The future of banking: What to expect
Once upon a time, banks experienced the dawn of remote banking, then mobile banking, and now they are seeking to expand their spheres of influence on the daily world of their customers beyond financial services. Online banking is also changing and has long been not so much a way to submit a request to the bank to conduct a transaction but a mobile remote control for resources and financial relations with service providers, family members, and friends. Let’s try to look ten years ahead. What will change in the banking system?
Overall tendencies
2035 is a distant horizon on which an exciting picture can be seen. Most likely, we will get a limited number of financial groups that will be engaged in classic banking: lending, providing financial services, and creating platforms for business development. Most likely, banks will be integrated into the systems of large holdings (as is already happening in some countries). Similar examples of merging companies from different fields of activity are observed more and more often: insurance companies become part of banks, logistics companies are part of marketplaces, and they, in turn, begin to provide financial services themselves.
Financial services
Already now, the largest banks provide not only financial services but also insurance services, personal customer service and services for their family members, telemedicine, and services for delivering goods directly from stores. The trend towards mutual penetration of banks into ecosystems will undoubtedly continue. As a result, banking will become less noticeable as an independent consumer service, integrated into more comprehensive and convenient services, and the banks themselves will become accelerators for the development of a specific segment of the economy, industry, or region within a particular direction. So, there will be fewer independent services like Digido and more complex solutions.
Use of artificial intelligence
AI is actively used in the banking sector, but a complete replacement of bank personnel with artificial intelligence does not seem possible even by 2035. For example, AI is not yet capable of making decisions in a conflict situation that requires finding a compromise or combining the properties of two negative scenarios if this situation has not had a similar precedent.
The most at risk are employees of primary structures: operators, client managers, and call center operators. However, we cannot talk about the complete replacement of personnel by robots since the function of people occupying these positions will change: they will become standards for orienting AI. Moreover, these specialists will develop into a new type of worker: those who will act as standard training models. Also, it is not yet possible to replace specialists in concluding transactions with models and statistics. It is a question of corporate culture. AI cannot be responsible for making risky decisions based on our current ethics. In any case of a non-standard contract, a person will have to take responsibility for making decisions.
Customer path
It is difficult to imagine that in 2035, a person will simply compare offers from different banks to choose the best. We can already observe the construction of a socially oriented banking model: the bank is becoming increasingly personalized, and analytical systems are improving and providing each client with customized offers for lending and other services. In the future, you won’t have to search for a personal loan without collateral. The system will offer it to you at the right time. The presence of a digital profile (which the state will create) for each citizen will simplify the decision-making process of providing services to clients. The profile will reflect all the necessary data: balance, current loans, degree of loyalty of the bank client, credit rating, etc. All this will enable the client to receive those bank services that can be provided to him in full and in the shortest possible time.
Currency of the future
Digital currency is developing in all world countries and will soon enter the sphere of state regulation. The main advantage of digital currency as a means of payment is its security. In the future, this form of payment will not differ from the usual from the point of view of consumer opportunities and instruments.
As a result, the widespread distribution of this digital method of payment will lead to customers stopping using paper money and constantly carrying an electronic wallet identifier. The user’s biometric data (for example, a fingerprint or a face photo) may act as an identifier. Moreover, digital currency brings excellent advantages to the state by ensuring economic security and protection of funds when making payments.
Conclusion
Current trends suggest that in 10 years, we will not see the banking system we are used to. Banks will transform into creators and coordinators of industry or regional ecosystems that ensure the development of an industry or region. In this sense, financial services will become a supporting platform that connects the interests of participants operating in the ecosystem and will cease to be positioned as an independent product. Banks will also gradually become suppliers of all-in-one financial services that provide a standard high-quality financial product that can be included in consumer products of independent ecosystems and aggregator services.
