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 ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd This may be extended much further in today's environment. When banks try to play it safe, they're doomed. In the digital era, where clients want and expect contextual offerings, the need to innovate is paramount. The only way to stand out and remain ahead of the competition is to keep inventing —in terms of products and services. Agility has become a cliché in recent years - yet clichés exist for a reason. Banks need agility in general, and competitive agility in particular, to survive. But how can a bank stay nimble with decades-old legacy systems when fresher fintech businesses have flexible technology that allows them to make any essential adjustment in days? Let's talk about the 'why' before we go into the 'how. Most corporate banks are of the opinion that since their customers are corporations, they are equally burdened with legacy systems and therefore cannot react as...

Retaining and Growing Customer Loyalty with Empathetic Banking banking on customer centricity, customer-centric solutions for banking, customer experience in financial services, customer-centric banking The customer is constantly evolving in every sector and banking is no exception. Wanting to be at the focal point of business and services, the modern-day customer is looking to go beyond the periphery of the system and gain control of their interactions by having hyper-personalized engagements and availing on-demand availability of services. The need of the hour for banks is to evolve with the customer, meet their changing expectations, and stand out even as they tackle fierce competition from fintech and technology giants. Digital transformation is the way forward. Especially now, as the outbreak of COVID-19 has made most banking organizations aware of the significance between digitalization and business continuity. In a post-COVID-19 world, banks will have to reinvent their operating...

  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 emerging  Buy Now Pay Later , commonly known as BNPL is the latest disruption in the once staid banking and financial services sector. Though BNPL has existed for some time now, it has garnered a lot of interest lately. The easy availability of payments via installments at the point of sale is attracting millennials and Gen Z customers who were earlier deterred by the high cost of goods and high rate of interest when purchasing goods on credit cards. Though this service is still niche, it is growing at a fast pace, fuelled in part by the unique restraints and conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, reports suggest that BNPL spending at e-commerce point of sale is likely to go up to about USD 680 billion by 2025. 1 With BNPL, banks need to address two key questions: Is credit card usage declining and will it eventually make the credit card obsolete? What can banks do to win in this emerging space? BNPL services can present a significant threat to the ...

  The credit card industry is an interesting space to be in right now. Consider this – Chase has partnered with select airlines to create co-branded credit cards that offer new members a unique welcome bonus against their next international flight. In India, the country’s leading PSU bank SBI has partnered with lifestyle brand Fabindia to offer a co-branded, contactless credit card for premium customers. And ICICI, another leading Indian private bank has joined hands with Amazon Pay to launch a contactless card that has already on boarded two million customers. The banking and financial services sector is witnessing an incredible pace of change and the credit card segment is no exception. As more customers move away from cash and innovative digital payment models emerge, the credit card industry must reinvent itself to retain their edge in the market. The concept of using valueless instruments for buying and selling can be traced back to the earliest human civilizations. Since then...

  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 ...

  Customers are always on the lookout for the best price and where they can get the most value for their money. It’s no different when it comes to banking. For instance, customers expect their banks to give them better interest rates on deposits based on their relationship with the bank or want rewards on credit card spend in line with their needs. Today customers increasingly value their personal relationships with their bank. While banks enjoy customer trust, offering products and services that lack differentiation has posed a potential roadblock to delivering consistent value. A Deloitte report points out that 75 percent people think that banking products and services are the same across all banks. 1 With customers willing to shift their loyalty for better prices and services, and with the emergence of new-age competition from Fintechs and BigTechs, banks have come to realize that this one-size-fits-all approach is counterproductive. Pricing, therefore, becomes a strategic imper...

  Customers are always on the lookout for the best price and where they can get the most value for their money. It’s no different when it comes to banking. For instance, customers expect their banks to give them better interest rates on deposits based on their relationship with the bank or want rewards on credit card spend in line with their needs. Today customers increasingly value their personal relationships with their bank. While banks enjoy customer trust, offering products and services that lack differentiation has posed a potential roadblock to delivering consistent value. A Deloitte report points out that 75 percent people think that banking products and services are the same across all banks. 1 With customers willing to shift their loyalty for better prices and services, and with the emergence of new-age competition from Fintechs and BigTechs, banks have come to realize that this one-size-fits-all approach is counterproductive. Pricing, therefore, becomes a strategic imper...