Covid 19 has hastened banks’ efforts to become more digital and serve clients with speed and a better customer experience.
Corporate treasurers also want consumer-level experiences in their company accounts, so it’s not just retail banking that’s demanding more.
As the payments’ horizon broadens, players shift digital capabilities to the front burner to cook new engagement-led services and ecosystem savory offers.
This leaves undifferentiated incumbents with a bland diet. This is indicative of Capgemini’s annual World Payments Report 2020. This is still a valid point.
Corporate users want the same ease of use at work that they enjoy from home.
Firms must develop digital capabilities not only to ensure and sustain client loyalty, but also to develop end-to-end customer interaction knowledge.
This is especially true in the wholesale/B2B payments arena, where corporate treasurers are increasingly turning to digital and innovative solutions to address long-standing inefficiencies.”
Banks are stressing the significance of digital transformation in order to bring their back offices up to speed with their front offices.
Because of the pandemic, overall payments transactions decreased, but non-cash transactions increased, with APAC countries leading the way with a nearly 25% increase, fueled by the widespread adoption of mobile payments and digital wallets.
We expect e-commerce growth, enthusiastic acceptance of transparent payment experiences, and alternative payment methods to propel non-cash transaction growth to 1.1 trillion by 2023, according to a report by Capgemini.
Key Determinants That Impact Corporate Banking
According to a report by CSIRO, Australia’s national science organization, electronic retail transactions will assume a larger percentage of business, displacing paper currency.
According to Reuters, the virus that causes Covid-19 can live for up to 28 days on banknotes, far longer than the flu virus.
This will only lead to greater digital payment experimentation, as Capgemini discovered, 41% of cash users tried a contactless card, 35% of card owners joined their card to their digital wallet, and 27% of customers attempted QR code payments.
Corporate treasuries suffer from inadequate treasury infrastructure and a lack of automation that limit efficiency.
Corporate treasurers seek improved API connection with ERP systems, risk management, and real-time payments with tracking, from their banking partners.
Meanwhile, fintechs are expanding into B2B middle- and back-office functions, according to the same Capgemini research.
Fintechs began with front-office functions that founders understood from their own consumer experience.
The role of Big Tech businesses in payments, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple, may be determined by Washington and Brussels, as well as future regulation that may limit their ability to expand into payments.
In the meantime, the payment behemoths continue to grow.
In 2019, payment service providers such as FIS, Fiserv, Global Payments, and Worldline purchased WorldPay, First Data, TSYS, and Ingenico, respectively, to expand their processing capabilities, market reach, and revenue models.
As firms emerge as clients/providers/competitors at the same time, the movement might be perplexing to market participants.
The word of the day is disruption, and it has been for a thousand days or more, but this year’s twist is that a major disruptor is Covid-19, which has prompted customers to try different payment sources.
Consumers are increasingly turning to new players, with 30% utilizing a BigTech for payment services and 50% currently using a challenger bank for some transactions.
Even baby boomers (those aged 56 and above) indicated they made a lot more payments using digital channels during the lockdown, indicating that they were late majority adopters.
Bankers look concerned about the threat of monolithic legacy systems that aren’t compatible with digital front-end services.
Nearly 68 percent of bank executives indicated the most important consequence would be the loss of existing clients and prospects if they do not convert, while 50 percent of banks cited outdated infrastructure as the most major impediment to open banking adoption.
This is a recurring topic, whether the concerns will lead to action remains to be seen.
Legacy systems have continued as a problem, according to Elias Ghanem, worldwide head of market intelligence for Capgemini’s financial services, because they “are implemented at a greater cost that takes many years to amortize.”
As a result, incumbents and traditional enterprises will find the rip and replace method too expensive.
Updating these systems has a high operational risk due to the possibility of losing critical data.
It’s also possible that business norms would be lost, which is dangerous.” Any transition necessitates a multi-year shift in systems, culture, and mindset in favor of a more current system.
“However, to assure straight-through processing, a digital front-end necessitates an agile back-end.”
That is why top-down commitment to iterative and organized legacy system transition is critical,” she noted.
Fintechs have minimal market entry hurdles because they may leverage banking infrastructure, according to Ghanem, and “current regulatory monitoring is confined to licensing and onboarding FinTechs as third-party providers, while risk profiling and operational resilience regulations are still limited.”
Banks must devote a significant amount of their budgets on operational maintenance (running outdated systems is expensive), compliance, and risk management.
As a result, banks have very little room to dedicate resources on front-end innovation.
There’s a risk that banks will continue to serve as merely infrastructure providers for digital players. Banks are aware of this issue and are taking steps to balance their emphasis and resources between back-end and front-end efforts.
Banking is no different than any other service sector in that the level of service a customer receives is determined by their expectations.
A customer’s experience with a bank staff may be satisfactory to one customer but unsatisfactory to another.
A good corporate banking experience entails having a single view of your customers across all channels. Whether in a branch, on the phone, or online, the same level of client care and experience needs to be delivered.
It’s difficult to define a positive corporate banking experience, but it’s easy to recognize one.
Check out this list of top bank website designs across US and UK
How Can Design & Technology Deliver A Good Banking Experience?
Technology, internet shopping, and mobile apps have given rise to new competition for banks and financial institutions, altering their public perception and profitability.
Why?
Customers are more empowered and have more options than ever before because they are more connected than ever before.
A corporate banking experience currently lacks,
Effective Communication – Banks rarely communicate with their customers and lack data-driven banking insights into what makes them pleased or unhappy with the bank.
One Size Fits All – Due to a lack of personalization, retail offerings by banks tend to treat all customers the same way, regardless of their financial status or personality.
Information – Banks are not delivering timely and relevant information. You can’t provide useful information to your customers if you don’t understand their needs.
Personalization – Individual preferences are not recognised by banks. When a customer has an issue, some prefer to go to a branch office, while others prefer to go to a main office.
It’s easy to become overwhelmed when looking at corporate banking customer experience from a broad viewpoint.
However, it is critical to begin someplace. You won’t be able to solve the entire problem at once, but you can work on one or two tiny portions at a time.
It’s easy to overlook a few areas as corporate banks race to enhance their client experience, which is more important than ever given how the banking customer journey has changed since the epidemic.
Furthermore, from the regulatory landscape to security best practices, banking as an industry has its own customer experience trends and problems.
Let’s look at some strategies that corporate banking can pick from retail banking experiences.
- Expediting Account Opening Process With UI
A quick and painless onboarding process is one of the most important aspects of providing a better client experience. The inability of banks to offer a fully online account opening process hinders them from eliminating the necessity for consumers to visit a branch for account opening in many circumstances.
Create a memorable account opening experience for your customers.
Allow account creation via a corporate banking mobile app.
Reduce the amount of clicks required to register for an account.
Digital Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Verification
Data collection with a minimum effort
- Online Payment Experience
Given the current pandemic, no one wants to do business in person. Today, sending money via net banking and mobile apps has become the standard.
It’s critical to ensure that you’re prepared to compete with mobile-only businesses that employ these tactics.
- Payment processing that is both faster and more secure
- For a better user experience, use a consistent and well-designed UI.
- Payment procedure gamification with offers
- Make notifications more timely.
- Correctly handling errors
- Smooth Card/Account Blocking Process
As more people go digital, the threat of cyber-attacks and banking fraud grows. It’s important for banks and financial institutions to be proactive in assisting customers in blocking or freezing their cards/accounts before a threat arises. A better corporate banking experience can come from,
- Customers being educated on when they should block their card or account.
- Functions made easily accessible.
- Next steps suggested in a dynamic manner.
- Anti-fraud notifications that are more proactive
- Customer Support Experience
One of the most powerful tools for organizations to improve corporate customer experience is via automated customer feedback.
This enables financial establishments to better respond to their customers’ issues. A few things that banks can prepare for are,
- Stop using antiquated methods like “Press 1 followed by a hash…”
- Remove the hold music and tailor the experience for each customer. Show customers where they are in line.
- Omnichannel Banking Experience
Every bank’s customer journey is unique, with each customer traveling a different path depending on where they are and what they’re doing. Banks and credit unions must provide a genuinely omnichannel consumer experience.
A genuinely multi channel customer banking experience necessitates tremendous investment on the part of banks.
Financial institutions can provide a consistent experience that develops confidence and loyalty by utilizing intelligent technology to manage interactions across all channels.
- Personalized End-to-end Customer Journey
Each customer has their own preferences and expectations.
A customized banking experience is key to track customer interactions across branches, contact centers, ATMs, and internet banking systems, as well as providing personalisation at every step of the way.
- Review banking digital channels on a frequent basis.
- Immerse in both good and negative customer feedback.
- Prioritize customer requirements.
- Analyze data to compare customer service performance to industry standards.
- Collaborate with internal stakeholders to implement the changes you’ve identified and assess the impact of those changes
Customers should be at the centre of banking operations. Tell them what you do with their information and how they may take control of it by signing up for an account on your open banking platform.
Open banking, as a customer-centric paradigm, encourages people to reclaim control of their finances and begin asking questions. Customers will have direct access to their data as part of the open banking revolution, allowing them unprecedented choice and freedom in how they interact with their banks.
If banks do not respond to the increasing demands of clients who want complete transparency into their accounts and expect their banks to easily link with third-party products and services, the conventional banking model will soon become outdated.
Kilowott leverages its expertise and leadership in design, digital technologies and business process automation for a complete end-to-end business experience transformation (BxT) within the banks and fintech industry.
We prioritize purpose, innovation, and deliver a holistic business experience to drive accelerated growth in customers, giving them exactly what they desire without trading sustainability and profitability?
Need a disruptive change to the human experience for your business or organization? Let’s talk
