What will the bank of the future look like?

According to the specialists, the bank of the future will offer highly personalised services. Even if, in the coming years, digital technology will take more and more place in the management of our finances, human contact will continue to create added value. Provided that the bank knows well its customers and can exploit the high volume of personal data – the well-known big data. Let’s take a simple example: if an order of payment has not been made or the mobile phone invoice is higher than usual, the bank can inform the customer by email, SMS or directly on his/her mobile.

Some banks will be only digital, but not all banks. Some customers will always need a banker for more complex operations. Moreover, the banker’s job is not so easy to replace and big IT companies have realised this. It is not a coincidence that Apple Pay, the mobile payment service by Apple, lays on partnerships with banks.

If, in the future, bank products will be less and less standard and more and more adapted to everyone’s needs, bank agencies will change too. Long gone are the days of traditional agencies with a counter behind a window! Bank agencies tend now to be more intuitive and to have several forms, depending on the new uses of the customers. They become smaller such as the neighbourhood banks in the United States or the small banks branches in Montreal, bigger with interactive terminals to make your presence known for your advisor, tactile walls where you can find information, children’s playroom and a lounge area with a drink dispenser or bigger such as a bank supermarket with departments and an after-sales service.

Bank agencies can also focus on specific customers (only for students or seniors) or projects (only for individual projects such as birth, education, personal loan or home loan), become temporary (pop-up agencies that complement online banking) or propose organised activities such as conferences, seminars or free shows for children!

It is not certain that all the above activities will meet with success. Only time will tell. Just one thing is certain: the bank of the future will be more digital and, at the same time, more human.

11/2021