Reimagining Digital

Digital adoption, artificial intelligence, automation, embedded analytics are terminologies which are known to all the people associated with the financial services/industry. These terminologies are in use in the last decade –thanks to the internationally acclaimed consultants, IT wizards, Digital leads of Banks, the regulators, social media and a rare breed of Bank staff/consumers.

There were debates everywhere as to the reduction of jobs, reduction/loss of business for banks/financial institutions, reduced business for technology companies as to the impact of not adopting to the changes in the digital world. Changes were inevitable and experimentation with digital in terms of new products, new services, new technologies were adopted by the industry. The new innovation models were expected to create disruption in the financial service space and a possible movement away from convention business models which was in practice for long adhering to the rules and regulations.

However, statistics of digital adoption by banks prove that the trends have changed but not to the extent as envisaged by the protagonists. There is definite increase in retail banking products/services in terms of digital adoption the world over and increasing day by day. The digital space is poised with right idea, technology, infrastructure, staff, consumers, products, services and the likes but still adoption is not revolutionizing the financial services industry as was widely predicted. The platform and ecosystem currently available and known to the world is enormous-thanks to communication revolution, internet and the connected systems.

It is worth examining the reason for slow growth in digital disruption in the financial services- – cyber security,non- awareness, staff not equipped, technology not foolproof, customer experience not appealing, not meeting the consumer expectations, demographic reasons, non-compatibles devices or non -penetration of smart devices in the rural areas, complex products, dependency on legacy systems. Maturity of financial services in terms of digital adoption with no clear definition of digital, lesser investments for digital, regulations and policies of Central Banks, inability to handle changes could be other reasons worth considering.

To conclude, while digital revolution is the buzzword in the financial services/banking, digital adoption has not reached the proportions which many dreamt of. It could be argued that the last decade set the platform /base and the next few years will pave the way for digital growth, maturity and increased business through digital adoption. The models need to be innovative to be successful and can be a combination of old and new platform or a completely different business model targeting existing or existing and new techsavvy customers. Banks and Financial services/industry are watching the trends and waiting to launch the offerings at a faster pace than ever before. For this - banking, technology and the staff associated with this field need to realign their skill sets, learnings and vision to "reimagine digital".