2014 Top ten retail banking trends and predictions

by. Jim Marous

The 2014 Top 10 Retail Banking Trends and Predictions are compiled from more than 60 global financial services leaders including bankers, credit union executives, industry providers, financial publishers, editors and bloggers, advisors, analysts and fintech followers.

This year’s list run the gamut from a continuation of past trends to the introduction of new trends in delivery, payments, competition, operations, customer experience and marketing. Prioritization of response to these trends will differ for each bank, credit union and industry provider, but none of these trends can be ignored.

For the third year in a row, I have reached out to global leaders in the financial services industry to ask for their thoughts around upcoming banking and credit union trends and predictions. As in the past, the response was overwhelming, with more than 60 responses. The emphasis of this compilation is mostly North America, but most of the trends are global thanks to responders from the U.K. and the Asia Pacific region.

While everyone had their ‘favorite’ trend, and some provided a personal top 10 list, I consolidated their thoughts and came up with trends that were considered the most important. Two significant trends that are not listed, but impact virtually every trend discussed, are the omnipresence of previous and upcoming regulations as well as the continued investment in new technologies to make this year’s trends a reality. Two trends that may prove important, but got less than expected mentions were the underbanked and alternative currencies like BitCoin.

All of the contributors did concur, however, that a guaranteed prediction for 2014 is that disruption will continue at an unprecedented pace and that the industry will look different this time next year.

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