Keeping Your Bank Up-to-Date with American Banker’s Top Trends for 2022
As we start off the new year, an article from the American Banker highlights seven bank trends to watch in 2022. The key, according to their analysis, is providing ultraconvenience to customers.
As you take a look at the list below, we strongly recommend you compare the trends to your bank's plans for the new year.
"One manifestation of this is embedded banking, a version of the open banking movement started in Europe, where banks offer their services through all manner of companies that aren’t banks. Another is the effort banks are making at personalization, trying to deliver just-in-time advice to consumers to help them avert financial problems and take advantage of opportunities. And letting customers authorize themselves with a selfie and facial recognition is the ultimate way to provide security for couch potatoes."
Seven Bank Trends to Watch
1. Embedded banking will become more widespread.
This is banking done in other than a bank branch, website, or mobile app. Banks and other financial services providers will try to present products to consumers at the point at which they are most useful. This could include offering mortgages as someone is shopping for a new home online and offering personal loans through home contractors, doctors, veterinarians and lawyers. It could be businesses getting banking accounts through their accounting software.
2. Banks will get better at delivering personalized insights.
Successful banks will tailor their messaging and sharpen their recommendations to suit individual customers. A study in May by Capco revealed that 72% of its 1,008 respondents rated personalization as “highly important” to them.
Banks of all sizes including Wells Fargo and People's United Financial are all hedging their bets on delivering more personalized insights.
3. More banks will support facial recognition.
Aite-Novarica Group reports that 15% to 20% of the 11,000 financial institutions in the U.S. use selfie photo imaging in combination with document verification to authorize use of mobile or online banking or online application processes.
It should be noted that use of facial recognition authorization is opposed by consumer protection groups.
4. Virtual branches will combine the best of in-person, digital interactions.
Digital platforms that simulate the conversation that occurs in a regular branch. Relying upon web or mobile chat, video, co-browsing and document sharing, became even more popular as a result of COVID precautions.
5. More banks will offer cryptocurrency services.
Even with the many fears and unknowns surrounding cryptocurrencies, banks of all sizes have started to enable customers to purchase these digital currencies in order to stay relevant. This includes many community banks enabling their customer base to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on their mobile apps.
6. Bank-fintech partnerships will multiply thanks to "matchmakers".
“We’re starting to see banks growing faster through fintech partnerships and breaking out into more significant valuations in the public market,” Matt Kelly, director of the JAM Fintop bank network, said in an interview in October.
7. Banks will embrace new hybrid-work technologies.
Once again, COVID has created long-lasting changes in work habits. The omicron variant is spreading "like wildfire," and some banks are predicting permanent changes to the way they do business.
Banks will need to review their internal processes and policies carefully. But to retain and attract new talent in this extremely competitive environment, banks will have to adapt to the new working culture.
It's always been important to be tech-aware and stay abreast of new technologies and techniques, but, as the American Banker list illustrates, it is more vital than ever to keep pace with consumer expectations, particularly in the technology/user interface space. Partnering with fintechs that deploy Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning technologies for different aspects of banking such as creating a more personalized experience, added security to account accsses, and processing traditional payments like check or the buying and selling of new digital currencies will enable banks to integrate into their customers' lives, making their services "ultraconvenient."