The banking and finance industry continues to go through major change with new market entrants, the pandemic, and innovative ways to engage with customers.

Open Banking and Open Finance allow data sharing through open APIs that give customers more flexibility and ease in cross-institution financial transactions. For financial services companies, it can provide valuable data for tailoring service offers to customers and may allow the institutions to differentiate through superior customer experience. Of course, it may also make it easier for customers to switch to competitors.

Customers continue to crave a more personalized customer experience (CX) that allows them to use whatever medium they choose to communicate with their financial institution. The pandemic has accelerated the move to mobile banking and other non-branch alternatives. At the same time, however, not just older consumers, but even young Gen-Z consumers want the strong option of true person-to-person interactions and financial advice.

Also rapidly growing in its importance to financial institutions is employee experience (EX). Four out of five financial institutions are concerned about loss of personnel and staffing. The flexibility of remote work that employees came to appreciate during the pandemic is one of multiple ways that many financial institutions are using in hybrid workforce arrangements in order to hold onto and attract employees. Nearly 60 percent of financial service employees are expected to continue working in hybrid work environments. Furthermore, employees are also looking for greater meaning in their jobs and freedom from the more mundane, repetitive tasks.