Digitisation or Digitalisation? Whichever is the correct term, we've seen it prevalent at Sibos this year.

Much has been said about how mobile players and other non-traditional competitors are encroaching on the space typically reserved for financial institutions. But this Sibos has put into frame more than that. It's not just a few payments that they are looking to take. Mobile payments just represents the start. Next comes the digital mining of data and further services that will further nibble away at your relationship. They're going after the corporate connectivity, the unique file formats, the reconciliation of data, better AR/AP management, and much more.

These competitors are threatening the complete customer relationship that the bank has built up over years.

So, financial institutions have to watch those gaps - or mind the gap as we say. We all know the corporates have their share of wish list items that they want to see from the banks product teams. We need to proactively address those items, because if we don't, then the competition is looking for the inroads, and they don't need a full suite of offerings to start doing it.

Today it might be just a few payments, but soon they will have built up the trust levels to take on more of the customers needs, and at that point banking becomes just a commodity that only a few need to provide.