16 Ways Banks Will Change Or Upgrade Services In The Next Five Years

As developments in financial technology continue to disrupt the traditional banking industry, banks must adapt to meet the changing needs and preferences of their customers. Online financial services companies have brought greater competition and innovation to the industry, raising the bar for what customers expect from their banking experience.

To stay relevant, banks will need to upgrade their services over the next five years, embracing new technologies and offering a more personalized, seamless experience. Below, a panel of Forbes Finance Council members explains some of the changes financial institutions will need to make to remain competitive in the evolving fintech landscape.

1. Offer Personalized Services

Banks will offer more personalized and convenient digital banking experiences. This includes investing in advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to better understand customer needs, preferences and behaviors, and providing tailored financial advice and recommendations. Banks will also need to offer seamless digital services across multiple channels, including mobile and social media. – Frankie DiAntonio, Lexington Capital Holdings

2. Collaborate With Fintech Companies

Banks have to embrace technology and stay competitive by offering reliability, trust, ease of business and global reach while maintaining a local presence to beat out other fintech products. They will have to embrace new platforms, apps and technologies that offer the same speed, reliability, lower cost and more as some fintech products offer. Instead of competing, banks could potentially seed newer fintech companies or heavily collaborate on cash-on-cash opportunities that relate to providing new offerings that help fintech companies stay on top of technology to ultimately provide a best-in-class customer experience. – Anar Pitre, Lotus Capital Partners

3. Develop A Mobile-First Mentality

Younger generations live on their phones and demand convenience and simplicity. They have high, evolving standards for diversity. Fintechs have been better than banks in launching solutions for people of color, females and other customer groups. Banks can and should do more to personalize their products, develop a mobile-first mentality and embrace digital marketing and social media. – Ksenia Yudina, UNest

4. Better Integrate Fintech Businesses

Banks will become more active in the acquisition—and hopefully better at integration—of fintech businesses that have reached a certain scale, solidity and quality. I think banks have been sufficiently burned on trying to innovate themselves to finally now primarily focus on expanding their fintech offerings and services via acquisition. – Allan Pedersen, Monetalis

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5. Launch Beneficial Financial Tools

Banks will need to launch financial tools on their website where one can prequalify for pretty much any type of loan with no hard inquiry to your credit. Having the option to fully accept an offer, sign approval docs, upload documents and e-sign closing docs will be tremendous. It will all be done remotely without the customer ever stepping foot out of their office. – Elijah McCoy, McCoy Brokerage Service, Inc.

6. Increase Online Access

Fintech will have to meet clients where they are. This means enabling the ease and simplicity of banking via mobile devices from anywhere in the world. It also means that compliance will have to evolve so that texting, virtual interaction and online access to accounts are supported both for clients and advisors. – Sandra Cho, Pointwealth Capital Management

7. Provide Insights

Banks will be forced to include more unique, model-driven insights into their published content. People will expect more transparency, fewer hidden fees and more useful information that can help inform consumers about investing or other financial decisions. – Alexander Harmsen, Global Predictions

8. Make Service Easy And Fast

For commercial lenders, speed and ease win the day, and a quick response is considered a “minimum threshold.” Business owners do not have time to wait or sort through complicated requirements for securing a loan. Relationships will always be important but navigating the process needs to be simple and straightforward for the customer. Technology can and will help, but often investment is required. – Kirk Mann, Mitsubishi HC Capital America

9. Streamline Loan Applications

In the next five years, banks should focus on integrating fintech-aggregated open finance APIs to show a unified view of financial data, help streamline loan apps and offer personalized loan options to small businesses. By leveraging new tools, banks can proactively engage and provide ongoing cash flow support. If neglected, those same clients will leave for innovative competitors. – Nick Chandi, ForwardAI

10. Go Above And Beyond Speed Requirements

Adapt or die. Banks lack efficiency in the fintech department in the case of speed. There are many smaller banks that are so far behind the 8-Ball that it is going to be hard to catch up. The saying goes, it takes the same amount of effort, time and money to underwrite a 50k file as it does a 250k file at a bank. Fintech funds in minutes. Literally minutes. Checkmate. – Will Murphy, Everlasting Capital

11. Deliver A Quality Employee Experience

FinTechs have achieved their success by putting customers at the center. Incumbent banks must shift their focus, design and address customer experiences and engagements with a customer-first approach. Don’t forget the employee experience, as customer experience can not be met without delivering on the employee experience. Transparency, speed, personalization and seamlessness are all imperative. – Monica Hovsepian, OpenText

12. Become Less Bureaucratic

Banks will need to adapt their business model to become less bureaucratic and more efficient. This presents a challenge given the onerous regulatory burden (and expense) placed on banks, which has been a key driver regarding the evolution of non-bank lending. To the extent possible, banks will need to think about attractive offerings (e.g., price flexibility) that rival non-bank competitors. – Andrew Kerai, Capital Ideas Inc.

13. Clean Up Portals And Data Visibility

Trying to figure out the cash flow in and out of a bank account, especially if there are multiple bank accounts and a sweep account, can be maddening. It shouldn’t be this hard, but legacy banks don’t make it easy to do cash flow analysis. This easy fix will make CFOs and controllers less likely to look elsewhere. – Aaron Spool, Eventus Advisory Group, LLC

14. Maintain Concierge Banking

While fintech improvements can make banking much easier and quicker for customers, the human touch traditional banks can provide will be a real differentiator. Banks that can show that not all decisions are based on an algorithm and that the relationships have value will be better positioned. Concierge banking will be a must for traditional players. – Glenn Hopper, Eventus Advisory Group

15. Attract Younger Customers

Building long-term relationships is key to success. It is all about offering applications to attract younger customers and stay with them throughout their lives. From offering new online products like estate planning that grows with customers to digital asset management, these types of services will set banks apart from the competition. – Renee Fry, Gentreo, Inc.

16. Deliver Winning Business Outcomes

As fintech representatives struggle to raise the next round with valuations that have been reset, their mindset will shift from “full throttle growth” to a focus on delivering solutions with winning business outcomes for their customers. Many fintechs that are experiencing financial pain will provide banks a window of opportunity to target and acquire innovative firms, so they may augment their digital footprint. – Sonny Kapoor, OneDigitalTrust, Inc.