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Introduction:

Over the years, as we’ve witnessed the Finance Sector evolving, we noticed that certain innovations pose the cornerstone of progress, i.e., The Blockchain Technology.  Blockchain emerges as a transformative catalyst, reshaping conventional norms and driving the industry towards an unconventional yet progressive path.

As Digital Technology continues its relentless growth, the adoption of Blockchain in the Financial Sector proves to hold immense value by unleashing its capability of fueling major shifts in transactional efficiency, data integrity, and trust establishment.

To further emphasize the benefits of blockchain in finance, we present to you a study that states “The global finance blockchain market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 89.2% from 2023 to 2030.” Yet, beyond the soaring statistics lies a human-centric narrative. it shows that the blockchain not only serves to optimize processes and drives profitability, but also acts as a source of empowerment and inclusivity.

Let’s dive into the cases of blockchain in finance, and the ability to revolutionize payments, streamline supply chains, and foster a more inclusive financial ecosystem.

 1. Enhanced Financial Services: Faster, Affordable and Secure at a greater scale 

Blockchain Technology Revolutionizes Financial Services by offering faster, cheaper, and more secure transactions at a larger scale. Its ability to ensure immutable digital transactions in real-time enhances speed, security, and scalability in services like money transfers, peer-to-peer payments, and trade finance. With reduced reliance on intermediaries and nearly foolproof tamper resistance, blockchain plays a key role in cutting down costs and minimizes frauds.

Due to its increased transparency, more trust and security is built, while simultaneously reducing transactional friction.

Moreover, its transparency fosters trust and security while reducing transactional friction. By facilitating digital identities, blockchain adds another layer of trust and security to financial transactions. In contrast, conventional financial processes rely on intermediaries and involve complex, time-consuming procedures that hinder efficiency.

Blockchain streamlines these processes, notably reconciliation, clearing, and settlement, reducing time and costs for financial institutions. Another major advantage of blockchain is that it eliminates manual document collection and sharing, practices that involve custom forms and insurance policies, further enhancing efficiency in the financial industry.

 2. Simplifying Collateral Management and Commodity Tracking 

Imagine effortlessly managing collateral for large loans or tracking commodities throughout their journey in the supply chain – all in real-time.

Digital technology has brought forth Blockchain technology to turn your imagination into reality. Through the emergence of blockchain, all of these processes are made faster, more transparent, and secure than ever before.

The benefits of blockchain in finance are vast, extending to areas like trade commodities as well. This capability offers invaluable insights into the chain of custody for insured commodities, particularly beneficial in insurance claims. By leveraging blockchain technology, businesses gain visibility into losses, enhancing accountability and efficiency across the board.

 3. Tokenizing Real-World Assets for Everyone 

Wouldn’t it be great if owning a fraction of real estate or private equity was just a few clicks away? well now nothing is impossible in the finance sector. Thanks to blockchain technology, it’s now possible through the tokenization of real-world assets.

Having the flexibility to sell easily or trade your rationalized assets, or even leverage them as collateral for loans, is a privilege that most of us crave. It’s only with the help of blockchain that this newfound accessibility and liquidity are empowering individuals and businesses alike.

Even Bank of America vouched for this feature of blockchain in finance by highlighting that the tokenization of real-world assets as a driving force behind the widespread adoption of digital assets. It’s not just about technology – it’s about making ownership and investment opportunities more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

 4. Transitioning from Physical Currency to Digital Currency 

As we grew up, we watched how the world slowly transitioned from using paper bills and metal coins towards the usage of digital currency. Knowing that digital transactions will not perish, adoption of a distribution network like blockchain seems imperative.

Experts highlight the keen interest of financial institutions in this blockchain application, anticipating reduced friction, enhanced transparency, faster transactions, cost savings, heightened security, and decreased financial crimes.

Notably, Deloitte’s 2022 “Merchant Adoption of Digital Currency Payments Survey” underscores this trend, revealing that 85% of respondents anticipate ubiquitous digital currency payments in their industry within five years. Similarly, the survey reflects substantial customer interest in digital currency, particularly among younger demographics.

Current blockchain initiatives within the financial sector are steering the global economy toward this transformation. While digital currency is still not a commonplace yet, at least for minute percentage of people, the momentum towards reaching that position is still undeniable.

 5. Fortifying Credit Scores through Blockchain 

Traditional credit scoring systems pose limitations, particularly in terms of mobility and security. This proves that universal credit score should be made a mandate, especially in light of recent security breaches like the Equifax incident, which compromised millions of consumers’ sensitive information.

Blockchain technology offers a solution by providing transparency and security to credit score management. By leveraging blockchain, lenders can access immutable records of financial transactions, enabling a more comprehensive assessment of an individual’s creditworthiness. Additionally, smart contracts ensure that personal information remains secure and confidential throughout the process. This innovative approach promises to change the way credit scores are managed, offering greater reliability and protection for consumers worldwide

 6. Enhancing Efficiency in IPOs through Blockchain Decentralization 

Escalating fees associated with venture capitalists, private investment firms, and banks during the IPO process has proved to be a matter of concern due its expensive nature. As a solution, equity markets are embracing decentralization facilitated by blockchain technology.

By eliminating middlemen, blockchain in finance streamlines the entire spectrum of investor-company interactions, ensuring security and slashing costs significantly.

 7. Harnessing Blockchain to streamline fund investments 

Investing in funds is not as efficient due to the high cost associated with it, manual processes, and disparate databases slowing down the procedure. However, with digital technology and the integration of blockchain technology in finance, providers can revolutionize this process.

By storing users’ legal, personal, and public information on a blockchain, providers can drastically reduce errors and fraud, enhance transparency during the digital transactions, and simplify data access. And by utilizing smart contracts, fund investment companies can swiftly retrieve user information without any hassle.Users can maintain control over their data, with access only granted upon their consent. In addition to that, users can monitor who accesses their information and for what purpose, ensuring transparency and accountability throughout the investment process.

Hence, the Blockchain in the finance sector has ensured that fund investment becomes as seamless as any other complex task that involves the risk of transparency, high costs and inefficiency.

Conclusion:

To summarize, blockchain technology and its transformative force has evidently revolutionized digital transaction and has defied outdated norms. Blockchain in the finance sector goes beyond simplification of financial processes, it strictly ensures transparency and inclusivity – two major traits that most traditional methods lack.Through the power of blockchain, digital technology empowers individuals and businesses alike, streamlining processes, reducing costs, and fortifying security. It eliminates intermediaries, simplifying transactions and ensuring data integrity.

In the banking and financial services sector, customer experience plays a vital role in differentiating the institutions from their competition. With ever-changing customer demands and a plethora of alternatives to choose from in this digital era, only a great customer experience can enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction, with better retention.

However, the pandemic has forced the banking and financial sectors to go digital, and their CX has been influenced by how well they handle the new digitization. Thus, simply being digitally sound is not enough; institutions must also focus on becoming customer-centric digitally.

Here are four digital CX trends across Africa’s banking and financial services that institutions should watch out for:

1.Using mobile app data to improve products and services

The majority of institutions are going digital by launching their own mobile apps; these apps collect a lot of consumer data that institutions can use to enhance the customer experience. Data analytics systems and machine learning algorithms help you extract useful information from this consumer data, which can then be used to build new products, enhance existing processes, better empower customers, and improve the overall customer experience.

Stanbic Bank, one of Uganda’s largest commercial lenders, is encouraging customers to transition to its digital banking systems by waiving digital transaction fees in order to improve their customer experience.

2.Integrating Artificial Intelligence with human power

One of the most important customer touchpoints is when they call the helpline for assistance. Nothing can be more aggravating for a customer than calling their bank’s customer care to report a problem only to be placed on hold.

When encountering a problem, users may now consult AI-enabled chatbots rather than waiting on the phone. Furthermore, Conversational AI has advanced significantly in terms of its ability to accommodate and handle customer issues, making it a superpower for rapid resolution.

3.An automated onboarding process

As the adage goes, “first impression is the best impression,” for a great first impression, a positive customer experience during onboarding is crucial. New customer onboarding traditionally involves a great deal of administrative work and raises the risk of process bottlenecks, putting consumers’ patience to the test. Banks may utilize automation to speed up critical aspects of the process, allowing consumers to create accounts even faster and improving the entire customer experience.

4.Cloud-based hosting

Banks and regulators in Africa are gradually changing their minds about cloud hosting. By moving to the cloud, banks regain control of their business models and innovation cycles, allowing them to develop excellent consumer solutions with agility and speed.

Absa Group, one of the major African financial services companies, has migrated many of its operations to the cloud, which has enabled them to deliver a great end-to-end digital experience, especially given their geographically dispersed staff and client base.

According to international consultants McKinsey, the number of Africans having bank accounts would rise from almost 300 million in 2017 to 450 million by 2022, with revenues growing from $86 million to $129 million during that time.

With most institutions aiming to be digital-first banks, it’s high time for them to begin investing in their digital client experience.

Learn more at the BFSI IT Summit Africa

Event organized byExito Media Concepts

Over the past decade, we have seen substantial growth with respect to digital transformation in banking and financial services. However, the rise of fintech has increased regulatory pressure on banks and financial institutions to closely comply with regulations while also enhancing the customer experience and operational efficiency.

The introduction of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in banking could be the key to enhancing operational efficiency and meeting the demands of banking and financial services. From analyzing customer behavior to improving back-office operations, AI in banking is poised to drive incalculable value more than ever before.

Here are five ways through which banking and financial services can leverage AI:

1. AI in regulatory compliance

Regulatory compliance in banking has always been a human extensive work, with no clear ROI. AI-based software assists institutions in facilitating regulatory compliance more efficiently and effectively than current capabilities.

AI can help compliance officers supplement their skills while also helping them to scale their operations beyond what is achievable manually. Machine learning (ML) paired with natural language processing (NLP) can help comprehend data inputs such as e-mails, spoken words, instant messaging, and documents, reducing the burden on officers even further.

2. AI for data quality assurance and macro prudential surveillance

In the banking sector, the volume of data received is usually enormous and it becomes difficult for authorities to process the same using traditional methods.

By automating macro prudential analysis and data quality assurance, AI and machine learning tools may help to improve macro prudential surveillance by automatically detecting potential mistakes and alerting the data source.

3. AI for surveillance and fraud detection

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to spot complicated patterns and questionable transactions that require further examination. AI may be used to analyze granular data from transactions, client profiles, and a range of unstructured data when combined with machine learning algorithms.

It can also help institutions detect non-linear correlations between distinct traits and entities, as well as potentially intricate money-laundering behavior patterns.

4. AI for knowing the customer

One of the biggest challenges faced by banking and financial services in terms of both customer experience and regulator demands is the Know Your Customer (KYC) process.

During remote KYC, AI can assist financial services organizations in performing identification and background checks. It can also help in determining whether the photos in identifying documents match each other.

5. AI for systemic risk identification

Authorities can use machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) methods to predict and anticipate market volatility, liquidity issues, financial stress, and even unemployment.

AI may also be used to integrate and compare trading activity data with behavioral data to provide more accurate analysis. Even though many institutions are concerned about ROI, there are a considerable number of institutions that have adopted technological innovation and have experienced substantial returns.

If your organization is looking to embrace these new technological advancements, join us at the BFSI IT Summit Africa, a one-day virtual conference to learn more about how other institutions are driving digital transformation and re-inventing digital customer experience in the BFSI sector.

Learn more at the BFSI IT Summit Africa

Event organized byExito Media Concepts

The pandemic has changed consumer sentiments and banking behavior drastically. These behavioral shifts related to banking activities have forced financial institutions to adapt to digital payments and change their approach too. It has also accelerated digital transformation and probably a permanent change in customer interaction too. This measurable shift in banking behavior has led consumers away from cash and checks.

The COVID-19 crisis has turned into a wake-up call for the banking sector and transformed consumer behavior in different ways:

1. Daily Banking is changing.

Consumer interaction has been significantly impacted because many banks have redefined their approach. As the pandemic forced social distancing , consumers were keen to use flexible ways of online and mobile banking. Financial organizations are looking forward to combining creativity and innovation in this evolving digital customer journey with such measures.

2. Higher need of more flexible transactions

In the contextualization of digital engagement, consumers are shifting to more flexible, convenient, and faster transactions. In this pandemic, people need more support and flexibility from banks. Hence, banks are accelerating the adoption of subscription-based models of implementation to promote customer-centricity. Even to enable customers faster and safe transactions, banks have enabled using biometrics. Moreover, in some countr ies, they allow activation of the contactless functionality in their ATMs which facilitate seamless transactions and limit physical contact during the pandemic.

3. Boost in Digital Payments

While the pandemic gave quite the financial shock for many, at the same time, it enabled people to be prepared to be resilient in the future . Until now, the move to digital payments was steady but subdued. Enter the crisis and digital payments received a big boost and impacted consumer behavior in banking. Many people prefer contactless payment options now more than ever before.

4. Self-service channels came into force

Majority of businesses like food courts, tolls, and retailers started encouraging cashless transactions, thus allowing consumers to perform their transactions faster and securely. With the evolving digital customer journey, banks started to invest in self-service channels. The implementation of next-generation ATMs and Self-service kiosks came into force. With a wide range of services and payment options, Self-checkout and self-shopping devices made everyday life easier. Thus, we saw a great shift in the banking sector which brought up the opportunity to enjoy the consistency of innovative digital services.

5. Responsible banking became the new norm.

Contributing and enhancing the smooth transition, the latest trends of banking even impacted the consumers purchasing decisions. Enabling basic human interaction features, financial institutions fairly shifted and adapted to evolving consumer behavior. Consumers preferred ethical and transparent services from banks and banking organizations made it possible with stimulus measures.

Conclusion

Shifting consumer behavior in banking and digital transformation is quickly becoming the number one priority for businesses in this sector; they need to embrace this change and become habitual to new norms. The shift to digital banking and digital payments has given financial institutions opportunities to reduce their manual tasks and operations, leverage new technologies, and adjust to these changes.

Learn more at the 11th Edition- BFSI IT Summit

Event by Exito Media Concepts

Today’s banking sector is witnessing a significant change consisting of an evolving workforce and an accelerated adoption of technologies in business processes. With the digital environment encircling the financial sector, banking services and consumers are expected to go fully digital. As customer demands continue to disrupt functions, the banking sector is keen on adopting agile practices.

In the quest for innovation, here are some key drivers of digital banking that can enhance the digital customer journey.

APIs in Banking Ecosystem

Application programming interfaces will be one of the essential key factors to lead financial institutions to connect with other banking sources. In addition, it may help to deliver a broad range of new services to the public. By unleashing this opportunity in the banking ecosystem, the future of digital banking looks bright as it could help deliver real-time solutions and channel sources of revenue.

Frictionless Payment Options

Offering frictionless payment options can also drive the traditional banking system and bring flexibility in payment solutions. This complete revamp in payment options can boost digital banking and thereby enhance the overall customer experience. The payment transfer will be swift, secure, and will be contact less. Such measures will help digital banking in 2021 allow institutions to create virtual versions of their physical credit and debit cards.

Chatbots and virtual assistants

The latest and the newest ones in this list to drive digital banking will be Chatbots and virtual assistants. Powered by artificial intelligence, the future of digital banking will be fully automated. These smart assistants may serve the purpose in every vertical of marketing, from customer support to sales, and deliver efficient, personalized services at a minimum cost. With such capabilities, AI will undoubtedly be a game-changer and streamline banking procedures in a significant way.

Omnichannel service

With a need to satisfy digitally savvy customers and streamline their services, financial enterprises are crafting an omnichannel experience for customers . Owing to unsustainable organizational and operational divisions, they will try to connect the touchpoints to ease the flow of information across channels to ensure that customer interaction isn’t broken. With such tailored banking interactions over the channel, they will deliver their customers with a uniform and integrated experience across all channels.

Digital integrations

Going digital makes customers’ lives easy and implementing digital integration in the banking sector can provide security and cost-efficiency. In addition, this driver of digital banking can ensure the smoothest workflow and the highest quality service across all bank locations. Going digital can also serve to manage services of opening a savings account remotely or setting up automatic payments anytime and anywhere.

Conclusion

To ride this digital wave successfully and prepare for Digital Transformation, every financial institution and bank needs to take immediate steps. First, they need to usher in this trend with a strategic mix of automation, experimentation, and analytics. Then, they should decisively switch gears before they lose touch with their customers and adapt to serve digitally savvy and mobile customers. Witness the rapidly advancing digital banking landscape escalation and enable your enterprises to grow better than ever.

Learn more at the 11th Edition- BFSI IT Summit

Event by Exito Media Concepts

With Covid-19 having transformed the entire customer journey and lifecycle, the BFSI sector
has been one of the most disrupted industries. There’s a dire need to align the people, processes and products keeping the digital customer in mind. At the 9th Edition of the BFSI IT Summit, we brought on board some path breaking leaders from the BFSI sector.
Here’s the essence of what followed

The panel moderated by Mr. Dipu K.V, President, Head- Operations & Customer Experience, Bajaj Allianz put forth incredible insights and best practices in streamlining the digital Customer
Experience.

It’s not about how the technology is adopted, but rather about how fast organizations incorporate it to the core DNA of the organization agreed the panellists.
With the rapid digitization, more resources are being spent on the footprints of different channels like the web, mobile app, etc and the key is to proactively engage with customers where they are.

Mr. Manoj Kumar, EVP-IT Kotak Mahindra went on to address the role security and trust play in customer experience. He says financial organizations need to look at the overall 360 degree view of the customers. While the ease of transactions is crucial for a seamless CX, the various risks involved must also be evaluated. Security is a pivotal aspect in building trust with customer experience.

He further addressed the need for an overall 360 degree view of the customers transaction via all touch points such as branch banking, mobile banking, net banking or through channels like NEFT, UPI etc.The idea is to have an enterprise fraud system through all these channels.

Businesses must ask themselves; what are the main channels that customers use?
Is there any additional authentication needed to ensure that the customers are identified rightly.

Mr. Kalyan Sritharan, Head Digital Products, ICICI Bank pointed out that, customer centric innovations are paramount in financial services. Organizations need to ensure that customers life is made simple. This can be achieved by having an overall 360° view of the customers which captures the scale and thereby enhances the customer experience.

Through a 360° view, organizations need to make sure that all the touch points are digitally served to achieve optimum scale of cost-efficiency and better risk-graded in terms of approach. Right from on boarding to servicing and providing a personalized experience, data models need to be built with customers as the cornerstone.

Register now to be a part of the upcoming edion.

Event by Exito Media Concept.