Australia’s banking sector faces an uncertain future amidst the Royal Commission, compounded by diminishing customer trust and enhanced competition from fast-moving players such as FinTechs and RegTechs, says the inaugural Banking Industry Report, released today by TAS.
According to the TAS report, traditional banking institutions are worrisome of growing customer distrust from the Royal Commission (21 per cent) findings, and in turn are seeing more opportunity to advance with disruptive innovation and technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data and Automation to deliver better service and gain more visibility of their customer to offset current attitudes toward the sector. However, the report found banks continue to struggle to fully realise the potential of technologies like AI to carve out a competitive edge ahead of international mega-companies gaining fast ground in the space locally.
The report, which canvasses industry leaders on their outlook and sentiment, further found that 1 in 2 banking leaders acknowledge greater customer engagement and experience as the front-running strategy for remaining relevant and competitive in the current environment. Leaders acknowledged that being able to build more customer-centric culture and service capabilities to drive customer satisfaction and loyalty will be key over the next 12 months. However, leaders are grappling with truly understanding the changing customer landscape and are also finding it hard to adapt their operations and mobilise their teams to be better prepared for ongoing disruption (20 per cent).
For 1 in 3 leaders, market forces such as increasing competition and new market entrants are a concern, with leaders referring specifically to global competition as well as the number of disruptive players such as FinTechs, RegTechs and other start-ups making waves in the industry. However, 58 per cent of leaders are not actively partnering with FinTechs or RegTechs – which demonstrates that there are opportunities ripe for the taking for those organisations who are wanting to carve out some market differentiation by partnering with these emerging businesses.
The report also found that leaders are keen to invest in three big areas over the next 12 months to gain market share and compete globally, including business transformation and technology (37 per cent), digital and data (33 per cent) and alliance partnerships (18 per cent).
Shane Baker, CEO, TAS says, “Australia’s banking industry is at a crucial point in its history, which is being driven heavily by disruptive technology and innovation, as well as getting some of the basics wrong like customer service and loyalty. Bankers are genuinely concerned about the long-lasting effect of the Royal Commission and how best to carve out competitive opportunities in the aftermath of these revelations, but also how to gain back customer trust.
In the year ahead, the industry will go through a cycle of change that will showcase the strength and resilience of incumbents who are willing to adapt to change and collaborate with the right partners to enhance their resilience in themarket, but we’ll also see the effects of open banking and how the newcomers like neobanks, FinTechs and international players will be taking a foothold in the sector like never before.”
About the TAS Banking Industry Report: The report canvasses the views of Australia’s banking and financial services leaders. It draws on in-depth interviews held between January and June 2018, with 50 leaders from a broad range of private and publicly listed companies. The inaugural report serves as an independent pulse-check of Australia’s banking industry and features exclusive insights from business leaders at DBS Bank, Alibaba Cloud, FinTech Australia, Flamingo AI and The Fold Legal.
About TAS: TAS is a leading provider of technology services to the Australian financial services market. TAS has been in operation since 1989 and is Australian-owned and operated. TAS has gained extensive experience in delivering the highest levels of availability, compliance and quality of service through many years of servicing one on the most highly regulated industries – Banking and Finance. They have delivered high-level services to 60 financial institution customers. TAS’s sister company, TAScloud, recently launched in mid-2018 and further details can be found at TAScloud GLOBAL.
