To quote Ferris Bueller “Life moves pretty fast”. He said that way back in 1986. From a vantage point 27 years later, it seems a quaint time, a time before social media, smartphones, and digitization took over our lives. The pace of change has accelerated since then and seems to be continuing its evolution. Today we are a new phase, a phase marked by volatility. Just when we think we’ve got things locked, everything changes, and then changes again. Rapid changes are difficult to adjust to, but to make matters more complex the predictability of the instability is also increasing. To put it bluntly, more things, stranger things are coming out of left field.
How can retail and commercial banks handle this situation? And more importantly, how can they take advantage of the opportunities it creates? Research from Accenture shows the companies that are truly agile are more than twice as likely to achieve top quartile performance and generate nearly 3 times better long term growth.
The best retail and commercial banks are technology-enabled. Others, if running on legacy tech stacks, are actively inhibited by the technology. To succeed in this rapidly changing world, a world where channels are proliferating, competition is exploding and customers are demanding more, banks need modern banking platforms.
Modern banking platforms combine sophisticated banking functionality and advanced technology. Deposits, loans, interest, taxes, fees, charges, limits, collateral, and foreign currencies. These are just a few of the areas that might need to be handled, and as customer segments, ecosystem partners and channels are added into the mix the nuances turn into complexity. The answer is rich, broad and deep banking functionality because banking is sophisticated. Putting that sophistication to use, turning complexity into simplicity demands architectures designed for today’s needs. Powered by the cloud, driven by APIs and microservices, modern systems enable banks to deploy their power smoothly. Where monolithic systems inhibit business ambitions, modern systems unleash them.
APIs need to be easy to find, easy to use and provide simple access across the entire system. Systems need to be in place to ensure the bank can maintain control, revoking access and throttling speeds where needed. Advanced workflow systems are needed to support sophisticated business processes. In a 24×7, online world, availability and scalability are vitally important. Cloud provides many of the capabilities needed to ensure that reputations built over decades are not damaged in minutes. As the volume of data explodes, rich analytics tools will be needed to mine the data for actionable insights.
With more choice than ever before customers expect outstanding experiences. Banks need to exceed those expectations to win. To do so and deliver differentiated customer experiences, a combination of functionality and technology is needed. Because that combination creates unimaginable potential. Or rather the only limit is the imagination of the financial institution. The world may be volatile right now, but the agility banks need is within their reach – if they have the right banking platform.
Fusion Phoenix from Finastra provides all the capabilities needed to support retail and commercial banking on a single platform. Seamlessly integrated with Phoenix, Fusion Digital ensures that banks can deployed advanced capabilities across the channels their customers expect. Fusion Analytics completes the platform by ensuring that raw data can be rapidly turned into actionable business insight.
