Ten trends that are shaping the banking industry

I agree fully with the above mentioned trends, however would like to add one. Trend 11) Products are becoming a commodity and differentiation has to take place on another level. Business Banking Board believes that this "level" is Information based value adding services. I would like to hear what other people think? 

I fully agree with Madelie. Like we do for high-tech companies with our proprietary STRADOF model, it's probably time for Financial Services Companies to also look beyond the product to find differentiators, of which there are plenty in what we call the "Total Ownership Experience".

With my current ongoing struggle with two Top 5 UK banks to remit money from UK to India, I can readily propose "Concierge Remittance" as one such differentiated offering.

An in-person consultative service by knowledgeable staff at the branch premise will help demystify BIC, IBAN, transfer currency, and other complications involved in a typical high-stake remittance transaction.

In a previous experience a few years ago, it was very off-putting for me to reach the branch of a Top 5 UK bank to do a remittance transaction  in person, only to be directed toward a telephone, and then having to speak out a 30-character IBAN number, beneficiary name, and other details loudly enough so that I could be heard over the din of the surrounding lunch hour Canary Wharf crowd. What was worse, the telephone transfer didn't come free-of-cost. Even if people had to pay double that fee, I'm sure many of them would prefer face-to-face service for such transactions.

I think also that multi-channel support is a massive issue and trend shaping retail banking in particular. Solving the issue means that not only do banks need to become client-centric, but channel agnostic. This requires a fundamental adjustment to metrics, strategy, organization structure and such. Probably, beyond re-assessing the fundamentals, this is probably the most accute challenge banks will have to tackle in the next 5-10 years.

The branch-centric approach to the retail organization structure is problematic when 90% of your customer interactions are non-branch.

In agreement to what has been briefed by Colin, I would also add a perspective on New Age banking in emerging markets like India. Banks while are still runing on high operational costs, the most trusted banks or the REAL mass market banks have the least IT penetration but perhaps higher CSAT and hence preference among individuals.

Most of the less operational cost - driven banks and financial institutions are least 'connected' with an individual.

So while we're looking at all the above mentioned points, we're blatantly ignoring the realities.