I recently got involved in some research that Salesforce put together at the end of last year.
They surveyed 2,800 financial services leaders in two waves just before and after the pandemic hit.
The first was fielded from November 12 through December 12, 2019 that generated responses from 1,400 leaders in insurance, retail banking, and wealth management across North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific regions.
The second wave was fielded from August 21 through September 21, 2020 that generated responses from 1,360 leaders in the same sectors and geographies.
All respondents are third-party panellists (not limited to Salesforce customers).
Here are some of the key findings:
- FSIs acknowledge importance of customer well-being, but fall short on taking action. 74% agree that focusing on financial well-being is important, but only 43% are taking action on either financial or overall well-being.
- Insurance (54% vs. 39%) and Wealth (51% vs. 30%) believe traditional financial institutions are bringing more innovation than digital-first FSIs.
- 87% of financial services leaders agree that autonomous or, as some call it, embedded finance will be critical for top performers in the industry.
- Growth-oriented FSIs have higher expectations of customer benefits of autonomous finance than Stabilizing FSIs because it will deliver:
- Improved financial wellness: 62%
- Better personalisation: 62%
- Simplified financial decisions: 59%
- Proactive customer service: 57%
- Better access to financial advice: 56%
- 98% of FSIs are using at least some AI
- 88% of FSIs have a strategy to automate financial decisions
- 73% of FSIs have deployed autonomous finance or plan to within a year
There’s more:
- Dealing with new technologies and implementing them is far more important than focusing upon the customer experience in 2020 versus 2019
- 3 in 5 financial firms felt unprepared for the crisis
- Only 1 in 5 customers felt their financial providers handled the crisis well
A good read and you can download it here.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...
