Digital banking has redefined financial services over the last decade, with consumer preferences clearly reflecting this transformation: 91% of customers now consider online and mobile experiences a critical priority when choosing a bank.
Yet the bar extends beyond merely offering digital services. While online banking capabilities attract customers from all generations – especially those in the Gen Z and Millennial cohorts – the delightful, seamless, and curated digital experiences secure customer loyalty.
Consumers’ expectation of personalized, on-demand digital banking is shaped by how they use technology in other aspects of life.
Technology, customer expectations, and banking innovation are converging in unprecedented ways. To thrive in this landscape, product leaders need to prioritize three pillars: leaning into AI-powered experiences, modernizing how they run their business (i.e., introducing a standardized product operating model), and streamlining compliance operations to allow room for innovation.
AI-Powered Experiences
The rapid evolution of AI and its integration into financial services has altered how customers expect to bank.
With the advent of AI, customers are looking for a hyper-personalized digital experience that analyzes an individual’s data and makes recommendations based on patterns and predictions.
Här är några exempel:
- Automatically categorizing expenses to give customers accurate insights into their spending habits
- Identifying better interest rates or account types based on their banking patterns
- Instant alerts for suspicious activity before money leaves their account
Banks that don’t lean into AI to maximize their customers’ product experience risk losing customers to more technologically advanced competitors. A product strategy needs to include innovation and investing in new technologies.
Get the Guide: Banking on Transformation: How to Accelerate Software Delivery in Financial Services
Modernized Operating Models
Achieving a state where innovation is empowered and ever-changing customer needs are satisfied demands a fundamental reimagining of an organization’s operations.
Traditional operational models – with their rigid hierarchies and siloed approaches contributing to long wait times, pre-determined detailed requirements, significant rework, and lack of cohesive strategy – simply cannot keep up with the speed of innovation or the complexity of customer needs.
Success requires more than surface-level digital transformation. What’s needed is a complete realignment of organizational DNA around customer centricity and continuous innovation.
Organizations must evolve their operating models to become responsive, adaptive systems that can sense and respond to customer needs in real time.
The evolution is commonly known as a project-to-product shift or product operating model. Adopting the approach involves several elements, such as breaking down departmental barriers, establishing cross-functional teams, and creating feedback loops that connect customer insights to product development and service delivery.
It extends from how organizations develop products to their planning, prioritization, and financial alignment processes, as shown in the image below.
The 2024 Project to Product State of the Industry report confirms this shift, showing how higher-performing companies – organizations that meet objectives more than 70-90% of the time – are at least twice as likely to actively focus on customer experience. These organizations are restructuring their operations to put customers at the heart of every decision while fostering a culture of perpetual innovation.
Get the Guide: Från projekt till produkt: En steg-för-steg-guide för organisatorisk omvandling
Streamlined Compliance Operations
As healthy as it is for banks to prioritize innovation and customer centricity, product leaders must balance their zeal to transform rapidly against an increasingly complex regulatory landscape.
Compliance became more burdensome – not less – between 2016 and 2023, according to the Bank Policy Institute (BPI):
- The number of employee hours dedicated to complying with financial regulations and examiner mandates increased by 61%, while aggregate employee hours increased by only 20%.
- Nearly half of management and board time is devoted to complying with regulation and supervision.
- The portion of bank IT budgets devoted to compliance grew by 40%.
While emerging technologies, including AI, offer new tools for managing compliance more efficiently, organizations must still make difficult strategic choices about resource allocation. The most successful institutions leverage technology to streamline compliance operations, freeing precious resources for value-driving initiatives while maintaining unwavering regulatory adherence.
The ability to make compliance more efficient will only become more critical as regulatory frameworks continue to evolve in response to rapid technological advancement.
Get the Guide: Banks Must Improve Operational Efficiency to Exploit New Technologies
Vägen framåt
Traditional institutions face a critical inflection point: Organize around these three key pillars now – AI-powered experiences, modernized operating models, and streamlined compliance operations – or risk losing ground to more agile, customer-centric competitors.
Go deeper
The financial services edition of the 2024 Project to Product State of the Industry Report shows how leading financial institutions are adapting to digital banking. Our research reveals:
- How banks compare to other industries in adopting product-focused operations
- Eight key areas where top performers excel
- Common obstacles to improvement
The report features Vanguard’s transformation as a key example. Their shift from project-based to product-based operations led to record customer satisfaction levels. This case study shows how banks can adapt to meet modern customer needs.
Get your copy of the report or read the executive summary.
Relaterade inlägg
With over a decade of experience in software integration, value stream management, and product management, Mara is a passionate and driven leader who strives to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. As VP, Product Management at Planview, she leverages her expertise in agile methodologies, software development, and value stream management to drive organizational change and transformation across the company. She is motivated by the mission of helping customers achieve their strategic goals and optimize their business outcomes with the Planview platform.
Mara Puisite
VP, Product Management at Planview
With over a decade of experience in software integration, value stream management, and product management, Mara is a passionate and driven leader who strives to deliver value to customers and stakeholders. As VP, Product Management at Planview, she leverages her expertise in agile methodologies, software development, and value stream management to drive organizational change and transformation across the company. She is motivated by the mission of helping customers achieve their strategic goals and optimize their business outcomes with the Planview platform.
In her current role, Mara focuses on aligning the go-to-market, go-to customer, and product offering strategies to offer a cohesive, seamless, and delightful experience to customers. She works with cross-functional teams to identify and implement best practices, processes, and tools to transform the customer journey and value delivery. She also advises on product offering changes to enhance the platform's capabilities and features. Some of the skills that she uses and develops in this role are software integration, value stream management, agile methodologies, customer success, and pre-sales.
