and automation areas is the growing need to automate time-consuming manual processing and routine tasks in middle- and back-office operations. Robotic process automation (RPA), machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) are extremely popular buzzwords in the BFS sector and vendors providing these services have experienced exponential growth in recent years. According to Serdar, while machines could automate around 50 percent of the jobs in the western world within the next two decades, a significant number of new jobs will be created by this movement by enabling humans to concentrate on more value-added activities rather than routine work.

3. Analytics and Predictive Capabilities

BFS companies have been collecting big data without knowing how to best utilize it. Feeding this data into AI-powered applications and platforms that run advanced analytics has enabled enterprises to start making informed and data-driven business decisions. Serdar says that for companies to incorporate ML, AI and natural language processing (NLP) into their operations to work with their legacy systems is a challenge. The solution could include investing more in strategic transformational initiatives. This approach can enable BFS organizations to be ready for the future challenges and operate as truly predictive enterprises.

Next month I will feature another blog post offering Serdar’s insights about technology and business process automation challenges in BFS. In the meantime, feel free to visit the Business Process Outsourcing page of our website for additional insights in the form of white papers, research reports, case histories and more.