Traditional banking organisations hold a lot of advantages, they have bigger, more trusted brands, longer relationships with more customers and more data to power decisions. So, with so many cards in hand, why are they so worried about challengers? It’s because neobanks are far more agile.
Unburdened by legacy systems and cultures, the new breed of challenger bank can launch new products and features quickly and easily, providing frequent reasons to go back and court prospective customers, new advantages to win over those prospects and innovative new offerings to further engage with existing account holders. This digital agility means they’re better positioned to respond to ever shifting consumer demands, seize new market opportunities and react to threats to market share.
Digital banking platforms are key to fast and flexible innovation
A digital investment platform gives banks the speed to respond to ever-changing customer-needs, offering ready-made technological capability paired with the ability to quickly design and launch digital offerings that are completely specific to the bank. They bypass legacy obstacles without the need to replace them, providing the ability to fast-track digital banking projects and fill gaps in digital transformation roadmaps.
How much faster are digital banking platforms than traditional digital innovation projects, and why?
Whilst actual time-to-market will vary slightly depending on the digital banking platform selected, new offerings are deployed in timescales measured in weeks and months, as opposed to the traditional project setups which are more likely to be measured in years.
There are a number of things driving this. Digital banking platforms are cloud native, allowing them to leverage the flexibility, capacity and speed of cloud environments, instead of workloads being stalled by conventional end-of-life IT infrastructure and processes. This means faster iterations and development at the speed of business.
The cloud also enables the development of microservices, a way of structuring applications that enables an even greater degree of flexibility and speed. Finally, API layering enables a digital banking platform to connect different applications, data sources and legacy systems without having to fundamentally alter or replace the source system. By 2021, 80% of application development will take place on cloud platforms using microservices and cloud functions.
What kind of flexibility is offered by a digital banking platform?
A digital banking platform offers an appealing combination of technology, processes and products that are immediately available, like an out-of-the-box solution but completely flexible in the way that they can be configured to a bank’s requirements.
An example of this might be the digitisation of a bank’s customer onboarding process through the platform. All the technical capability for this already exists within the platform, but the customer journey and backend workflow can be tailored exactly to the bank’s requirements, with things like OCR data capture, biometric authentication, connecting with external parties for credit checks, referring to support staff for video call all being able to be added quickly and easily as per the bank’s individual selection.
A digital banking platform with configurable components and product builders provides the flexibility to tailor products and services across all channels. You can quickly launch products and services targeted at specific segments by configuring ready-made apps. Alternatively a flexible platform architecture based on microservices and reusable modules makes the creation of more complex digital banking solutions possible quickly, easily and cost effectively.
Future proof digital transformation, done your way
The component based architecture of a digital banking platform allows banks to pick and choose what they want to deploy and when, making it an ideal partner in any digital transformation effort. It will act as a flexible and modular service layer and allow banks to quickly bypass legacy barriers.
Beyond the gains offered by the platform technology itself, partnering with a digital banking platform provider enables a bank to access new, faster ways of working. Modern development methodologies such as agile and DevOps enable continuous delivery of a stream of new products and features that can be swiftly rolled out to meet shifting customer needs.
If you’d like to discover what a digital baking platform could do to speed up and enhance your bank’s digital transformation effort, we’d be happy to walk you through the possibilities. Get in touch to start the conversation.
