What’s on the mind of bank innovators?
What business problems and opportunities are their highest priorities? What customer segments represent the biggest opportunities for new innovation?
The findings
Respondents ranked “Channel Strategies (online, mobile, other)” as their highest business priority, with 83% ranking their interest in this topic as 8 or higher on a scale of 0-10. This was followed by “Customer Retention/Customer Engagement”, with 77% ranking it 8 or higher.
The third ranked priority was “Cross-Sell/Expanding Share of Wallet”, far surpassing “Customer Acquisition”. “This suggests that banks are more focused on improving the experience and relationships of their existing customers than fighting to gain new customers” says Will Trout, co-founder of the Bank Innovators Council, “We think the promise of improved data analytics may be influencing this somewhat”. (The scores shown below are the weighted average of all rankings)
The priorities of BIC members are spread a little more evenly evenly when it comes to the business lines and customer segments where they plan to focus their efforts. The top priority was “Consumer Payments”, followed by “Affluent Consumers” and “Small Businesses”, with 68%, 67% and 63% of respondents ranking those as 8 or higher, respectively.
Members were also asked where in the innovation process they felt the Council could add the most value, and the answers were heavily oriented towards the front end of the process. “Identifying New Opportunities”, “Generating New Ideas/Solutions” and “Market Intelligence/Opportunity Discovery” were the top three priorities in this section, at 81%, 79% and 71% ranking those as 8 or higher, respectively.
“It’s great that our members see the value in generating new ideas, we love to work on ideation.” says BIC co-founder JP Nicols, “We are also prepared to help them test and implement those ideas”.
About the Bank Innovators Council
The Bank Innovators Council was launched in New York during Finovate Fall in September, and has quickly grown to nearly 300 members from 34 states and 29 countries on 6 continents. The council provides provide opportunities for members to pool their resources to develop and test new ideas outside of the day-to-day demands of their existing businesses, and in ways they could not do alone.
The Council held a free innovators workshop in Boston on October 23, and is returning there by popular demand on December 3 to continue the conversation. The Council is also planning a comprehensive full-day workshop in London on February 13, 2014 after Finovate Europe. “Our members love attending cutting edge events like Finovate, and they tell us that they would like some help them putting all of those great ideas into context and begin putting them into action.” said Nicols.
Click here to register for our Boston Innovators Workshop on December 3.