Digital Opens Door to Banking Growth and Opportunities

While digital technologies and the mobile consumer present challenges to financial institutions, some organizations have leveraged the power of digital to streamline processes, boost productivity and enhance the consumer experience.

By Jonathan Rowe, Ph.D., is director of research and marketing, nCino

Banks today face a myriad of threats and challenges, including increased regulatory burdens and competitive pressures from credit unions, disruptive peer-to-peer lending groups and other institutions. Yet, technology and changing customer behaviors and expectations – particularly the trend of increasing mobility – open the door to growth and opportunities.

Consider for a moment the following points:

• In 1995, the typical banking customer visited the branch 2.21 times per month; but by 2012, those visits dropped significantly to just .26 times per month.
• More than 90% of the U.S. adult population currently has a mobile phone and approximately 55% of Americans use their phone for mobile banking.
• While it took almost 12 years for Internet banking to surpass branch banking in terms of number of visits, mobile banking has surpassed internet banking in less than seven years.
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. recently marked a significant milestone when it became the first bank in the U.S. to report more than 20 million total active mobile users.

Mobility has entered every part of our lives from the professional to the personal, and the financial services industry is no exception.

Embracing Enterprise Mobility to Boost Productivity

Financial institutions must leverage mobile technology across the entire enterprise to empower employees and free them from their desks and branch-only interactions.

No longer is it sufficient to simply offer mobile banking. Instead, financial institutions must leverage mobile technology across the entire enterprise to empower employees and free them from their desks and branch-only interactions. Financial institutions that embrace mobility will boost productivity and operational efficiency across business channels and be able to serve customers where they live, work and play.

Imagine if your bank employees had the ability to open a deposit account while at a customer’s business, participate in a loan committee meeting while working from home, or approve a loan securely on their phone while traveling. It is this mobility that provides the means for operational agility and ongoing business value.

When you think of a company who has effectively embraced mobility, Uber, a six-year-old company now valued at roughly $40 billion, is likely the first that comes to mind. At its core, Uber is a taxi service, the likes of which have been around for millennia. However, what has differentiated Uber from other standard transportation companies and enabled its explosive growth is on-demand mobility – for customers in requesting a ride, for the drivers who provide the service, and for the back office employees who help manage it all.

This is exactly how banks need to be thinking. Every technology platform should be evaluated to determine its mobile capabilities. New systems purchased must be mobile optimized and provide the highest level of data security.

The number of systems banks have should be reduced so that employees managing a loan file are all working on the same virtual loan file with a single virtual document set regardless of the device and their location. Over time, this mobile technology model will also empower regulators to perform exams remotely and more efficiently, creating an even better relationship between the bank employee and regulatory examiner.

A recent study of small business owners by ath Power Consulting found that 93% of business customers would prefer a commercial loan process that used mobile technology and allowed them to interact directly with a lender without having to visit the branch. Two institutions serve as exceptional examples of banks that have successfully applied this mobile framework to their business lending processes.

Taking a Netflix Approach to Banking

Read how two financial institutions leveraged digital for efficiency and growth here ...