Client Care is the future of banking. IT Specialists or Google will support this by delivering turnkey system solutions to banks.
September 2020The banking world is driven by modern technology and banks are competing with greater innovation and advanced and smarter internet/mobile banking. The idea that banks will no longer need in-house IT and that their focus will be “only” client care and their financial portfolios may sound even stranger. This is because turnkey technology will be provided by tech companies to banks, and most certainly by some of the largest ones, led by Google.
Technology giant Google announced in August that it has entered into a partnership with eight US banks, which will offer clients banking services through their Google Pay application starting next year. Amongst the banks are both large global players such as Citi and small community credit unions, which have insufficient infrastructure to build their own digital banking systems.
Google, with its recent entry into the banking world, is looking to penetrate another segment of our daily life. Google’s banking services offer a pathway to digitization that many banks couldn’t have imagined before. After all, why would financial institutions spend billions on endless maintenance and improvements to their IT systems when they can simply invest in turnkey technology?
The Easy Way to Digitize
It is quite conceivable that in the future, smaller to medium-sized banks will not develop tech solutions on their own as this does not make much impact in differentiating themselves from the competition. Instead, banks will focus on quality customer care, effective marketing, and, above all, the design of their financial products and services. The technology aspect will be outsourced. The multinational tech giant is simply copying specialized tech companies that have been promoting this exact approach for years now.
“Google’s entry into this segment is undoubtedly crucial news for the entire market. But this is nothing new. At BSC and our American partner, we’ve been a supplier for turnkey bank systems for years now. On top of that, our solutions have enabled institutions to launch completely new digital banks within three months. In addition to banks that need to digitize and keep up with the times, these same solutions can also be used by sports clubs or large retailers. In this way, they can quickly build a bank for their wide client base and bring them additional services, “describes Čeněk Navrátil, Business Director at BSC.
Technology players such as Google or the Czech Company BSC, will enable banks that rely on complex core legacy systems to quickly digitize without any risk and enjoy massive financial savings. In addition, a turnkey bank may not be the only way forward for financial institutions. Providing banking services through platforms such as Google Pay will just be another sales channel and bring organizations a step closer to their clients.
In this way, a turnkey bank can easily create a new digital brand. This in turn allows them to target a different group than the one that the bank normally targets for new clients. In addition, when using the services offered by specialized companies such as BSC, the bank will not lose its brand, nor will it have to share it with anyone. The customer’s digital banking experience will be unique to the bank’s identity, but the experts will be developing it better and more efficiently at a lower cost.
“As a result, everyone wins. Tech companies will be able to establish themselves in their field and be recognized for their know-how and resources and banks will have an easy path to digitization and be able to focus on the other parts of their business that are important for them. The client will always get great software and will choose the bank purely based on the quality of the banking services.” concludes Čeněk Navrátil from BSC.
The question yet to be answered is when similar trends will reach the Czech Republic and how other technology players such as Apple will react to Google’s move. After all, Apple already offers their own credit card, which is backed by Goldman Sachs. However, there is no doubt that tech players have great ambitions in banking which could transform the world of banking quite significantly. However, this does not mean that banks will lose their importance. They will just be focusing on other areas of their business.