Four Core Must-Haves To Enable Digital Banking

The concept of "convenience" in banking is undergoing a shift away from branch locations and toward digital products that mesh with consumers' mobile-empowered lives. Accenture research suggests, however, that simply "being more digital" -- creating upgraded or mobile-friendly versions of existing products and services -- will not be enough to fend off new competitors.

In order to avoid disintermediation and generate value in the digital world, banks will need modernized core platforms to move beyond their traditional role as enablers of financial transactions and product providers.

They must become what we call an "Everyday Bank" -- playing a deeper role in the day-to-day commercial lives of their customers. That means offering them advice, access and the information they need to make decisions -- whether it's buying dinner, a mutual fund or a new car. The goal is to become a trusted partner before, during and after a transaction.

Luis Martin Gonzalez, Accenture Core Banking Services

[Also from Accenture Core Banking Services' Chris Williams and Luis Martin Gonzalez: Does Your Core Platform Enable or Inhibit Superior Financial Performance?]

The stakes are high. Accenture estimates that competition from non-traditional playerscould erode as much as one-third of traditional retail bank revenues by 2020. The burning question facing banks today is whether their core platforms enable or inhibit their ability to become an Everyday Bank.

Institutions seeking to become an Everyday Bank must transform their cores into highly-efficient, high-transaction volume, just-in-time engines that power their operations. That, in turn, requires the core platform to be centered on four key capabilities:

Chris Williams, Accenture Core Banking Services

Digitally Fit

• Offer services with third-party providers to support customers' everyday needs and enable real-time processing across all operations.

• Deliver the customer experience at the right price point through increased automation; enable scalability with low, variable cost-per-transaction.

Designed for Analytics

• Position analytics at the heart of the bank across all application layers and decouple the data layer from business logic and processes.

• Allow personalization on a real-time basis through predictive analytics.

Engineered for everyday actions

• Evolve the customer database to hold new types of data (such as information found on social networks) used by analytic engines to create more personalized offerings and services.

• Increase granularity levels to expose data and services across channels, using these reusable components to support more functionality, such as providing payment engines or account bookkeeping for third-party providers.

Adaptive to new paradigms

• Manage and store third-party data to provide better customer services such as account aggregation.

• Expand offering suite to monetize bank information and services.

• Deploy multi-tenant platforms to enable seamless cross-border operations.

• Use new technologies such as cloud or big data to transform cost structures.

1 of 2