The personal banker of the future is more likely to be a highly intelligent machine than a human, using quantum computing to continuously provide individual, tailored services to customers, according to a new report from KPMG Australia.
- AI will continually track and analyse your financial position
- Loan applications will become instant, with the data already accessible
- COVID has accelerated the “death of cash” and the rise of central bank sponsored digital-currencies
30 Voices on 2030: The New Reality for Financial Services brings together insights from thirty senior leaders in Australia’s financial services sector and beyond, to paint a picture of the possible 2030 industry landscape. As well as changing customer expectations, evolving regulations and new business models, the report identifies key technology advancements that will drive new services and capabilities.
1. Instant risk analysis
A financial services firm’s greatest asset will be what it knows about a customer. This will enable it to quickly and instantly price risk and credit – instead of taking days and weeks to process loan applications, and seeking information from customers, reliable data will already be accessible.
Simon Bligh, CEO, illion believes that companies have underestimated the value of time to their customers: “Failing to value a customer’s time will be unacceptable and indefensible in 2030. The amount of time it takes to interact with a financial services provider – signing and scanning a document, physically getting your ID checked in a branch, waiting on hold – is a barrier to spending additional time with the kids on a Saturday. Incumbents currently take weeks to approve a mortgage – a process which takes Tic:Toc just an hour. By 2030, the approval process will be done in minutes.”
2. An end to cash
Hygiene issues during the pandemic have accelerated cash-less, contact-less payments, as have the growing plethora of wearable digital devices with embedded payment technology such as Apple Pay, Google Pay and Beem It. Some financial institutions have even brought out their own wearables, such as WestPac PayWear.
As Ross Buckley, KPMG Law – KWM Professor of Disruptive Innovation, UNSW predicts: “Cash will be defunct in Sweden by 2024, replaced by electronic payments and central bank digital currency (CBDC). Australia has long been on a similar trajectory, trailing by five to eight years. So by 2030, cash usage in Australia may have ended, or be close to ending. Certainly by 2030 most major economies will have issued CBDCs for use in wholesale and commercial transactions, and in some in retail transactions.”
3. Real-time financial advice
Data, machine learning and advanced algorithms, powered by quantum computing, will provide a constantly updated information stream about a person’s financial position, generating insights and advice. The Commonwealth Bank’s Customer Engagement Engine is one example, running more than 400 machine learning models across 157 billion data points in real-time to automate what notifications are most valuable to send.
Toby Norton-Smith, Managing Director, x15ventures, explains: “This goes beyond traditional ‘sales and service’ messages, for example during the COVID crisis, the status of loan requests, or saving a portion of a tax refund. It includes coordinating access to a broader range of CommBank’s digital banking features like Benefits finder, which aggregates hundreds of government benefits in one place, CommBank Rewards offering customers cashback on relevant offers, and Bill Sense, which uses historical data to manage and predict upcoming bills and payments. It also connects customers to new, innovative services coming out of x15ventures such as Home-in, aimed at helping home owners buy and settle into their home in a simpler and smarter way.
The Australian report follows a previous UK report from 2018: 30 Voices on 2030: The Future of Financial Services. Daniel Knoll, National Industry Lead, Financial Services, KPMG says new perspective and vision were needed following the unprecedented disruption of COVID-19.
“With the pandemic turning industry playbooks upside down overnight, we once again turned to 30 industry experts and asked them to consider the long-term impact of the pandemic, and how it may have changed the rules of the game. We hope these insights and predictions will inspire leaders to make the decisions that will enable their organisations to thrive in 2030,” he says.
