SunTec

  For the banking sector, 2020 will be remembered as a difficult year packed with obstacles and lessons learned. While the internet and mobile banking were gaining traction before the pandemic, the worldwide crisis made going ‘digital’ the sole option to reach out to customers, engage them, and service their requirements during lockdowns, making it more about a bank's actual existence than a box to be ticked. Banks must adapt to be relevant, prosper, and grow as customers increasingly turn to digital alternatives. The growth of the API economy is another key trend linked to digitalization. Open banking, facilitated by open APIs, is now firmly established in financial services, giving clients flexibility over what goods and services they consume, including partner products, as well as from other third parties. This indicates that the purchasing decision might come from a third-party source rather than the bank. Third-party service providers, huge IT corporations, and fintech are all...

  A 1% increase in price results in a rise of 8.7% in operational profitability. Despite this, more than 30% of price decisions made by businesses each year fail to achieve optimal results.   Pricing for goods and services is an important part of any go-to-market strategy since it affects revenue, profitability, and brand perception. In the banking industry, proper pricing is critical to increasing profit margins. Fintech competition, shrinking lending margins, and regulatory-driven reductions have all had an impact on banking earnings. The regulatory environment has tightened significantly over time, previous strategies like hidden costs or passing costs on to customers are obsolete. Banks are also dealing with deteriorating client loyalty as well. Customers today have a variety of alternatives to pick from, as well as the ability to compare services and pricing models among banks to make the best decisions for themselves. Banks must focus on adopting data-driven smart pricin...

  The relationship between banks and their customers has evolved over the past decade, thanks to technology-driven innovations. This has led to customer relationships becoming not only more digitally disintermediated and less branch-centric, but also increasingly fickle. The pandemic further made customers even more price-conscious and amenable to shift loyalties to benefit from better pricing. In such a scenario how can banks win new customers and retain existing ones? It becomes crucial to consciously factor pricing when formulating strategies and plans to deliver “customer centricity” and “superior customer experience journeys.” In this Point of View article, you will discover: Why right pricing is the hero for banks Four distinct areas to focus on to ensure contextual price The role of technology to boost pricing ability and agility

  The credit card industry has evolved and grown significantly since the 1950s when Bank of America launched the first card. Robust consumer protection policies like quick charge back of unrecognized transactions have won the industry some loyal customers. But the basic functionality of the credit card was commoditized long ago and now there is minimal differentiation, with most cards offering variations on loyalty and cash back offers. The question now is, how will the sector hold up as fintechs and tech giants continue to disrupt the sector? Keeping Pace with Innovation Credit card companies are currently replacing the magnetic stripe with EMV chips that ensure greater security. Signatures for purchases are also becoming obsolete as most retailer no longer require this. Tokenization is another important development. This implies the use of a unique non sensitive identifier or token that is stored in a merchant’s network to protect credit card information from bad actors. But the ...

  It takes a moment for the life of a person to change; nearly four years for an engineer to graduate; or decades for a civilization to establish supremacy. And it has taken 12,000 years for the banking industry to become what it is today. Today, the banking industry is a global behemoth comprising of global banks, regional banks, community banks, digital banks, fintechs, and a lot more companies that play a very integral part in all our lives. In an 11-part article, we explore the factors that led to the rise of banking in becoming this behemoth that we see today. While 12,000 years may look like an exceedingly small-time compared to a million, the importance of banking in today’s world cannot be understated. Much less the fact that it also has the power to make or break the destinies of corporations and nations across the world. No one knows exactly where banking started. Or which was the first bank? Banks do not have a founding father either. But the wise men say that banking is...

  Empathy or the ability to empathize with others is one of the most crucial factors that decide a person’s emotional intelligence and how they interact with others. Up until now, businesses based their models and strategies on the concept of efficiency.  Empathy is the newest buzzword in the world of business and likely a trend that is here to stay. At the heart of this shift to empathetic business is the modern customer and their expectations. On the one hand, customers want a more fulfilling experience. They want ease of use, on demand access, intuitive and personalized experiences, offerings and much more. At the same time, they are increasingly aware and conscious about ethics and values of any organization or brand they engage with. It is no longer just about which business has the better prices, but also about which business’ values resonate with their own, and who they perceive as caring. If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has served to deepen the importance of a value...