Need for instant fulfilment fuels incumbent banks’ speedy digital transformation

EVENT COVERAGE: ABF SUMMIT 2022 Need for instant fulfilment fuels incumbent banks’ speedy digital transformation

Increased digital-savviness of customers will spur rise of megabanks, experts say.

Expect more digital banking features to be rolled out and possibly even the rise of megabanks amidst an increasingly digital-savvy banking and finance sector that seeks instant fulfilment, senior executives of three of Asia’s top banks told attendees of ABF Summit 2022 Day 1 closing panel moderated by Andrew Gilder, Asia-Pacific Banking and Capital Markets Leader; Global Corporate, Commercial and SME (CCSB) Banking Consulting Leader, Ernst & Young.

Brian Hui, HSBC MD and Head of Customer Propositions and Marketing, Wealth and Personal Banking (WPB), revealed that HSBC rolled out over 200 new digital features in its mobile app just last year in its quest to make digital banking as convenient as possible for its customers stuck at home. “Literally one digital feature being delivered per working day,” Hui told attendees of the panel on June 15.

“I will say, it’s less about the platform, because if we’re talking about infrastructure. It’s still the same platform, but with [a] much more hyper personalised design,” Hui said. “What is more important is how we make it agile during this situation.”

Instant fulfilment

As customers become more technologically inclined, so does their appetite for faster services and more options, all three of the panel speakers agreed. This is because banking becomes less confined to the finance space, but starts to extend to other industries that involve technology, such as mobile games and e-commerce–where digital natives have become used to fast processing times and instant gratification. Take payments, for example.

“Paying is no longer compared to [other] banks. Payments [is] compared to many different industries. And that creates a huge impact because the customer and the expectation from different industry different apps are basically the same. And what I see in the new normal is a minimum expectation that the consumer will have instant fulfilment,” noted Dick Ho, Deputy General Manager, Personal Banking & Wealth Management Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited. The need for instant fulfilment is complicated by the fact that, as a highly regulated market, banking processes tend to take more time than online shopping’s cart out and deliver now options.The question of security also comes into play. Ashmita Acharya, Retail Banking Head, Citi Singapore, noted this challenge, especially given the recent surge of fraud and scams in Singapore’s banking sector. “I think between ABS [Association of Banks in Singapore] and MAS [the local regulator], there’s been a huge amount of focus in keeping offline safe. And that’s something that is becoming top of mind. So it’s a balance between going to a completely digital payment ecosystem and keeping the client safe, keeping the ecosystem safe,” Acharya said.

The more, the merrier

Citi’s Acharya also pointed out banking customers’ need to have access to more services–also the inspiration behind HSBC rolling out hundreds of new features in their platform, as HSBC’s Hui earlier noted. “Clients want more options, more Paying is accessibility. They want better pricing, no longer whether commission free robocompared to advisory. They want greater access to other banks. education opportunities, investment Payments is markets, or to financial instruments, compared to across all segments,” Acharya said. many different HSBC’s Hui agreed. “What they industries want is more choices, faster speed, lower price. Strategically we always ask ourselves, what exactly is the thing that is not going to change, and hence, the business model itself will sustain,” he said, commenting on how banks plan to ride out the rise in digitisation and the dawn of neobank disruptors. For Citi’s Acharya, there is room for all banks to thrive in the new digital norm. “The entrants who are coming in are going to make us incumbents be better and smarter, because we do have the information, we do have the ability to offer up a much more broader proposition than some of these new virtual entrants, because they’re very targeted, they’re going from one of the slivers, either as SME banking, or they’re going in for payments, or they’re going in for a very deposit-taking strategy or lending,” she said.

Megabank or fintech

Asked about the future of banking, Ho, Acharya, and Hui all noted that it will be more digital and techembedded than now. For the full event coverage, go to https://asianbankingandfinance.net/