Industry Insights: Let’s get busy this year

Nobody can be sure what will happen in banking in a volatile economic climate like this 2018 year. Investors are biting their nails waiting for a recession. Realtors debate whether the next inevitable housing bubble will burst this year, or next. Consumers don’t know whether they will have more money to spend or less, but their debts are starting to pinch again. Trade deficits! Changing regulations! What’s next—robots with bank accounts?

Meanwhile, we at Alogent spend a lot of time looking at trends and listening to banks and credit unions—our customers. But we always come back to looking at their customers, or at least looking at financial institutions through their eyes. We scour the studies being done, the results our own clients are getting and why. Okay, we admit it: we harp on this theme.

That’s because we see how effective consumers have learned to be at driving the evolution of most marketplaces. Technologies aren’t the primary drivers. It takes everything we’ve got (which is a lot) to stay out in front of the technology curve. Institutions certainly aren’t the main drivers, though we offer kudos to the many individual banks and credit unions that are boldly experimenting with new services and approaches.

But the push and pull of tech developments and the cadence of institutional vision-seeking—crucially important as those are—ultimately take a back seat to consumer shifts in behavior and demands. They’re just not sitting around taking what they are offered any more.

 

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