Gone are the days when you had to visit the bank branch for your tasks. With the penetration of internet in the remotest area of the universe, digitalization and growing use of cellular phone banking are now accessible on your phone or any device that has an internet connection to if and the majority of Banking tasks can be completed online.

The government initiatives like Jan Dhan yojana for opening zero balance banks accounts with facility of debit cards and bank apps available for Android, IOS and Microsoft platforms in multi lingual formats along with growing no. of payment apps facilitating linking of bank accounts has helped online banking to cross urban barriers and grow in the rural areas.

With the above-mentioned scenario, the global banking sector is becoming both more strategically focused and technologically advanced to respond to consumer expectations while trying to defend market share against an increasing array of competitors.

A great deal of emphasis is being placed on digitizing core business processes and reassessing organizational structures and internal talent to be better prepared for the future of banking. This transformation illustrates the increasing desire to become a ‘digital bank’.

Considering the above scenarios, the serviceability parameters and operations modes of banking are bound to change and in view of the same, the below-mentioned banking trends will be key to succeed in the competitive and fast-growing banking market. The trends are:

• Serving a Segment of One – involves clustering a customer base with advanced criteria, where human-centric, design-thinking pillars and CRM tools help banks and credit unions match needs to solutions in real-time
• Expansion of Open Banking – to accelerate innovation and collaboration, leading to expanded banking ecosystems that could include more than just financial services to make a consumer’s lifestyle better
• Commitment to Phygital (physical + digital) Delivery – for innovative customer experiences and increased value to the consumer, supported by customer data and advanced analytics that can personalize engagement
• AI-Driven Predictive Banking – for enhancing the consumer experience, with increased security and efficiency and providing consumers with value through ‘next-best actions’ as opposed to blind selling of products.
• Payments Everywhere – for decreasing the ability to differentiate on back-office capabilities, transaction fees, and increasing the importance of differentiated user experiences.

Having analyzed the trends let us look at the technologies that will impact the banking in a big way in the coming years. The technologies are:

• API (Application Programming Interfaces) – For customizing apps and applications to suit the customer needs
• Analytics/AI (Artificial Intelligence)/Machine Learning and RPA (Robert process automation) – will be mainly used for customer behavioural and predictive analysis for betterment of personal services
• Conversational Interfaces (Chat Boats, Voice Device Services) – will be used for designing voice-activated digital assistants which will become the next major consumer channel
• Cloud – will be used for providing services like IaaS, SaaS, PaaS by the services provider to the banking industry how would prefer OPEX over CAPEX model which will also help them in reducing capex and operational costs
• Mobility and Wearables – will be used for contactless biometric authentications, tracing and analysing customer behaviours and accumulating and analysing customer data as a part of the analytics
• Internet of Things (IoT) – will be used to improve serviceability, thru predictive analysis of the data gained from the IoT
  Block Chain – will facilitate upgrade paths for out dated banking systems with reliable and trust-able technology that could withstand frauds, scalability and security issues with reliable and trust-able technology.
• Quantum Computing – considered one among the disruptive technologies this is likely of change the face of many verticals but has a long adaption time for the commercial ground
• Augmented and Virtual Reality – will be used for enhancing customer experience by integrating apps related to the banking domain to the Core Banking solutions (CBS)

Having analysed the trends and upcoming technologies please find the below recommendations for the ICT solution deployment in the next generation digital banking era.

• Since this is a multi-locations scenario the interconnect foundationf must be strong enough ensuring flow of data seamlessly with minimal latency ensuring better customer experience in case of application like video conferencing etc. The back bone should be based on Service provider MPLS with last mile connectivity coming on Fiber.
• All ATM and e- experience centre’s should also be connected on MPLS with last-mile fiber connectivity.
• In the branches, the internal LAN should be designed using cable that support 40-100G speeds from day one as the same would be required to facilitate un compressed 4K Video traffic over LAN
• All IOTs, Lighting and AV integrations devices should be POE enabled an ensuring reduction in usage of power which in turn would lead to a greener solution
• Hosting of all apps can be done on Service Provider Data Center with enough resourcing to cater the traffic being generated for a period of 5 years
• Omni Channel Multimedia contact center should be deployed to facilitate customers as the same will enable them to approach help desk using any channel (voice, video, email, chat, mobile app)
• Engage in software selections which are upgrade and have open API’s to customize the solutions and app as per the requirement. The same should also have integration capabilities with upcoming technologies like Blockchain, AR and VR etc.
• Integrate back end analytics for betterment of customer services and efficient marketing
• On all of the above deploy robust, proven and stringent security policies for avoiding cybercrime incidents like hacking or data theft, etc.

This is just a brief of the setup we are recommending in general for more details contact us on info@tandmconsultants.com