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Brett King could not have better timed his visit in Mumbai

Brett King could not have better timed his visit in Mumbai than yesterday

So I had great time with Brett King for his seminar on Business of Banking in Mumbai, India conducted by Oracle and CXOToday.com. Few Highlights;

  • 3 year old kid of this generation is already digital savvy and he / she would like to believe that every device or (even) a book is “touch screen” and as bankers, we need to evolve our channels and systems matching expectations of the new generations.
  • For new generation customer post 2020, bank would not be a branch, but say a small device like mobile.
  • If Bookstores are becoming obsolete and being replaced by Digital kindles of the world, would you really require as much physically branches and infrastucture in Banking?
  • Why don’t banks distribute mobiles to customers and that would help them make more money that investing in heavy physical infrastructure such as lot of branches.
  • Regulations and compliance of future would be determined by “behavior of the customer” and not stated / unstated needs of regulators
  • Search traffic has heavily moved from “find ATM or Branch locations” to “open A/c online or mortgages”
  • With 8 Million accounts, SQUARE has enabled merchant acquisition with more convenience,  than loads of documents traditional banks would ask them to fill.
  • Today if digital equipments can quickly enable your health-check real time, why would banks and financial institutions not enable the “financial health-check” at the tip of the fingers
  • Devices such as mobile should be able to enable higher revenue generations, if we identify opportunities which are win-win for banks as well as customer
  • Social media hits of Facebook, Youtube outnumber any consolidated gathering of human race anytime and banks should look at them for customer behavior and exploring the mindset.
  • Should banks be selling products to customers?: -  No way, infact customers buy home and cars and banks are only enabling the transaction effectively and with less friction, simple, contextual and real time. This view will help banks to connect with customer better.

 Brett’s visit could not have been better timed when lot of new Banking license are being scrutinized, New ideas from Nachiket Mor Commitee such as  “payment Banks”  and "every Indian adult must have a full-service electronic bank account by 2016" are evolving , and when Government of India is looking strongly at “financial inclusion” for masses and moreover, Brett predicts rise of very-cheap SMARTPHONEs by 2018. And that could be win-win.  

I am sure Brett will have MOVEN as a great case study in times to come.       

Shripad Vaidya- Founder, “Online Banking” Blog community at Finextra

Note: -3 fingures below visually represents Brett's Book called "Banking 3.0"

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Comments: (3)

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 16 January, 2014, 13:13Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Brett is a visionary guy for sure, but - IMHO - he forgets that human psychology hasn't changed in years (compared Dutch Tulips to Bitcoin, for example). "Digital" generation still sucked mummy's tit, not an iTit.

When s#&* happens to your money (and it always does), you'd still prefer a human being rather than Siri to help you out. Ask yourself a simple quesion: what problem (apart from cost saving) does branch closure solve?..

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 20 January, 2014, 10:57Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

To Alex: - Thanks for your comments. This is not to defend or justify what Brett thinks, but wanted to give some of my views. Any new idea would be always debated in the world, till the time it gets settled. And no new concept can work in a short time and it always takes some time to materialize.  1970’s not many people could visualize the PC revolution, in 1980 not many people could visualize the internet revolution, 1990 same thing could be said for social media.   Also I agree that not every idea which the forward thinker puts forth, always achieves reality e.g. dot-com burst is a good example where lot of venture capitalist and enterprenuers burnt their figure. So finally it’s not closure of the branch, but the way branch would be perceived. My father always thought that “Brick and Morter” Branch is a place to conduct every banking function. I believe that Bank fits into “click and Morter”  types, whereas in future my nephew  son or say grandson would always take this as “click only” type where physical premises exist for concept selling or  developing relationships. Therefore, beyond cost saving their could be various ways to use the physical  infrastructure optimally. Also we need to look at incremental investment for new physical infrastructure related to 4 key parameters a) cost b) Growth c) Customer centricity d) Brand. However these concepts are for world to watch, experience and experiment. And there is no short cut.

 

A Finextra member
A Finextra member 20 January, 2014, 11:39Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Great thoughts, Shripad.

I would also add (a) new role(s) for and (b) new value of physical interactions. In an increasingly digital world, that could have some special meaning.

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