Are Banks Really Satisfied with Their Current Technology?

A thought-provoking blog recently posted online by Forbes addresses the relative shortage of fintech start-ups going public. One of the reasons it suggests is that on “the B2C side, there is no huge mass of disgruntled bank customers waiting for something new to come along.” In support of that contention, it cites a Harvard Business Review article published last month was entitled "Disruption Starts with Unhappy Customers, Not Technology."

Moreover, the Forbes article contends that U.S. banks in particular “are hardly very satisfied with many of their IT vendors.”

That being the case, new fintech solutions aren’t catching on due to the combination of customer satisfaction with the level of service they currently receive at their banks and their banks’ satisfaction with the legacy technology they employ.

That doesn’t jive with our experience at Finscend. We’re a fintech start-up that has developed a unique bank dispute platform powered by artificial intelligence. We’re too young to even think of an IPO at the current time, but we’ve done our research. It’s thorough. And conclusive.

Over the past three years, we’ve spoken with tens of thousands of customers of over 700 leading banks worldwide. What we’ve heard is exactly the opposite: Those who have interacted with their banks in order to attempt to raise a dispute concerning a credit or debit card transaction are almost uniformly disgruntled and would very much like to see something new to come along to replace the lengthy, pedantic and, worst of all, subjective process they have endured.

And the feeling is mutual. Bank executives know that their legacy technology and archaic methodology is a drag. And they also know it’s expensive. The top 15 American banks alone lose over $3 billion annually due to deficiencies in dispute resolution. And what we’ve heard from them leads us to conclude that, for banks, disruption doesn’t begin with unhappy customers or technology. It begins with bloated expenses.

What banks have indicated to us, therefore, is that they will be receptive to fintech solutions that drastically reduce costs once they are assured that they integrate seamlessly with their existing digital ecosystems. Finscend hears that loud and clear!