Caspar Herzberg |
This article first appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of The Record.
Today, many new direct business models in the financial services industry use IT as a core capability to offer services predominately or even exclusively over online and mobile channels. Typically, they provide the same types of accounts and services that traditional bricks-and-mortar branches do, but with lower fees. As they catch up, conventional branch set ups are adding limited digital functionalities like paperless office, while others are leaning towards pure digital branches. But more needs to be done.
The world is changing from a digital-first to a mobile-first strategy. For the tech-savvy Generation Y, their mobile is their first and, for some, only screen in their life. If you are not thinking mobile first today, you are five years behind.
The digital world moves so quickly that we don’t have to look far into the future to see the next evolution coming. In a few years’ time, the mantra that the most exciting start-ups will be pitching won’t be ‘mobile first’ but ‘artificial intelligence first’. Enhanced, real-time, more accurate information will lead the digital world to make better decisions.
For financial services institutions, it will result in improved product and service offerings at appropriate price points, allowing them to capture and lock customers in, and improve profitability.
Every transaction, call, click, tweet, chat session, like, post, check-in and so on is a potential source of information. If they can harness this data, firms can predict the needs, activities and preferences of their customers and use them to anticipate customers’ actions, and deliver a tailored, consistent experience across every channel.
To accomplish this, banks need big data and advanced analytics technology that connects insights to customer and employee-facing channels – technology that can process massive amounts of data in real time and quickly turn it into personalised recommendations delivered at the right time and place.
VeriPark’s Next Best Action solution, built on Microsoft Cloud technology, empowers banks and insurance companies to deliver relevant, timely and coordinated offers. Using Cortana Intelligence Suite’s big data and advanced analytics capabilities, like machine learning, Next Best Action analyses data streams to predict the optimal next actions to take with a given customer. These are delivered as real-time recommendations or automatic actions across inbound and outbound channels, including mobile, web, branch, contact centre, e-mail and social media.
Financial institutions can extend Next Best Action with other solutions like customer insights and cognitive services to boost their ability to predict business, risk and deliver innovative services. Welcome to the artificial intelligence-first future.
Wim Geukens is managing director of VeriPark Europe