Digital Transformation – Aligning banks and customer journeys

All banks across the world have embarked on their digital transformation journey to be competitive and technologically sound in these rapidly changing times. Each bank has a different way of looking at digitization. It is safe to say that digital transformation is the process of digitizing a bank’s business to suit the evolving customer needs and demands. APIs, open banking, integration with Fintechs are some of the keys areas in the journey. By becoming digital, banks’ resources are put to use effectively at lower costs and quicker turnaround. With holistic digitization banks can provide seamless and enriching experiences to their customers. Digital transformation does not happen in a day, it takes effort and time to transform an organization for new digital realities. However, there is no upper limit for being digital as technology is a moving target and advancements are made each day where banks are put under tremendous pressure to keep innovating and upgrading.

Some of the challenges banks commonly face during their digital transformation journey are –

Whilst banks have their own challenges as they embark on the journey, the customers of the banks also face the heat during the transformation journey. Banks have a diverse customer base comprising silent generation, baby boomers, generation X, millennials and generation Z. Additionally, their customer base comprises people from urban and rural areas. A bank’s customers face challenges in terms of knowledge, interest and access to digital applications. As not all customers fall under these three areas, it becomes the responsibility of the bank to ensure their strategy is covers all the customers. Some points to invoke interest and knowledge among the customers include:

Banks today also provide their customers the access to banking services vide agent banking where agents are deployed to provide doorstep banking to the customers. This includes both urban and rural customers. With newer technologies like AI, automation, blockchain for payments, trade, loans, robotics in a disruptive mode, banks face newer challenges each day. They may have to come up with newer ways to combat the challenges and at the same time keep progressing on their journey of digital transformation.

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