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Customer Experience and Design

Top 5 Technology Trends in Financial Services – May 2013

Trying to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to IT issues is a challenging task. Emerging technology forces in the financial services industry are already impacting business. The convergence of these forces does present challenges; however, it also provides a window of opportunity for financial institutions to elevate business performance and gain a competitive advantage. Perficient provides a monthly perspective on some of the most talked about IT issues and emerging trends to help industry professionals identify and rationalize their IT investments.

Winning Mobile Banking Strategies

Digital disruption threats, rising customer expectations and new technologies continue to advance mobile banking in the financial services industry.  Wearable technologies like Google Glass and smart watches may soon allow consumers to manage finances in a whole new way.  As a result, mobile banking has become a seemingly ubiquitous part of our lives and banking culture. How consumers’ changing digital financial expectations impacts banks, credit unions and non-banks is evident through the evolving mobile banking and marketing strategies for delivering services and communicating value to their customers.    

Payments: Regulatory Compliance & Disruption 

With worldwide mobile payment transactions set to $235 billion this year, based on Gartner’s most recent forecast, payment providers must rationalize payments as a key customer channel to be competitive, not only in banking, but also in retail and commerce.  Based on these predictions the financial services industry we’ll likely see growth in P2P payments, money transfers, new bill payment capabilities, and virtual currency.  Disruption is also at a feverish pitch right now as key non-banking service providers accelerate offerings to differentiate themselves from others in the marketplace. 

FinTech Startups & Partnerships Critical

The industry is becoming increasing dependent upon the FinTech community to help organizations deliver innovative technology solutions for their customers.  A consistent theme in the financial services technology is surfacing among innovators – partnering.  Strategic partnerships with other companies and open APIs encourage innovation and accelerates a FI’s ability to bring new services to market.    At the recent FinovateSpring event, a leading FinTech conference, attendees were immersed in demos from financial technology vendors making light bulbs go off in people’s heads and instilling fear in others.  For these reasons, its important for financial marketers and technologists to keep a pulse on the FinTech community and look to leverage partnerships and solutions where it makes sense in their business. 

Refocusing on Data for Decisioning

Financial services front offices are increasingly pressured for real-time business intelligence and analytics, customer insights, and centralized customer preference profiles for their delivery channels.  Technology vendors and solution providers are also experiencing push-back on the term “big data” and the unrest it causes in the industry.  As one of the articles we’ve highlighted states, “It’s not the size of your data that counts; it’s what you do with it”.  As we talk about data management and analytics strategies the focus needs to be more on what value is derived from the solution rather how to classify it.

Innovation at the “Core” of Banking

Leading a core banking transformation is a major undertaking that requires CIO leadership skills and  investment in technologies that help modernize their existing systems.  However, banks soon will not have the option to push off  this core transformation project.  The benefits far outweigh the negatives, as core modernization allows banks to be more agile and respond to changing market opportunities.  During this process of implementing new banking platforms, the use of cloud computing services and need for systems integration will become increasingly important. 

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Elizabeth Dias

Elizabeth Dias is an experienced technology marketing strategist focused on the financial services and retail industry at Perficient. With over nine years of experience as a professional business-to-business (B2B) marketer, Elizabeth is knowledgeable in technology strategies for the financial services industry focusing on mobile banking and payments, data analytics, and enterprise information management. She also closely follows the fintech community as well as tech trends in social and digital, and is also an active blogger and thought leader on Twitter (@techmktggirl).

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