ONE of the most significant impacts on financial services in recent years is the ability for both consumers to “shop around” and switch to a different product very quickly.

Asian consumers, for instance, have access to a wealth of resources to help them move financial providers: CompareHero, MoneyMax, Compare Asia Group and Money Hero, among others. Whether it’s changing from one life insurance provider to another or moving large investment portfolios for multinationals, buyers’ options are easily sought, learned about and the switch made.

The aggregation services to which many turn (like those listed above, and iSelect in Australia) have realized that many financial providers are offering – more or less – the same return-on-equity models, similar terms, and products which are often difficult to differentiate. Presenting multiple options to those seeking to move to a new provider is a relatively simple exercise, therefore: both for the user and the aggregator.

To add a further difficulty in presenting a USP, since the global financial crash of 2008 companies across the finance sector can no longer merely cut internal costs to drive down prices.

Amongst a homogeneity of product offerings, customers are seeking a personal service, even from substantial providers. Faceless multinationals today lack any glamor they may once have possessed – the rise of boutique banking and niche product companies is starting to satisfy new demand. For the larger company to survive in this marketplace, the ability to personalize services is very highly valued: even if you’re big, you need to think small.

Small businesses understand their market and their customers intimately – it’s a unique advantage which only the technologically advanced, empowered mid- to large size finance operation can emulate. The entrenched systems, built up over years of growth may not be suitable to reach and retain a new generation of financial consumers at personal and business levels.

Buzzphrases abound in the technology and business press: articles talk about the road to digitization, a digital journey and the transformative nature of technology. Inside an enterprise, this means different strokes for different folks:

• Human resources’ and operations’ concepts of digitization are internal. Efficient work practices and effective internal communications drive efficiencies, so new tech such as deep learning and unified communications are proposed as key investments.
• Marketing’s concerns are largely external: it’s all about the message for the market. Technology can create overarching platforms which unify social messaging, email, and outgoing call-center materials – plus any new platforms which may arise in the short to medium terms.
• C-level strategists are more concerned with altering business models to create new vectors to the market. Adopting the mindsets and methods of agile startups and disruptive competitors is key here, and the very latest shiny software services can allow the more significant enterprise to act like a start-up. Changes required here are to both internal and external systems.

The disruptive changes to the financial sector have, without exception, been technologically-based. Unbundled services are carving away swathes of the traditional institutions’ markets: contactless payments, international money transfers, micro-banks, and the services now being offered to the “unbanked” by smartphone tech.

It’s worth noting that it’s not just the small players who are taking advantage of tech. Many large, non-finsec enterprises are moving into financial verticals with great effect (Coles in Australia, for instance), and global banks like Santander are starting to move monies internationally in cryptocurrency. Being big but thinking small works just as well as being small and thinking different.

Incomplete digital strategies don’t work

• If your organization isn’t capable of communicating internally, sharing knowledge and co-ordinating work, your customers will never receive a seamless journey.

To get new products or improvements in existing products to your customers’ attention, all the systems and underpinnings for those products need to interoperate.

• If your organization doesn’t possess the facility to react to customer interactions coherently, relationships will start to falter.

Analysis and amalgamation of interactions form coherent customer experiences: that’s personalization, and it’s what makes your customers feel special.

In short, going the extra mile for your customers keeps them as customers. Additionally, it lets you capture future growth opportunities – in cruder pre-technology times, this was known as “up-selling”. But blanket presentation of the same messages to every customer now drives them away. Every organization-client relationship is unique, and each will present unique opportunities.

Do your systems possess the internal and external-facing capabilities to go the extra mile? Or are your systems still silo-ed?

At Tech Wire Asia, we’d like to recommend the services of one of the companies below. Each can help transform your business from top to bottom, with technology solutions which will equip it to keep growing and succeeding in the competitive financial sector.

DST SYSTEMS

DST provides a digital framework which can unite the financial operations of an enterprise of any size, so that legacy tech and internal processes are aligned with the demands of today’s disruptive financial marketplace. The steps to this end are achieved with DST’s help; from planning and detailed business-case documentation for change, to automating processes and business intelligence creation.

Digital transformation holds the key for businesses, even multinational powerhouses, to treat every client with the personalized service they deserve. The processes and systems which DST can help you develop will allow the agility and opportunities which are the hallmark of the disruptive startup, at scale. This is attained by creating internal processes which drive the standards of customer experiences upwards, and free up valuable resources.

By addressing logjams in internal processes and applying organizational or technology-based change, DST Systems help finance operations to become agile, responsive, efficient and purposeful.

Engaged customers are customers-for-life, and the holistic customer view (using unified internal processes) is the only way to develop the levels of personalization which are demanded by the connected generation. DST Systems will let your organization create that engagement, and in the process, orchestrate real change in the structure and credo of the financial organization.

Read the full editorial here. 

EXACT

The European business process technology expert Exact offer a host of products and solutions which can be tailored to fit a range of businesses as diverse or as granular as needs be.

The Global and Synergy products, for instance, when used in combination, create an all-in-one solution (a single point of truth, if you will) where all information from purchase to logistics comes together.

By integrating financial data with, for instance, marketing data, the entire enterprise gets the same point of view of all operations. This means that information flows seamlessly right across the organization, leaving no division or department left out of playing its strategic role.

The company’s offerings are multilingual out of the box, with international trade concerns further empowered by on-the-fly currency translations. Solutions are available as cloud-based products or can be installed in-house. The company offers software as a service, too, allowing potential users, on even a small scale, to acclimatize to the ecosystem.

Exact’s operations are wide-ranging enough to encompass the different governance and regulatory measures which limit or allow activities right across the globe. Its solutions are malleable and so can cope with new regs as they come online.

PEGA

The Massachusettes-headquartered company is over 30 years old and is a leader in software designed to improve customer engagement and operational excellence.

Pega’s products can be deployed very quickly – an advantage of a cloud solution that’s so long in the tooth – so it’s perfect for swift spin-up of disruptive business models.

Existing, legacy systems well embedded into financial concerns can be assimilated into Pega, and the platform deploys AI algorithms to help bring out useful business intelligence data.

The AI aspect of its offering is referred to as ‘robotic automation’, which while providing imagery of metallic humanoids helping your customers, describes instead automating the changes required to technology-based workflows.

Pega’s solutions can be based in-house or in the cloud, and the system is adaptable enough to move from one to another, according to need.

Pega Express is a relatively new offering and is based on the Pega 7 Platform. It allows the quick and easy build using a visual application development environment with no coding skill required. Pega Express means that companies can build on the solidity of the platform and produce bespoke apps, for use either for facing clients or internally.

Pega Express has a free trial option, so users can test the software to see if the offerings would be a good fit for their purposes.