After a challenging 2023, what is expected for banks and fintechs in 2024?
We selected 7 priorities for Financial Institutions for the next year:
- Maintain a sustainable growth mindset.
- Discipline in operational and IT efficiency.
- Willingness to legitimize GenAI applications.
- Unlock Open Finance.
- Discover opportunities with Digital Currency/Drex.
- Reinvent businesses with Instant Payments next wave.
- Keep an eye on Fraud Prevention.
1. Sustainable growth
Growth with a profitability story will continue for most players in the financial services industry. Investing wisely in marketing and sales while increasing the customer lifetime value will continue to play an important role in CEO’s agenda. The cost-to-serve optimization through digital, personalized communication and pricing assertiveness is also important to compete.
2. Operational and IT Efficiency
Costs and investment optimization will continue to be a priority for banks to maximize returns and operational efficiency index. Banks aim to serve the clients assertively, optimizing cost-to-serve and channel strategy while improving overall customer satisfaction. From an IT perspective, reducing legacy systems and infrastructure costs as well as improving time-to-market still is an edge for the best players.
3. GenAI applications
It is expected that GenAI will continue to unlock tangible use cases to drive financial benefits in IT and operations. So, players will keep consistently testing new possibilities and seeking AI talents or external services in the market. The abundance of specialized firms and new entrants can be an alternative to financial institutions’ test and pilot use cases.
4. Open Finance
The agenda is evolving fast, and players are in different stages of maturity and appetite with Open Finance. Here, time-to-market is key, and players’ ability to convert available data into actionable insights is a must-have, otherwise, no value is truly created. A few players are already taking advantage of Open Finance by fine-tuning their value propositions and offering more personalized products to their customers. This is crucial to become the primary banking choice.
5. Digital Currency
The Central Bank Digital Currency (Drex) will modernize the national financial system and provide more control over financial transactions. Banks aim to capture value by creating use cases in areas such as investments, credit, and real estate. The digital currency will allow asset tokenization and fractioning, make transactions safer and reliable, unlock new secured credit products, and facilitate access to capital among others. By applying smart contracts and blockchain technology, players will have a blue ocean to explore.
6. Instant Payments
Instant payments will continue to drive changes in the payments market. After the undoubted success of PIX, new products and use cases will land and potentially gain relevance over traditional payment methods. The Pix Automatico, focused on recurrent payments, is expected to go live next year. This new world, with lower margins and payment market growth, is forcing players to operate more efficiently, strengthen their value proposition and reinvent business models.
7. Fraud Prevention
Financial institutions are still burning tons of money with Fraud and Cybercrimes, impacting their business profitability and operational loss indicators. The efforts to balance fraud levels and customer satisfaction are still a challenge to most institutions, demanding high investments in people and technology. The financial losses have a direct impact on the net profit and deserve special attention from financial institution leaders.
