Evgenia Ostrovskaya, Business Development Director, Retail and Banking at Genetec, predicts that the impending arrival of the fifth-generation cellular wireless (5G) network will mark a turning point.
2019 has seen the continuation of a very pronounced transition within the banking sector. The traditional bank is changing from a bureaucratic machine to one focused on three main functions: being a trusted advisor, a problem solver and a digital ambassador.
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A reason for this change is a reaction to the increasing centrality of digital services, and the popularity of challenger banks – whose exceptional digital platforms have created high expectations of more customer centric offerings.
Therefore, this modern climate dictates that institutions become more agile. They can do this by cutting down on costly assets where possible and the remainder being audited for optimisation.
As a result, outsourcing has become vital a practice. For instance, this year I’ve noticed banks have had a tendency to opt for subscription models and the cloud rather than buying their own on-premise hardware. Furthermore, 2019 has seen an industry-wide push towards investigating and testing the cloud as a viable alternative to on-premise, but I think 2020 will see this approach become an industry best practice.
A 2020 game-changer
Given the imminent arrival of 5G, which will increase speeds, bandwidths and open up new possibilities on the digital front, I believe this could be a game-changer.
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By GlobalDataAnother key trend within the industry has been to optimise operations where possible. Just like the retail sector, as demand for the physical store has lessened there’s been an increased need to optimise to reduce running costs. Resultantly, banks have been optimising through the unification of their systems, like security, IT and operations, as integrated platforms cut down on maintenance and training costs.
We’ll likely also see the bank branch shrink, not only in the building size, but staff numbers as well, and narrow their opening hours too. Additionally, there’s a new trend of measuring corporate building utilisation to minimise wasted space – as a lot of staff travel and work from home.
Unified systems are also a great vehicle for this optimisation as companies have all their data consolidated into a single platform, which allows staff to more easily identify trends within a branch and make changes to improve the customer experience – like branch layout to deal with queues, or the number of ATMs or staff that are available at any given time.
An internal personnel shift
Therefore, I think 2020 will likely see an internal personnel shift within banking, as these new data-driven insights will require new staff to carry out these changes.
However, the most critical priority for the banking sector in 2019, and no doubt moving into 2020 as well, has been cybersecurity. The last few years have seen highly publicised incidents of large companies being unable to protect their assets, often followed by heavy criticism from the public, and unsurprisingly cyber is always front for banking mind decision-makers.
