As the CEO of global financial services company Citi once said: “We see ourselves as a technology company with a banking licence” – Micheal Corbat.
This statement is even more valid now for financial services companies than when he made the comment in 2014. Digital transformations are taking place within the financial services industry at blinding speed, as smart technology continues to forge its way into our everyday lives and remote working models have taken a strong hold over financial institutions.
With declining branch traffic, increasing customer expectations, and more competition from digital banking apps like Revolut, the race is well and truly on to digitally transform and outpace the competition.
An overwhelming 97% of 100 financial services surveyed by BDO are currently implementing their digital transformation strategy or developing one. But why is a digital transformation so critical for financial services businesses? What are the key benefits and elements of a successful digital transformation strategy?
From driving efficiency and increasing sales to better team collaboration and higher productivity, the benefits are far reaching and critical to the success of modern financial services organisations. In this blog, we’re diving into the benefits of digital transformation for financial services and talking about the key elements that make it successful.
The secret to growing and retaining your financial customer base? According to an EY Survey of 32,000 retail banking customers, providing a great customer experience is No.1. So, how do you deliver the best experience? Convenience, support, responsiveness, value, and consistency. Digital transformations deliver these important aspects of excellent customer service in spades, making them invaluable for delighting customers and meeting their expectations.
From the ease of online banking and swift response of your virtual customer support to the cost-effective nature of paperless payments, with digital transformation at the heart of your financial service’s processes, the benefits reach right to your customers.
With your best company asset being your employees, giving them the tools and technology they need to collaborate helps them plot innovation for the next wave of digital transformation in your financial services business.
But not only that, better collaboration in digital workspaces using workflow apps, digital communication tools, and automated processes inherently grows more productivity, access to specialised talent, and more time to focus on more complex business challenges.
In 2011, 68% of financial services executives highlighted “managing brand reputation” as their top priority. Over a decade later, that number has increased by 13%, according to Accenture. The best way to protect and improve your brand reputation? A first-class brand experience has consistency, authenticity, and credibility at its core.
The beauty of digitising your documents, services, and internal work protocols is you can design and agree on a set of branding guidelines, customer support processes, and communications strategies. Housed in brand management software, these brand guidelines ensure customers receive a consistent experience, and your employees share the same vision.
Digital transformations significantly reduce manual interventions, tasks, and human interactions. With intelligent workflow software, collaboration tools, and automation, financial services companies can drive efficiencies across all divisions, speed up processes, and allow teams to use their time to focus on more critical tasks.
Digital technologies eliminate a significant chunk of once manual-only tasks like writing and uploading clients’ financial information, serving customer queries at the desk, manually calculating financial insights or forecasts, and handing over important documents between financial teams in person.
Automation tools are coming onto the financial services market at an exponential speed. Whether it’s automated compliance technology, bot-led customer service, automated invoices, customer identity verifications, or money remittance, there appears to be no limit to what automated technology can do for financial services businesses.
With automation comes a host of benefits in and of itself, including less human errors, increased staff productivity, more customer satisfaction, less pressure on internal customer service teams, happier employees, and more free time to think up your next generation of innovative technology-driven ideas.
Thanks to the incredible data universe that analytics technologies afford financial services companies, you can now access a larger volume of data and let intelligent technologies extract meaningful insights. Leaders can use data insights to drive organisational change, inform product development, and improve customer experiences.
According to MIT Centre For Digital Business, companies invested in their digital transformation make 26% more profit and a 12% higher market valuation than their industry competitors. And the data checks out across the board, with 56% of CEOs saying digital improvements have increased revenue (Gartner).
With the long menu of marketing and data-based technology now available to us, there are more ways than ever before to reach customers across every digital touchpoint and use ever-expanding data insights to create more engagement, connection, and conversions, especially with Gen Z and Millennial generations.
There are several marketing and advertising automation tools on the market today that can keep your financial services company top of mind without manual intervention. From automated emails reminding customers to sign up for time-sensitive deals to dynamic advertising that changes based on user behaviour, nothing is stopping you from creating profitable customer journeys that float between traditional and digital marketing worlds.
Financial services companies can take faster leaps toward product development with data to back up their decisions with enhanced customer data, automated online surveys, and deeper insights.
This agility, responsiveness, innovation, and speed delivered by a robust digital transformation strategy enables financial services companies to stay competitive and proactive in developing their product line, whether it’s new online banking tools, automated rewards programs, or intelligent wealth management and investment software.
So, what makes a digital transformation successful for financial services institutions? Let’s look at the most important elements of a digital transformation strategy.
Mobile-first: Over 50% of all traffic comes from mobile (Statista), so digital transformations should aim to increase mobile applications and accessibility.
Open collaboration: Engaging employees and welcoming collaboration across all organisational levels are crucial to successfully implementing a digital transformation strategy.
Cloud technology: Cloud-based services award financial services companies to keep their businesses flexible, ready for change, secure, and cost-effective by investing in less IT infrastructure.
Customer-centric: Customers keep banks and other financial institutions in business. That explains why digital transformations typically have “improving customer experience” as one of their key goals.
Always improving: Digital transformations are always in a constant state of development, it’s not a single focus with a beginning and an end, it’s a continually evolving strategy.
Data-based: Digital transformations have data at their heart, fueling innovative ideas, analysing customer trends, and predicting future demands.
Innovation culture: Successful digital transformations require a keen focus on experimentation, testing, and constant evaluation to learn from outcomes on a micro-scale before spreading across the organisation.
Today, we hope you’ve realised why digital transformation is so critical for financial services’ success and what fundamental elements are essential to shaping your long-term strategy. One such element is testing every cog in your digital transformation machine to continuously improve, measure success, ensure your project runs smoothly, and achieve your desired outcome.
At Assured Thought, we listen closely to understand your organisation’s unique goals and challenges to develop a bespoke testing and quality assurance program to complement your objectives. Our testing solutions are delivered by subject matter experts and integrate seamlessly into your team to help you accomplish short and long term digital transformation goals.
Get in touch with us today to develop a tailored testing strategy for your financial services business.
Want to learn more about digital transformation in the financial services sector? Read our previous blog on creating your digital transformation roadmap.