The success of a banking digital journey is an accepted truism. A user friendly banking solution underpins the successful digital transformation. A Boston Consulting Group study found that digitalization has resulted in 20% increase in revenues and 30% decrease in expenditures. A holistic digital transformation is said to have resulted in 12% reduction in cost-to-income ratios.
But unfortunately, many banks are fighting an uphill battle for completing their digital journeys. The most prominent roadblock is the low adoption rates for banking solutions. Banking personnel are put off by complex interfaces and often disregard organizational push towards new technologies. It is therefore important to consider employee friendly, agile and flexible solutions to champion the digitization push.
The cardinal focus of the user-friendly banking solutions includes,
User friendly banking solution
Simplicity is the byword for highly adopted banking solutions. A good user interface goes a long way in improving adoption of digital solutions. Banks should opt for solutions that ensure flexibility on front-end UI design coupled with easily integrable back-end systems. This is possible with creation of customized and niche solutions that are developed in close co-ordination with the banking team.
Security invested into the project charter
Banking customer service is highly data centric and therefore invested with water tight privacy laws. So, the point of access to customer information should be highly secure. It is important to include security at the planning stage while developing banking systems. Network level security along with multi-level authorizations are necessary to meet security requirements at all touchpoints. With evolving threat perceptions, banks are moving to a cloud-infrastructure to ensure high degree of infrastructure security and scalability. It is also prudent to rely on an efficient technology-stack that can meet the demands of the development-testing and deployment cycles.
Integration of structured and unstructured data
Banks have access to large amount of customer data. Global banks are employing next-gen data engineering solutions like Data Lakes to ensure a democratic access to all customer related information. It involves consolidation of disparate systems with a cloud delivered back end services powering the access for front end devices and application. Comprehensive security protocols should be deployed at all points to avoid compromising customer data privacy.
Collaboration across lines of business
Siloed decision making has been the Achilles Heel for banking. New age solutions are attempting to tie-in diverse systems like CBS, card systems, loans processing systems and more to access a single version of truth. Till recently, most of development was IT-led and this affected early adoption by business leaders. It is imperative that technology development involves business and front-end users to create a user friendly banking solution. A Centre of Excellence driven development ensures that all stakeholders can equally participate in development of applications.
Banks are investing heavily to move up the digital curve. Banks should move ahead with cloud delivered solutions that can be implemented quickly and seamlessly with minimum risks to recoup return on investments. Next wave of innovations is more centered around human-centered designs, artificial intelligence and contextual banking. This would entail a creation of the foundational architecture where in subsequent layers of sophisticated applications can be deployed with minimum cost and risks.
Balaji is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Evolvus Solutions Pvt Ltd. He plays a critical role in anchoring strategic priorities for the company to gain leadership position in the payments domain.
