Soon Customer Situations Will Dictate Services, Rather Than Vice Versa

Customers vote with their feet. The access to a wider range of consumer banking service providers and consumer lenders encourage financial institutions to invest in modernizing their own internal systems to be better able to deliver the comprehensive financial experience many have come to expect having received similar experiences from retail and healthcare industry participants.

Driven by changing consumer behaviour, the concept of channel will disappear as banks start to break down these silos and work towards bringing the physical and digital experience together. This will be a huge step for financial institutions to take, but an incredibly important one because customers don’t think in terms of channels – they want to consume services where, when and how they want them and services must be adapted accordingly.

The limitations of a FIs internal systems are not the customer problem, and they do not expect to be limited by those systems. They know that they receive product recommendations from their favorite retailer when engaging online, and are coming to expect that same level of service from an FI they have, in many cases, been doing business for much longer. Technology enables individualized financial solutions to be conceived, implemented and serviced at scale.

Mercator Advisory Group anticipates many FIs that are seeking to retain the primary financial institution (PFI) role with their customers will accelerate their innovation and implementation velocity. Personalized service will be table stakes in the coming years, with the PFI delivering as vital service coordination resource. The fundamental shift in thinking for FIs will be from having “owned” a customer to acting as a fiduciary and advisory partner that benefits when the client is best served.

Overview by Joseph Walent, Associate Director, Customer Interactions Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group

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