What the financial sector currently deals with

Excerpt

1. Customers at the center of the financial industry strategy
   Complaints against financial institutions have increased by 31% in the first five months of 2020 according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in the US. What COVID-19 has confirmed to the finance sector is, that if they want to be successful in the long term, their interaction with the customer must be at the center of their strategy. They must know how their customers interact with their business and offer them the right product at the right time and as fast as possible. Achieving this requires integrating and optimally coordinating internal processes. Reaching this goal does not seem an easy task, since in many cases, they lack an interpretation of what matters to their customers and what drives behavior. Too often, banks track...
    
2. Keeping up with compliance regulations without increasing resource costs
   Financial institutions spend each year about $270 billion on compliance-related costs. And this trend has been growing since the anti-money laundering regulations following the 2008 financial crisis. These regulations forced financial institutions to comply with additional ue diligence requirements and to keep records of it. Processes that were already labor intensive became even more so, increasing the need of additional resources in this area.
   A solution is not easy to find. On the one hand, banks and financial institutions need to create a culture where calling-out non-compliant behavior becomes normal and where defects are not ignored. This change is not only to ensure that history does not repeat itself, but also because non-process driven compliance relies on humans, and humans inevitably make mistakes. On the other hand, large institutions are spread across multiple countries with...
    
3. The irruption of agile fintech companies and neobanks - how to compete with resilient non-traditional players
   Innovation in the banking and finance sector is largely driven by technological progress. This is not a modern movement, as many may assume. Financial services is an industry that always has been ahead of other industries in terms of technology. In the 1950s, they introduced credit cards, in the 1990s, internet banking, in the 2000s, contactless payment technology, and in the last years, fintech is taking off and traditional finance institutions are struggling to keep pace with the rise of agile fintech companies and neobanks. Three trends have led to this situation...