Infosys Finacle, part of EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Infosys Limited and Efma Thursday unveiled the ‘Innovation in Retail Banking’ report. The report highlights the top trends that are transforming the way banks operate and engage with customers, with a special focus on their plans and actions in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The company shared in a regulatory filing on Thursday that more than 750 banks and financial services companies from across the world participated in the 12th edition of the report. Jim Marous, publisher of the Digital Banking Report and copublisher of The Financial Brand authored the report.
With the present medical crisis looming large, the report revealed significant opportunities for digital maturity. Only 7 percent of respondent banks have deployed digital transformation initiatives at scale with commensurate benefits. Further, many banks have shown a dip in their self-perception this year, with only 9 percent saying they were innovation pioneers, compared to 14% last year.
Scaling digital transformation, improving customer engagement and cost management, however, have emerged as the top three priorities going forward, for banks, with focus on agility driven by cloud adoption. Respondents have spoken of increased investments in mobility, advanced analytics and open banking APIs, as areas expected to have the biggest impact on banking over the next 12 months.
Key takeaways from the report include:
• Banks have identified 7 keys to digital transformation, with the most important components being leadership / culture, data and analytics and CX.
• While there is an understanding of the importance of digital transformation, most firms rate their efforts as insufficient, with 62 percent stating their digital deployment as partial or digital investments not delivering as expected.
• Respondents voted their three biggest challenges for undertaking digital transformation as – time and cost of implementation (71 percent), system integration (66 percent) and legacy technology landscape (62 percent).
• Mobility (73 percent), Open APIs and AI / Advanced Analytics / Machine Learning (64 percent) were seen as the most important technologies having the biggest impact on banking over the next 12 months, with cloud computing (58 percent) being an area of great importance in the future.
• Much of the innovation in 2020 was seen as having taken place in Lending (40 percent) and Payments (38 percent).
• Over 64 percent identified product delivery channels as an area which would see an overwhelming preference for innovation over the next five years.