While Covid-19 fatigue is real, businesses leaders can’t afford to lose focus on the impact the pandemic has had on their companies and their industries.

According to BCX, the financial services sector faces unique challenges – some resulting directly from the pandemic, others as a manifestation of the heightened pressure on businesses and budgets.

View the infographic here

The rise of fintech

Well known is the rise of fintech – tech-savvy, low-cost players that have entered the market, in addition to telecommunications companies and mega-corporations such as Google, Amazon and Alibaba, offering low-cost, always-on banking that is available anywhere and on multiple devices. Key global innovation tactics include a single view of the customer, digitalisation and transition to digital channels while reducing physical footprints and improving data security.

Decreasing advisory revenues

Financial advisors in South Africa have experienced a decrease of 16% in their projected sales due to Covid-19, with UK companies experiencing an 18% decrease, and 23% in Australia. As a result, financial advisors need to find new ways to connect with and engage customers, illustrating value through market intelligence and highly personalised products.

Rising customer expectations

Customers expect personalised financial services and products that integrate seamlessly into their lives, pre-empting solutions before the customer even realises they need them.

Omnichannel strategies, tied together with ecosystems, are providing individualised products and services, in new ways. With the advent of open banking regulations, it will allow new entrants to provide customers with a single point of consumption across all these service entities, utilising all digital channels. This development has the potential to disintermediate the banks from their customers.

Legacy systems

Financial services’ rich data is locked in legacy systems or departmental silos. With incoming and existing technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotic process automation, cloud, data analytics and blockchain, this data could revolutionise the industry.

Reduced physical footprint

Covid-19 has customers calling for simpler, virtual banking options.

Security

As the sophistication of cybercrime continues to increase, financial services companies need to remain agile and adaptive to ward off attacks on both their funds and their clients’ personal data.

Financial services companies can use this time of disruption to tailor customer-centric products and solutions, re-design and digitalise processes, and leverage data that supports an omnichannel capability. This time of rapid change is an opportunity to respond with innovation and agility, refining and in some instances redefining the financial sector of the future.

For a simple, one-page overview of how financial services companies can pivot from siloed processes, fragmented customer interaction and an inability to pivot to new opportunities, to integrated, nimble and digital-first organisations, download the infographic here.