3 ways to future-fit financial services organizations

Big tech companies are on target to capture up to 40% of the $1.35 trillion in U.S. financial services revenue from banks, according to Insider Intelligence. Weathering this storm requires an integrated approach to people, processes, and technology. Yet many financial services organizations are saddled with outdated technology and processes that make digital transformation overwhelming.

“Nearly every bank has taken off on their journey to the cloud, but very few have gotten more than a few feet off the ground,” Accenture reports.

ServiceNow Financial Services Operations can help accelerate digital transformation. It allows financial services organizations to intelligently orchestrate and automate business processes and services. IDC agrees, having named ServiceNow the winner of three 2022 IDC FinTech Real Results Awards: Next Generation Payments, Treasury & Trade Transformation, and Overall Winner. 

“Winning in both the Next Generation Payments and Treasury & Trade categories, and receiving top honors as overall winners, demonstrates that ServiceNow has proven it can revamp existing financial services environments with its work orchestration and process automation capabilities,” says Jerry Silva, vice president at IDC Financial Insights.

Here are three ways financial services organizations can future-fit their businesses.

1. Drive frictionless customer experiences

Many financial institutions face innovation challenges due to outdated technology and fragmented platform architecture. This makes it difficult to manage customer experience, requiring multiple people to work on customer requests across numerous departments.

Because financial services systems are built for volume, availability, and security, they’re not easy to change. Changing too quickly risks regulatory, compliance, security, and account issues. Yet innovation is imperative to meet evolving customer demands and prepare for future success.

Equipped with a banking-specific data model and strategic out-of-the-box applications and integrations, Financial Services Operations orchestrates work across both existing and new processes and technology.

It includes optimized workspaces for bank employees, preconfigured workflows for common processes, and strategic integrations to help organizations become more efficient, deliver frictionless customer service and consistent employee experiences, and continuously adapt to meet evolving customer demands.

Lloyds Banking Group, for example, automated more than 90% of payment exceptions by adopting Financial Services Operations. Work that once took days now takes minutes, thanks to integrating systems and data.

In addition, Lloyds is able to process more than 60% of direct debit refund cases in less than three minutes, a process that took three days prior to implementing ServiceNow. Customers can receive a refund in as little as 30 seconds.

2. Reduce operational costs

Many financial services organizations rely on multiple platforms—such as a payment system, customer relationship management system, and a lending platform—to perform a single financial transaction. These siloed systems stymie business performance and productivity. They’re also costly to maintain and update.

Adopting leading-edge architecture and delivery practices can help accelerate software innovation across the enterprise at scale. Financial Services Operations allows organizations to go beyond the constraints of their current systems. Using process automation, AI, and low-code, banks can create brand-new ways to work.

At a large global bank, for example, organizational silos and legacy communication channels caused service inconsistencies and many other challenges. These resulted in cost inefficiencies, a lack of data and insights to drive improvements, and difficulty providing efficient and productive customer and employee experiences.

After implementing ServiceNow, the bank significantly decreased development costs and increased self-service. Thanks to the noticeable value add, use of ServiceNow rapidly expanded organically across the organization. 

3. Improve risk and compliance oversight

Banks operate in a highly complex and regulated environment while managing ever-changing security risks, such as infrastructure and data privacy vulnerabilities. With ServiceNow, controls are easily built into the process and tracked via service-level agreements, an end-to-end audit trail, and managerial dashboards.

Now banks can move away from outdated, inflexible risk and compliance technologies that depend on email, spreadsheets, and shared cloud documents. Using a digital, end-to-end platform can allow financial services organizations to create a seamless enterprise system of action. This system can connect tools, people, and processes—and prioritize risks based on business impact.

Getting the right data to the right people at the right time will help financial services leaders make informed decisions to manage risk and compliance properly.

Find out more about how ServiceNow makes financial services work better.

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