SunTec

  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...

  “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...

  The top three global banks, which are the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China have a combined income of £7.12 trillion, a vast revenue for only three companies. Traditional banks have almost had a monopoly on the market for the longest time now across the globe. Following the successful disruption of other industries using technological advances, e.g Netflix to video content, Uber to public transport; non-traditional financial services (FS) companies are smelling blood in these very profitable waters, and are looking for ways to infiltrate this market. After a long period of undisturbed calm and tranquility, the old, unchanging banking industry, like many such industries in the last five years, is finally showing signs of disruption. The banking space is growing with the influx of third parties like Virgin Money, and challenger banks such as Monzo, Atom and Tide using technology to infiltrate the lucrative banking m...

  New regulations such as GDPR, PSD2, and MiFID2 are challenging financial organisations to adapt faster to the digital world. However, they are increasingly seen as burdens as businesses race toward compliance. As banks and financial organisations speed up to adapt to the demands of these new regulations, they are at risk of satisfying themselves with surface, superficial changes without truly seeing the necessary, radical shift they need: a true digitalisation. In this digital world, customer experience and business models are changing and evolving at a head-spinning pace. Faced with demanding regulations urging them to adapt to this changing landscape, banks are faced with a choice. They can become a simple utility provider, working silently in the background to provide a smooth, painless customer experience. Or they can become a customer owner, fully in control of the customer experience. It is the difference between selling coffee beans (utility provider, in the background but...

  The advent of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the internet of things (IoT) have transformed the way in which the world operates. Customers now demand personalised experiences and firms that haven’t digitised their businesses must transform in order to compete in this new world. One industry which has found it more difficult to adapt is banking , as many banks are saddled with rigid and core legacy application systems.  Large banks and financial institutions continue to remain slow to adopt these emerging technologies which is preventing them from delivering an optimal customer experience, driving growth and keeping themselves relevant in a dynamic market. Banks must modernise their legacy banking systems in order to compete in this evolving marketplace.  A strategy that can help banks modernise their operation is adopting a modular approach to enable an easier digital transformation. While there are many options to modernise core ...

  A normal human being thinks rationally. The human being’s mind processes more than 50,000 thoughts per day along with a multitude of actions and decisions. Many of these are conscious and some are subconscious. But, all these actions, thoughts, and decisions have something in common – they all lead to a goal. This fundamental truth – goals drive actions – will be the key to any organization’s success in the future. This will be true for transaction-intensive industries such as banking. Through a series of three blogs, I would like to point out why I think that Goal-Based Banking is the future. Let us step back and start with the example of Sara. Sara goes for a jog daily and meditates every alternate day because she wants to be healthy. Or let us take Mark. He enrolls in an online full-stack developer course because he wants to get a better job. Being healthy and getting a better job are the goals that drive Sara and Mark to decide and take action. Or in other words, these action...

  From time immemorial, people have  trusted  banks for the following – 1) Storing their money safely; 2) Facilitating monetary transactions for their daily life; 3) Helping grow their wealth, and 4) Providing access to an easy credit system when needed. Over the last few years, like a trusted friend, banks have also added one more dimension to the relationship it shares with its customers – becoming an advisor who will help them meet their financial needs. The role of the banks in these five dimensions means that the banks are present across an exceptionally large part of their customers’ lives. This also puts the banks in an enviable position – they are aware of what transactions their customers make, more than any technological giant, telecom operator, or retail institution. Plotting these transactions over a customer’s lifetime can help the banks create a wonderful insight-propelled view of why a customer makes any transaction. In addition, the banks also have two mor...

  The dawn of civilization The act of banking is said to have originated in the Mesopotamian Civilization in the region of Sumeria. Around 12,000 years back, humans still lived in small communities, probably around 50 people formed a community. Everyone knew each other. During hard times, if Raul needed fifteen goats, he could always ask Pepe. Pepe gave Raul fifteen goats and he trusted Raul to give back those fifteen goats soon enough. Trust and cooperation between individuals were the keys here. As humans grew ambitious and smaller communities became larger communities, it was impossible for everyone to know every other person. Probably the neighbor was a stranger. Still, Raul would have needed fifteen goats in times of need. If he asked Pepe, how could Pepe be sure that he will get back the fifteen goats. Trust and cooperation were still essential, but how can one combine trust and cooperation with the inherent risk that was obvious in the above situation. Humans found two ways ...

  In the last part, we looked at the rise of civilization and the emergence of writing as the contributing factors towards the growth of banking. In this part, we will look at two other major factors that drove banking in the early parts of human history – trade and empires. The expansion of trade As the Roman empire collapsed during the 5th century AD, the evolution in banking also came to a standstill. While people were still saving money in banks and taking money on credit, there was no significant progress. For nearly 500 years, the status quo continued. Banking, in its current sense of form, is traceable to medieval and early Renaissance Italy, to rich cities in the north such as Florence, Venice, and Genoa and the reason banks flourished in these regions was because of the growth in trade. The original banks were “merchant banks” that Italian grain merchants invented in the Middle Ages. In the 11th century, as the Lombardy plains in Italy grew more fertile, the merchants of L...