Richard Palmer, Head of Compliance and Risk, recently attended the Customer Experience in Financial Services Forum and shares his key findings from the keynote panel.
Customer Experience within the financial services sector is changing dramatically, primarily due to the exponential advance of AI. For the firms providing the services, it is imperative that they keep pace with this hybrid evolution/revolution. We heard from a panel of CEOs from financial institutions about how their businesses are adapting, both operationally and culturally.
We heard for instance, about how customers belong to ‘Generation Now’ rather than being viewed as Boomers, Gens X and Y, Millennials etc. Generation Now, as its name suggests, requires speedier service – immediate payments, advice at all times of day and night, along with clear, simple product information without complexity or jargon.
We also heard how Generation Now is making itself a potential target for cyber criminals and fraudsters – the quicker the customer wants an item transacted, the easier it can be for financial criminals to steer them along a fake path to early completion. The panel pointed out that greater speed should not be achieved at the cost of safety.
We learned about the cultural shift which will be required in order to fully integrate AI. An interesting point made is that the average age of a financial adviser in the UK is currently between 56 and 57 years old and, typically speaking, it can be a slower process for this type of individual to embrace technological change. And as clients get younger, they will expect a different approach to financial planning driven by the latest tech.
The FCA’s recent introduction of Consumer Duty was hailed as a breakthrough in helping to make the customer the primary cultural focus of regulated firms. One CEO described how he regularly reminds his employees that they are paid not by the employer but by the customers of the company, and that this has helped to improve the customer journey – as evidenced in part by a significant increase in positive customer feedback scores.
Another CEO highlighted that a clear factor in increased consumer satisfaction is the better use of data, and that AI has helped considerably with this improvement. Another innovation is having an AI avatar as the first point of contact for the customer. It has been shown that clients would often much rather interact with a carefully designed virtual advisor than they would hang on an unanswered telephone line awaiting the availability of the next human operator.
There were warnings however about the current obsession with AI and the proliferation of firms advertising how they are using it to help potential customers: it seems that “AI-washing” is in danger of becoming the new “green-washing”. Let the buyer beware – a concept that will never change, regardless of the intervention of AI!
The central message from the keynote panel is that in order to succeed, firms will need to be able to move as fast as their customers!
If you’ve enjoyed this blog why not check out more insights from recent events we’ve attended including Diving Into Insurtech & Incumbent Partnerships – ITC London and Insurtech Journeys: From Product to Profit – ITC London.
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