Only recently, HSBC declared its intent by launching a platform that gives clients the ability to view their transactions in one place. As a result, the bank will enjoy this visibility too and gain significant insight into retaining clients. It will also have the opportunity to actively pursue the banking relationships its customers have with other institutions, by providing enhanced products and value added services.

“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.” This statement by Theodore Roosevelt several years ago is very relevant in the area of customer experience even today. That brings me to the question, what is customer experience, as opposed to service or putting the customer at the heart of all we do?

They are set to disrupt the payments industry. Payments Service Directive 2 (PSD2) and open API banking will ensure that banks invest significantly more into digital. They will require banks to open up their infrastructure to third party service providers.

It’s a game-changer at getting you ahead in diverse fields. While there is no common definition for cognitive computing, it involves the simulation of the human thought process in a computerised model. This includes self-learning capabilities that leverage data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing to mimic how the human brain works.

Trust is a characteristic that we all expect from our banks and financial services providers. Not without reason, as in most cases we are entrusting them with our life’s savings. Yet another regulation, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) looms large on the horizon - May 2018 to be precise, when banks and financial services providers must be compliant with the new data protection rules.

Differentiation is difficult in the financial services and banking world. And arguably, until the advent of the banking crisis, new market entrants and competition driving regulation, the industry has quite honestly taken customers for granted. With customer churn at a low level of around 4% per annum, the client’s apathy to explore the market is not surprising.

With more and more financial services and banking providers entering the market, clients have a plethora of providers to choose from. As a result, lower interest rates owing to lower margins have affected differentiation in the current financial climate. Which is why, Customer Experience and the ability to provide access to value-added services is the battleground upon which Financial Services (FS) organisations will either win or lose.

Some banks try to leverage the transactional data from their core banking platforms to provide their clients with categorised spending insights as a service. However, this is a service that very often delivers limited value.

Mobile devices have become ever more of a necessity in people’s lives. This has given banks the opportunity to directly engage with their customers, the majority of which seldom visit their branches.

The single view of the customer continues to be the nirvana that banks strive towards. But, this outlook comes in different forms depending on who you are talking to. Whether that be wanting an integrated view of the customer’s product holdings with their bank, or a broader understanding of the customer’s channel interactions (omni-customer), or a combination of them all.