Challenging the Challengers: How can Incumbent Financial Institutions Defend Against Disruptors?

Historically, large banking institutions have always been somewhat on the back foot when it comes to innovation, holding off on innovation to see what is successful within smaller institutions or companies. Only once proven successful, deciding to roll out the new innovative feature or tech to their massive customer base.

This strategy, however, is no longer sufficient and one must understands and acknowledges this fact. With the introduction of challengers and disruptors, these institutions need to up their game and experiment if they want to stay relevant. One needs the relvant tools to ensure that relevance is achievable.

THE GROWTH OF CONTACTLESS PAYMENTS 

The pandemic changed many aspects of people’s daily lives, one of them being how they pay for their goods. Covid-19 accelerated the use of contactless payments and other digital financial services. The pandemic has essentially made in-branch banking irrelevant, there is no longer a need to enter a branch to do any form of banking when you can simply do it all from the comfort of your own home. The pandemic has taught us that in order to stay relevant and keep up with the challengers, institutions need to be quick to innovate and evolve.

CHALLENGING THE CHALLENGERS

Long before the pandemic, banks were struggling to keep up with challengers who are fast to create new customer interfaces, to streamline customer experience and to modernise both their front and back office.

Customer demands have shifted dramatically since the pandemic, and if banks don’t act swiftly to keep up with them, they may very well become irrelevant in the near future. Below is a list of suggestions of how incumbent financial institutions can defend against disruptors:

1. Act Now

Many fintech firms have become even stronger as a result of the pandemic, so the need to act now is more important than ever. The competition is rife out there and if banks don’t act now, they will slowly but surely lose their customer base to fintech disruptors.

2. Prioritise innovation

Many banks are still stuck using outdated tech and infrastructure. By prioritising innovation efforts, banks can stay relevant and attract new talent. The time is now to explore new options to improve the customer journey.

3. Evolve

Banks need to explore alternative sources of growth. Banks should look to compete with their competitors, even those who are not even banks. For example, the lending space has seen evolution recently due to a shift in customer demand, institutions are finding new opportunities to create value through a ‘buy now, pay later’ system.

To conclude, today’s competitive business arena offers huge growth opportunities to those who can meet the ever-increasing demands of customer expectations, fierce competition and pressure on margins. A business needs support and the relvant toolts to help trump these challenges by providing a one-stop payment and issuing platform that is tailored to meet your specific needs and expand as your business changes and grows.