Migrating to a cloud solution isn’t new, revolutionary or innovative. At this point, many enterprises do it for a variety of reasons—enhanced strategy, flexibility, productivity and cost-savings among them. When workloads move from onsite storage from an online cloud, such benefits soon manifest themselves. But if your institution is contemplating the cloud leap, it’s difficult to ignore Read More
“Banking is necessary; banks are not.” It’s been 22 years since Microsoft founder Bill Gates made waves with this controversial statement. And recent evidence suggests he may be right. While we still require banks to store, manage and distribute money, financial technology (FinTech) entrants are rapidly creating new business models to simplify functions such as loan requests—a Read More
Card fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes impacting financial institutions. A 2016 LexisNexis report found that issuers directly lose $10.9 billion per year in card fraud, with an average loss of $5.90 per compromised card.With the threat mounting, a bank’s first impulse is often to build additional barriers to mitigate the risks of card fraud. Read More
Historically, financial institutions have adopted technology with a best-of-breed approach, utilizing different platforms from different vendors. This is especially true in check processing, where multiple platforms are leveraged to support a single financial transaction or payment type. The end result is multiple platforms, multiple vendors, multiple support resources – and multiple headaches.To process a single check, a Read More
It’s no secret that small business loans historically offer small profit; in fact, there is little economic difference in funding a $100,000 loan versus a $1 million loan. However, even though these loans may not always be the biggest movers to a bank’s bottom line, this type of lending is essential to establishing and building lasting relationships Read More
Business leaders across the board recognize that gathering positive and negative feedback is the most effective means of molding a service around the real wishes and needs of consumers. Esteban Kolsky, the founder of ThinkJar, argues that 67% of customer churn is preventable if a problem is resolved at the first engagement. However, gathering the feedback to Read More
While digital banking is one of the fastest growing channels for financial services, banking employees are still far and away the preferred interaction point. Especially when it comes to more complex financial needs – loans, investments or debt management – the primary channel banking consumers still use for researching and purchasing products is people. For example, a Read More
It used to be that bank CEOs wore their lack of technology expertise as a badge of honor: “Hey, I came up through the lofty halls of Credit; I don’t need to know anything about technology.” However, times change. Now that product delivery, service, underwriting, sales execution and marketing are all inextricably attached to technology, today’s CEOs Read More
Startup financial technology (FinTech) companies may be the best thing to happen to traditional banks in a long time. No, really.Many have warned that the introduction of digitally savvy options into a traditional market can be disastrous. After all, just look at what Uber is doing to the taxi business. In a heavyweight match between traditional banks Read More
Money originated as a control mechanism for governments of ancient Sumer to control farmers, based upon shared beliefs. It was then structured during the Industrial Revolution into government-backed institutions, banks, which could issue paper notes and checks that would be as acceptable as gold or coinage, based upon these shared beliefs. We share a belief in banks, Read More
The financial services industry is evolving at an exponential rate in this age of digital transformation. Shifting customer expectations, disruptive technology and demanding regulatory requirements are constantly reshaping the sector. Many banks are finding that their current infrastructure and platforms are simply not capable of supporting the proliferation of user-centric, omnichannel and omnipresent capabilities that customers have Read More
It’s an odd paradox: the financial services industry spends millions on title searches and title insurance each year, but has not been quite as diligent in exploring who actually owns the intellectual property behind its mission-critical technology. Granted, bank exposures are somewhat mitigated through contractual indemnification and warranties. However, as the industry continues to use more non-traditional vendors Read More
Despite all the excitement around mobile payments and mobile wallets, consumer adoption has been disappointingly slow. One reason is that current payment apps don’t enable “non-cash” payments and promotions, which reduce the customer incentive and benefit to use them. The value of storing credit and debit cards on a mobile wallet is obvious, but today’s mobile payment Read More
In recent years, banks have been focused on driving costs out of the branch network with self-service technology, branch closures and staff reductions. Yet, there is a genuine risk that driving any more cost out of the branches with across-the-board staff cuts will drive customers out of the bank altogether.“Workforce is the lifeblood of any organization,” according Read More
$1.3 trillion: a massive sum, which represents the increased revenues and lower costs that will be created by the Internet of Things (IoT) between 2013 and 2022 in the financial services industry alone, according to Cisco. When you consider the financial opportunity in tandem with the possibilities that IoT offers to gather and disseminate information from an Read More
Financial technology (FinTech) start-ups are bringing noticeable competition to the financial industry’s traditional retail and investment banks. What differentiates them from traditional banks is their agility in addressing specific pain points such as payments, loans, mortgages, personal finance and remittance at speeds and pricing that is difficult for traditional banks to match. Like Uber for taxis, Netflix Read More
When it comes to selecting technology solutions and services, do banks pursue opportunities that sacrifice quality? It might be an unpopular opinion, but many times the answer is “yes.”Those financial institutions that take the least-costly route are often the same ones that have compliance issues, bad audits, technology performance issues and upset customers within a year, all Read More
Exceptions are part of every operation in all businesses, but they are a source of particular concern for financial institutions (FIs). Regulatory examinations concentrate on exceptions to regulatory requirements and exceptions to best practices. The fiduciary responsibility that banks have concerning their clients’ money means that operational exceptions carry risk for financial liability and brand integrity. Exceptions Read More
When it comes to cloud adoption by financial institutions, it’s no secret that the transition to the cloud has come at a slower rate for financial services than for other industries thanks to rigorous data security policies and stringent regulatory requirements. However, pressures to renew banking’s existing technology and applications because of shrinking margins and the emergence Read More
In 2015, retail banking startups raised $6.8 billion in funding, more than three times the amount raised in 2014 according to CB Insights, showing a significant investment in financial technology (FinTech) innovation. Several areas of developing technologies, specifically biometrics, artificial intelligence and wearables, are poised to revolutionize everyday financial activities in the near future.Biometrics. Security is a Read More
