7 minute read
Digital Finance
COMMENT
Ahmad Saad, country manager – UAE and Qatar, Liferay
A digital-first approach
The transformation of financial services is more important than ever. Here’s why...
New technologies have had a huge impact on the financial services market in recent years. The Middle East is racing ahead with digitalisation of financial services in line with the region’s national goals and is a strategy which lies at the heart of the region’s finance sector. Moreover, the region consists of more youth with almost 60 per cent of its population aged under 25 – a young, digitally-savvy and tech enabled economy geared for modem financial experiences.
A digital-first approach is clearly the way forward and one which empowers banks to become more competitive while providing consumers a pathway to their individual banking experiences, thereby
THE FOCUS ON DATA AND ANALYTICS TO DRIVE OPTIMUM EXPERIENCES IN THIS DIGITAL WORLD WILL BE A STRATEGIC PART OF THESE DIALOGUES boosting their services. According to a survey completed by Broadridge, more than 50 per cent of C-suite leaders in firms that have reached a high maturity level in their digital transformation journey, from the pandemic and beyond, have experienced an increase in revenues and profits as a result.
Additionally, more than 60 per cent of surveyed leaders reported that digitalisation has helped them make better decisions and improved planning.
In fact, at Gitex Global too, innovation in customercentricity is one of the key areas of discussions that executives aim to have as businesses prioritise compelling, high-impact digital experiences. The focus on data and analytics to drive optimum experiences in this digital world will be a strategic part of these dialogues.
Here, we take a closer look at why digital finance is the future and how financial institutions can approach modernisation to ensure growth.
FOCUS ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE As companies in the financial services market continue to invest in digital transformation, the primary goal for most organisations is to deliver a userfocused customer experience that prioritises customer convenience. The Arab African International Bank for instance recently elevated its customer journey across all major touchpoints to drive user-centric digital banking and for its customers to have access to various financial services.
Moreover, branchless banking, neobanks and challenger banks are also on the rise and gaining strong foothold, all to focus on increased value addition for customers by addressing their needs. Meanwhile, financial institutions are pacing to stay abreast of customer expectations. While customer acquisition is vital, retaining a customer is even more important and one which has been proven to be less expensive. This aspect also makes customer journeys and experiences a key component in digital transformations.
Hence, keeping pace with advanced technologies to meet modern user expectations remains vital. Customers will not take time to move to alternatives if they feel their journey is not satisfactory and others in the sector can better serve their needs.
ADDRESSING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TOUCHPOINTS While focusing on improving customer experience (CX), there are several avenues a financial provider could take.
Some of the areas they should play close attention to include, providing an exceptional first interaction, improving customer communication, and implementing personalisation through the user journey.
Exceptional first impressions to improve retention: First impressions generally can make or break the customer experience quickly and also impact customer retention. According to Hubspot, 92 per cent of customers would stop purchasing from a company after three or fewer bad experiences. When it comes to banks and financial institutions in particular, new customers are often required to provide a lot of personal information and documentation.
Digitising this first step helps improve CX by saving time and creating seamless processes during the initial onboarding experience.
To enhance the initial customer experience, the industry can digitise – a process for collecting customer data, way the organisation obtains and stores documents and data validation to ensure accurate information and completion of applications
Improved forms of communication with mobile: Digital transformation offers many opportunities for organisations to improve how they engage clients. Tools like online and mobile banking can help reduce delays, minimise missed information and simplify problem solving and this reliance will only continue to increase.
Increased personalisation: Personalisation in CX plays a vital role too. Integrating personalisation into a digital transformation strategy can include both simple or more complex offerings.
Personalisation for better CX includes – crossselling and upselling additional products that are relevant to clients, pricing based on customer behaviour, utilising predictive models for loans and making loan, portfolio or policy recommendations.
Ahmad Saad
92%
FINANCIAL SERVICE TRANSFORMATION The future of customer experiences across financial services is a mix of data, analytics and technology. Customer centricity with personalisation remains top of mind for most financial institutions, just as increasing operational efficiencies do across digital transformation journeys.
As the financial services industry continues to evolve, organisations must focus on meeting today’s customer needs by creating a concise digital transformation strategy, deliver customercentric solutions and differentiate themselves from growing competition.
COMMENT
Werno Gevers, cybersecurity specialist at Mimecast
Limit your online risk, don’t overshare
Is our propensity for sharing every detail of our lives – and the lives of our kids – putting ourselves, our friends and family, and even our employers and colleagues, at risk?
Cybersecurity experts have warned that cybercriminals could use information on social media to harvest personal information to boost the e cacy of a broad range of cyberattack types.
According to Werno Gevers, cybersecurity expert at Mimecast, any information shared online can be used to develop social engineering and other cyberattacks. “Our love of sharing details of our personal and professional lives online can give cybercriminals useful information about our location, date of birth, occupation, place of work, hobbies and even intimate details about our personal lives. Cybercriminals then use this information to improve their techniques and launch increasingly sophisticated and convincing attacks that can trick even experienced and cyberaware internet users.”
“As much as we love sharing photos of our kids’ birthdays and special moments, it can pose a very real and direct security risk to parents, kids and others in their personal or professional lives, including employers. For example, if a parent posts a photo of a child’s birthday outfi t outside their school, it reveals information about the child’s age, location, the school they attend and more, which cybercriminals could potentially access and utilise in their attacks.” The line between personal and the business worlds is also blurring. Posts on business oriented sites like LinkedIn are becoming more “social” and employees and companies are inadvertently leaking sensitive business and personal information. “That job advert for a fi rewall engineer with very specific requirements tells a cybercriminal important information about your choice of security vendors and where there are gaps in your cyber skills, information that they can’t easily obtain elsewhere,” explains Gevers.
In Mimecast’s State of Email Security 2022 report, 60 per cent of organisations in Saudi Arabia and 66 per cent of those in UAE were concerned over risks to the business from employees oversharing company information on social media.
“As soon as content exists in digital format, it’s out of your control and could potentially fall into the hands of unscrupulous criminals,” says Gevers. “In the case of photos and other information shared to social media, all it takes is for threat actors to develop online personas that can ‘connect’ with your social media profi les and they have direct access to all the personal information you post online. Sharenting poses additional risks, as cybercriminals could use the information you post about your kids to commit identity the t that can put kids at risk for years to come.”
Some studies estimate that by 2030 nearly twothirds of all identity fraud cases a ecting kids will have been a result of sharenting. And since anything posted online lives on indefi nitely, kids may have a hard time later in life disassociating themselves from pictures or other information posted online by their parents.
Gevers advises that social media users take extra care before posting anything online. “Never reveal intimate personal details about where you live, where you work, or where your kids go to school. Avoid posting photos from the o ce that can provide insight into your company’s security measures, as threat actors could use this information to circumvent the organisation’s defences. Critically, remember that the internet doesn’t forget: anything you post online is likely to remain there indefi nitely, so take care to consider whether that photo or social media post could create risks to you or those in your immediate circle, including your employer.”
