Technology has made the world a better place by shaping everything, from our day-to-day operations to the lifestyle we lead, technology is redefining convenience in whatever we do. As countries uplift their digital and physical infrastructure to embrace new technology, a focus is on financial institutions to enact new technology to serve its stakeholders better.
While the rise of FinTechs and innovative technology has propelled banking convenience to the next level, I believe that banks which provide tailored customer convenience along with human support will thrive in the future.
If we look at the demographics of Sri Lanka, we see two broad clusters of people where one group is tech savvy and to grasp the ever evolving innovations into their life, while the other is not as familiar with the latest technology and are dependent on legacy systems to fulfil their daily banking needs.
In the 90s, customer convenience was about obtaining a loan or a product from a financial institution. During this era, banks who offered the most number of ATMs or branches were lauded as those that offered greater convenience.
However, today’s banking is entirely different. With the rise of new technology and change in consumer behaviour, we are witnessing disruptive technology enabling customers to engage with their banks through multiple touchpoints to carry our various lifestyle and financial related transactions.
We are also aware of the emergence of diverse financial lifestyle services, facilitating customer transactions in basic commerce in the form of shopping online or booking an overseas trip to channelling and paying for Doctors’ appointments.
One major element that is paramount when it comes to digital banking is security. With the rise in new technology, convenience has become simpler and tends to alter a consumer’s perception on security and vice versa, where having high security authentications lead to a poor experience.
We believe that the future of banking heavily relies on smartphones. However, for customers who are more comfortable in working on larger screens we offer a state of the art Internet Banking facility, where ease of use, security and offerings are continuously being enhanced.
To offer true convenience not only do we need new technology, but also the right people.
One major gap in the banking industry is the lack of advisory support for consumers. We plan to bridge this gap by cultivating our employees with multi-faceted skills so that they are empowered to advise clients on the financial decision best suited for them. In addition, we have also implemented a stringent set of SOPs to ensure that we have the right service consistency at all our branches and monitor these through means such as mystery customer surveys and consumer research.
Another important overhaul was introducing automated workflows to our retail credit approvals where the retail teams process operations online. As a result, we have reduced turnaround times for customers and further added value to our product propositions through centralisation of housing loans and developing propositions such as dekken dennam for personal loans and instant cards.
Today, social and technological transformation has had a significant impact on banking and key tools such as data warehouses and BI systems have forced banks to adopt strategic marketing and product management practices.
As changes in the broad financial fields accelerate and business converge, it is imperative to differentiate banking products with key advisory skills being a value added feature to meet the needs of our customers along with a human touch.
The future of banking requires balance. While consumers can handle menial, day-to-day financial tasks from their phones, they still prefer the opportunity for a face-to-face conversation when making an important financial decision. The growth of technology will continue to enhance customer experiences but the organisations which are ahead are those that understand the need to balance the adoption of technology with the importance of human interaction and service delivery.
The writer is Deputy General Manager, Retail Banking at Seylan Bank