Creating a truly connected financial organization

Financial services is no stranger to disruption. From fintech to blockchain and beyond, the industry has bobbed and weaved through a decade of constant change.

The good news is that this experience makes the industry uniquely positioned to lead through the challenges of COVID-19. The bad news is that those financial organizations that can’t rise to the task can lose the trust of customers counting on them in their time of need.

This is an important moment for the financial service industry, and those that can deliver consistently stellar customer experiences are more likely to rise to the top.

The key to great customer experiences
It’s been said that trust is the ultimate human currency. It can’t be bought and, once attained, can be lost in an instant. For financial institutions this is especially true, which is why the ability to deliver great customer experiences even while responding to the massive spike in customer requests is critical.

In a 2018 North America Banking Operations Survey, Accenture found 74% of bank operations leaders say customer experience is their top strategic priority. Creating the customer experiences that lead to enduring trust and loyalty begins with building a truly connected financial institution.

This goes far beyond creating a slick customer interface. Many financial institutions have focused their digital efforts on the engagement layer, but the key to delivering truly exceptional customer experiences is the ability to connect the front office to the rest of the organization.

In 2018, JPMorgan Chase spent about 40% of time in global operations on servicing client accounts, including answering queries. As we develop systems to better direct those requests, we will spend less time searching for answers and more time responding to client needs.

Fragmentation across systems and departments is the prime culprit for this damaging lack of agility and operational resilience. Because when the front, middle, and back offices can’t connect, customers can’t get the services and answers they need.

Reaping the rewards of connection
With today's growing cost pressures and low interest rate environment, margins are thinner than ever. Inefficiency is expensive—unwieldy processes and disconnected systems lead to lower productivity and soaring compliance and audit costs. The financial institutions that have already backed their engagement layer with connected operations are reaping the rewards.

According to a recent McKinsey analysis, scaling up to the entire global banking industry might generate new value of $30 billion or more, assuming core business processes representing 15-20% of spending could be digitally streamlined to improve productivity by 8-10%.
 

Introducing new Financial Services Operations
The next frontier for financial services will be to transform the customer experience with modernized operations from front to back. Which is why ServiceNow has worked with more than 900 financial institutions that run their business on the Now Platform® to develop Financial Services Operations, our first industry product purpose-built for financial services, which will be generally available later this year.

Financial Services Operations will enable financial institutions to increase employee productivity, significantly reduce operating and compliance costs and strengthen customer loyalty. Employees in operations will finally have access to one single system of action to aggregate insights across systems of record, manage processes end-to-end, and collaborate in real time across departments. Product highlights include:

• Banking services framework, compliant with Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) standards, and an industry data model that will enable rapid plug-and-play deployments with fast time to value.
• Card Operations application that will streamline common customer inquiries such as credit limit increases, card access management, and new credit card issuance.
• Payment Operations application that will digitize payments inquiries and exceptions such as payments in error and beneficiary claiming non-receipt originating from customer and third-party institutions.

Financial Services Operations can be the key to building the lifelong trust and loyalty that helps lead to enduring success—and it can’t come a moment too soon.

Use of Forward–Looking Statements
This blog contains “forward–looking statements” regarding our expectations, future plans and performance. Forward–looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward–looking statements. If any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions prove incorrect, our results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward–looking statements we make. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in any forward–looking statements include: (i) delays and unexpected difficulties and expenses in making generally available the financial services product, (ii) uncertainty whether sales of such product will justify these investments and (iii) changes in the regulatory landscape relevant to enterprises operating in the financial services industry. We undertake no obligation, and do not intend, to update these forward–looking statements

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