Recently, Volante hosted a webinar titled “Elevate and Accelerate: Unleashing Business Growth Through Exceptional Customer Experiences.” The webinar brought together payment experts to discuss the latest trends, best practices, and innovative strategies that create a cohesive omnichannel experience that delights customers, streamlines operations, and boosts performance
This is the second in a two-part series summarizing the main points of the discussion. This article will focus on the role of data, intelligence, and risk in the modernization of payments for the new era.
Harnessing intelligence over automation in the financial sector
As the digital finance landscape matures, the focus within financial institutions is shifting from mere automation to the integration of intelligence. Automation, once the cutting edge, has become the industry standard. The new frontier is intelligence—capabilities that go beyond automated transactions to provide strategic insights and enhanced customer experiences.
Banks are not only exploring how technology can streamline processes but also how it can provide intelligence that enhances customer satisfaction and drives cost savings. This intelligence needs to be actionable, providing real-time insights that allow financial institutions to offer tailored services to diverse customer segments. For example, banks want the ability to configure different parameters in real-time to identify the most profitable customers or those who process the highest volume of transactions.
Modernization amidst risk: Balancing operational changes with security
As financial institutions modernize, they must do so with a careful eye on risk. The convergence of operational teams that once functioned in silos presents new challenges. Different payment networks carry varied levels of risk, and a centralized team must be adept at managing these while maintaining efficiency. It’s also an opportunity to leverage centralization and the resulting efficiencies to drive a better customer experience.
Additionally, the implementation of Real-Time Payments (RTP) has simplified operational challenges in some ways by providing customers with immediate and complete visibility into every transaction. This visibility and the credit-push nature of RTP also simplify certain operational aspects of payments, affording financial institutions the ability to redirect focus on customer experience.
The role of data and analytics in differentiating customer experience
Data and analytics play an increasingly pivotal role in creating distinct customer experiences. With RTP and similar instant payment platforms evolving, financial institutions can leverage the ‘bigger pipe’ that these technologies provide. This larger bandwidth allows for the transmission of richer data alongside payments, facilitating straight-through processing and enabling banks to offer new classes of customer experiences.
The move toward standardizing payment data formats, like the ISO standard, simplifies data consolidation, allowing banks to spend less time on data management and more on value-added services. This could mirror the Amazon model, where buying a product leads to intelligent recommendations for complementary items.
Integration of payment options: Driving satisfaction and growth
The integration of diverse payment options is not just about enhancing the customer experience; it’s also a growth strategy. With a unified omnichannel strategy in place, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for financial institutions have evolved. They now encompass a broader view of transactions, volumes, and types of payments. As instant payment rates rise and traditional payment methods like checks move towards platforms like RTP, the metrics for success are changing.
Financial institutions are encouraged to begin by enabling the receive capability for RTP and FedNow, laying the groundwork for a comprehensive strategy that caters to all customer segments. The journey is critical, and institutions are advised to ‘walk before they run’—to take measured steps towards integration rather than attempting to overhaul systems overnight.
Conclusion: The path to future-proofing financial services
The path to future-proofing financial services entails a complex but necessary evolution. Institutions must prioritize today’s technology—cloud-native solutions, microservices-based architectures, and systems that support 24/7 operations with high availability. This journey is a marathon, not a sprint, requiring a deliberate approach that balances innovation with risk management, intelligence with automation, and customer-centricity with operational efficiency.
Stream the “Elevate and accelerate: Unleashing business growth through exceptional customer experiences” webinar.
