How has the banking battlefield evolved? - Decoding: Banks - Episode 1

11 FS kicks off their Decoding: Banks series with a look at the banking landscape today and how we got here. Over the course of the episode, we look at some of the fundamentals - what is money, what is a bank and how has the banking ecosystem today taken shape? We'll also look at how rival players have changed the game and what the future might hold. Let's get started.

Customers Demanding Enhanced Mobile Banking Apps

It is more important than ever to deliver a significantly better digital banking experience than is delivered today. Customers want an experience that is fast, easy and secure. More importantly, they want control of their finances at their fingertips.

Find out more from The Financial Brand. Click HERE.

Laying 5 e-Commerce Myths to Rest

Once seen as secondary to in-person sales, the e-commerce channel has rocketed to the forefront since 2020 and is now a key purchasing gateway for many corporate buyers.

Despite this, misconceptions abound, with a number of B2B companies telling us that “customers aren’t ready” and “e-commerce is an immature space for businesses like ours.”

McKinsey & Company’s latest B2B Pulse helps put these notions squarely to rest. Not only are corporate buyers open to e-commerce, two-thirds now rely on digital and remote channels throughout their purchasing journey. While some B2B companies see e-commerce as the purview of cutting-edge tech players, the reality is that suppliers across industries are ramping up their capabilities at astonishing speeds.

The conventional wisdom around B2B e-commerce is due for a reset. These charts expose five prevailing myths.

Read the McKinsey report HERE.

Where Banks & Credit Unions Are Missing the Mark with Mobile Banking

Consumers expect more out of mobile apps than a glorified debit card and checkbook register. Their raised expectations uncover gaps in the quality of major financial institutions' apps in comparison with fintech apps, new research reveals.

Even the best of the best among the mobile banking apps of large financial institutions are doing only “C level” work compared to where they need to be. They are especially lagging in the digital money management functions that have made fintech and neobank apps so popular, according to a major consumer study by Insider Intelligence.

Get the details from The Financial Brand HERE. 

Why Bond Yields Are a Key Economic Barometer

U.S. government bond yields aren’t just a barometer of the economy, they also influence the cost of borrowing, from mortgages to student loans. WSJ explains how they work and why they’re so crucial to the economy.

Battle of the blockchains

To believers, open, public blockchains provide a second chance at building a digital economy. The fact that the applications built on top of such blockchains all work with each other, and that the information they store is visible to all, harks back to the idealism of the internet’s early architects, before most users embraced the walled gardens offered by the tech giants. The idea that a new kind of “decentralised” digital economy might be possible has been bolstered over the past year as the numerous applications being built on top of various blockchains have boomed in size and functionality.

Read the full article from The Economist HERE.

What Trends Are Going To Transform Business Banking in 2022 and Beyond?

Financial institutions are especially vulnerable to losing small-to-medium sized businesses to fintech entrants.

SMBs have typically been underserved when it comes to tech innovation or new digital services. More than six in ten businesses in this large segment go outside their primary bank for business services such as payments and receivables.

An innovation revolution is roiling business banking just as it has consumer banking.

When it comes to sleek new tech and shiny new digital products and features, much of the innovation has long been focused on the consumer side of banking. Business banking, meanwhile, remains stuck in neutral, saddled with legacy tech and processes, many of which are still largely paper-based.

But banks that can ramp up their game when it comes to business banking services stand a good chance of getting a leg up on competitors and driving revenue. Individuals that use business banking services are, after all, consumers as well, and increasingly they are demanding the same type of innovation they get in their consumer lives from their business banking relationship.

So, what trends are going to transform business banking in 2022 and beyond that?

Find out by reading the report from The Financial Brand HERE. 

How to keep innovation moving

Managing the risks and rewards of emerging technologies is a tricky balancing act. How is it possible to maximise the upsides of innovation while minimizing the potential downsides? Read more here: https://econ.st/327bXxU

Fixing Banking’s Pain Points

"Years ago in a TV commercial for Wittnauer fine watches, a young woman approaches a jewelry counter and says, “I want a Wittnauer.” A dimwitted sales rep insists on showing her other items. She continues murmuring, “I want a Wittnauer.” He doesn’t catch on. Finally she shouts her request: “I want a Wittnauer!” Finally it sinks in, and the sales rep gets the sale… despite doing everything possible to undermine the experience by ignoring even the most obvious buying cues.

Are financial institutions listening any better to the voice of the consumer? Not really.

In a BAI webinar, “Trends In Marketing & Customer Acquisition,” serious questions were raised about banking providers’ ability to give consumers what they want, how they want it, when they want it."

Read the full article on The Financial Brand HERE

How Starbucks Operates Like a Bank While Serving Coffee - WSJ

Starbucks, a $124.4 billion company, trails only McDonald’s as the largest restaurant chain by market capitalization. In this video, WSJ’s Heather Haddon explains how Starbucks used technology to garner its loyal customer base and why mobile orders are shifting the chain’s business priorities.

How Companies Are Overhauling Supply Chains to Ease Bottlenecks

The Covid pandemic has strained global supply chains, causing freight backlogs that have driven up costs. Now, some companies are looking for longer-term solutions to prepare for future supply-chain crises, even if those strategies come at a high cost.

ATM usage is headed the way of the payphone

The availability of ATMs may have peaked at 470,000 units scattered across the U.S. in 2019, with a fall-off since then to 462,000 in 2020 and an estimated 456,000 last year, a spokesperson for research firm Euromonitor International said in updating its report on financial cards and payments in the U.S. 

Kendrick Sands, Euromonitor’s head of Consumer Finance Research, expects that downward trend to continue.

The automated tellers are disappearing in tandem with banks closing local branches. The banking strategy pivot comes as digital banking and payment alternatives become more widespread.

Get the full story HERE. 

Ways to Start Using NFTs in Your Business

NFTs may have been floating around since 2015, but they only gained massive popularity in 2021. Some NFTs sold for millions of dollars!

Although an emerging technology, NFTs in business have become a hot topic. 

This article explains how to use NFTs for your business and what to know before delving into these digital assets.

Want to know more? Click HERE. 

How to Build Blockchain Financial Services Applications

Are you a start-up founder or an enterprise leader with plans to launch a financial services application? You might be wondering whether, and indeed, how to use blockchain for this.

Industry observers highlight the steady growth of blockchain in the financial services market.

A Markets and Markets report states that the FinTech blockchain market will grow from $0.23 billion in 2017 to $6.2882 billion by 2023. The report projects a CAGR of 75.9% during the 2018-2023 period.

You are no doubt wondering how to build blockchain financial services applications?  Find out how, HERE.

 

Triple Extortion Ransomware - What it is and how to prevent It

The global surge in ransomware attacks increased by 102% in 2021 compared to the beginning of 2020, and shows no sign of slowing down

The number of organizations impacted by ransomware globally has more than doubled in the first half of 2021 compared with 2020.

The healthcare and utilities sectors are the most targeted sectors while organizations in Asia Pacific are targeted more than any other region.

Since April, researchers at Check Point Research (CPR) have seen an average of over 1,000 organizations being impacted by ransomware every week.

Prominent attacks that have taken place at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 point at a new attack chain – essentially an expansion to the double extortion ransomware technique, integrating an additional, unique threat to the process – that CPR calls the Triple Extortion. 

What is Triple Extortion? You can find out HERE.

Santander finds itself in a Citi moment with $175 million error

As Santander looks to claw back roughly $175 million it mistakenly paid to British customers on Christmas Day, it can look to Citi, on a basic level, for what to expect, what to avoid and what to ask itself.

Citi’s manual transfer of $900 million in August 2020 to creditors of the cosmetics firm Revlon is likely the highest-profile recent case of a bank making an errant, nine-figure payout from its own reserves.

For Santander, the $175 million represents duplicate payments. About 75,000 people and companies received one-off or scheduled payments from 2,000 businesses — in many cases, their employers or suppliers — that have accounts with the bank. Then, they received a second identical payment from Santander.

Find out more HERE.

Workplace Injuries in the WFH Era: A Tale from Germany

Accidents do happen. Everyone's home included. But, here's the thing. Technically speaking, this remote worker got injured on his way to work. 

"The man was working from home and on his way to his desk one floor below his bedroom" when something bad and painful happened. 

One or a thousand steps, does it really matter?

At home, or on the way to the office, does it really matter? 

Well, according to the insurance companies, it does. 

Find our what happened and why HERE.

10 worst password snafus of 2021

Using strong and secure passwords is sound advice not just for your own personal accounts but for any accounts or services you use on the job. In fact, a weak password can create far more trouble for an organization that holds user data and other sensitive information. To show just how much trouble it can create, password manager Dashlane has unveiled a list of the worst password-related security incidents for 2021.

For its 2021's Worst Password Offenders list, Dashlane looked at the year's 10 worst security mishaps that involved hacked or stolen passwords. These fiascos show that advice about creating a strong password is still being ignored by too many individuals and too many organizations.

Read the full list HERE.

Deutsche Bank’s ESG executive slams industry’s greenwashing practices

Kamran Khan, Deutsche Bank’s head of ESG for Asia Pacific, urged the financial services industry to step up its game and take responsibility for its use of ESG and net-zero labels. 

At a time when the possible ramifications of greenwashing practices multiply rapidly, Khan said there is a growing need to put a “reality check” and impose the authority of “saying no” to colleagues or clients trying to misleadingly attach the ESG label to their products. 

“When you look at it, any company can make a net-zero commitment, and come up with a nice little PowerPoint on how they’re going to move from today to 2030 or 2050,” Khan said at a Sibos 2021 panel last October.

Read the full article on bobsguide. HERE.

Top 10 tech trends that will shape the coming decade, according to McKinsey

McKinsey predicts the 10 tech trends will shape the next decade. These include digital connectivity, distributed infrastructure and next-generation computing.

We’ll experience more technological progress in the coming decade than we did in the preceding 100 years put together, says McKinsey. And just 10 tech trends will dominate this shifting landscape.
 

Understanding the effects of this change can help avoid nasty shocks to the system, for both individuals and organizations. Businesses that are making the most of advances in tech are also in a good place to make the most in terms of return on their investments.

Read the full article HERE.