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May 29, 2019

Read time: 4min

How cross-sector trends are impacting insights in the financial services industry

Market Logic Team

During our webinar Fast insights for FinServ, I was joined by Georgiana Brown, Deputy FinServ Customer Experience at Ipsos and Henry Mason, CEO of TrendWatching. We discussed cross-industry innovations and how technology can help insights and intelligence professionals manage and leverage their insights faster.

The way we interact with our financial services providers has changed a lot over the years, with more and more channels emerging: from branches to telephone, online and mobile banking, and now to voice banking.

As customers have been offered a wider range of channels to choose from, they are experiencing more convenience and flexibility. But while there is more speed and choice, financial service providers may be at risk of losing some of the emotional engagement that traditional channels bring.

Voice of the customer

As Henry Mason mentions, “Despite rapid adoption of digital solutions, consumers are still human.” Customers want connection, trust and self-improvement. They want to feel heard and respected. What’s more, their expectations are rising: bank customers are not just comparing the services they receive against those offered by other banks – they’re comparing your services with the entertaining content that Red Bull puts out, the sense of community that Airbnb brings, and the speed and convenience of Amazon.

“Bank customers are not just comparing your services to other banks. They’re comparing your services to RedBull’s content, AirBnb’s community, and Amazon’s speed and convenience.”Henry Mason, Trendwatching

All of this means that you are competing against customer expectations set by the best in class in any industry across design, customer experience, service, quality, and price. It is in companies’ best interest to look beyond the competition to innovations in other sectors and markets – and to understand what those innovations are doing for your customers’ expectations.

Cross-sector innovations

Some financial service providers are taking innovative steps. Last year, Chase released Finn: its financial management app for millennials. Finn has added an app feature that allows you to attach an emotion to transactions. The app contains several customizable features that enable consumers to record how each transaction makes them feel, or whether it was a necessity; they can analyze their spending habits over time.

These cross-sector innovations that Henry brought up are fascinating, but they also bring a heap of new data to consider. That means that insights and innovation managers in the financial sector have their hands full. Not only do they have to manage the mountain of information from within their own industries (Apple Pay, digital-only banks, Cleo, amazon, etc.), but they also have to wrap their heads around innovations from other sectors and industries.

It’s just no longer possible for humans to synthesize all of that data and research manually – which is why Market Logic leverages AI to help insights and intelligence managers sort through the haystack and find the needle.