Disembarking Legacy Air Flight 2000

The air is turbulent as the energy of change churns, affecting our flight path. Conversations relating to digital transformation have been taking place in financial services for decades.?For the most part, progress to date has been incremental.?The milieu in 2023 is different however – the industry “step change” that we have been anticipating is upon us, and the wind beneath our wings is now capricious with modern technology solutions pivoting around the concepts of scalability, adaptability and openness.??

From a technology perspective, there is no “secret sauce” associated with the recalibration taking place; we are simply speaking to modernity and reducing reliance on legacy sunk cost – modern standards implemented adeptly within a contemporary framework and powered by ecosystem. ??Adopting modern standards is not transformational in itself; what is transformational is the manner in which financial institutions align to modernity and digitally position their organization’s business with modern technology, leveraging capabilities to deliver new experiences in a meaningful and differentiated manner.

The Boston Consulting Group is predicting that FinTech will become a USD $1.5 trillion industry by 2030.?This explosion is being driven by ecosystem-based delivery and the platform economy.?In financial services, we are moving into the era of composable experience.?Rather than capabilities being disparate, modern digital is nurturing combobulation to bring together complete experiences that matter when, where, and how for consumers.??In some cases, it may be financial institutions themselves orchestrating the primary experience, in other situations it may be financial institutions being composed into a secondary experience where they can add value.?Regardless, composed digital experiences that resonate, will be enthusiastically adopted by consumers and become a new norm.?Banks and credit unions that excel at building and curating these experiences will put themselves in the position of being financial services digital “category killers.”

The question for financial institutions that must be answered strategically relates to participating in the platform economy and positioning to facilitate ecosystem-based delivery. Conditions are turbulent and metaphorically flying on Legacy Air Flight 2000 will become increasingly disconcerting. Digital banking will not remain a “transaction processing experience.”?While processing transactions will always be important in the background, the experiential aspect of digital banking is re-orienting around supporting lifestyle and goals in an intelligent manner. With this shift, modern digital banking will disrupt the traditional retail branch experience, by providing increasingly diverse personalized experiences, powered by cloud, data, AI, machine learning, and technology that improves processing, with real time rail payments, and blockchain being examples.

At a moment of transformation, one looks forward, not backward.??The time to seize the opportunity and proactively disembark Legacy Air Flight 2000 is now.?Waiting for an emergency landing does not outwardly make sense, nor does it serve constituents who are waiting patiently for their financial institutions to embrace change and the possibility that it represents.?Luckily, equipment change is within reach – the departure lounge of digital is ready to host guests and Modern Air Flight 2030 can be prepared for take off.