3rd Annual Digital Banking Summit, Berlin 2023

A third edition of a pan-European event suggests some history and state of maturity. Indeed, while the early audiences were attracted more by the novelty and excited about the opportunities, by now both financial institutions and technology players are confidently engaging in ‘business as usual’ digital banking and making unstoppable progress with it.

This year’s conference saw some 190 participants from all over Europe and beyond (there were delegates form as far as Senegal and Pakistan), representing 80+ companies, including 35 banks. The intense agenda offered the audience 40+ diverse presentations, discussion panels and round tables. By the end of the summit we all knew (a lot) more about Digital Banking – and about each other. As with all good events, the live networking opportunities were priceless.

The immense variety of topics presented and discussed can be summed in several trending groups, of which I found four standing out and meriting attention:

Digital ID

By far the most numerous discussions, presentations and participants on this topic was somewhat surprising, but it undoubtedly indicates widespread challenges in the industry and a respectively growing number of solutions on offer. The benefits of digital banking also come with certain risks like fraud, identity theft, money laundering and more. To help operating institutions mitigate risks and fight crime, we heard form a number of leading vendors in the field – ranging from single identification focus, e.g. biometric (as seen in Berlin from iProov) to advanced and comprehensive platforms like Evrotrust, IDentt and TrueID. A notable overlap with another trending topic – AI: many ID solutions increasingly utilise different forms of machine learning, neural decisioning or cognitive and generative models. A trend to watch!

Customer Centricity

Banks have been flirting with the idea for decades: they embraced CRM around the turn of the century but later forgot what the ‘R’ letter there stands for. In more recent times CX (customer experience) became the mantra yet in the last 10 years we’ve heard more horror stories from abused customers, than praises from delighted ones. And then digital neo-banks came to the scene and disrupted the industry, not least by providing a notably better experience. The 3rd Summit had a whole section dedicated to this, and even outside that part every presenter had at least a mention if not a major point of their story. CX was at the heart of ING Bank’s long and winding journey of global transformation, eloquently told by Marco Eijsackers.

Other best practices also had the Customer in focus: Credit Europe made CX the business case for their digital transformation; Reiffeisen built their Digital Bank by understanding customer needs and preferences and gave it the motto ‘Built for Customers’. Barclays took CX to the B2B dimension, and pure digital plays all had it at their heart. There was no shortage of presenting tech vendors with specific enabling functionalities, like Personetics (for hyper-personalisation of experiences), Creatio offers composable, no-code automation for CRM and CX. Netcetera aims to improve interactions with advanced UI and communication capabilities. And several ID vendors aimed specifically for fast and smooth customer onboarding.

Not least among them, Objectway has a special place for CX in its innovation methodology and integrated offering. We believe that, with commoditised services and financial products, CX is becoming the next frontier for competitive advantage and expect to see exciting developments in this field.

Artificial intelligence

No longer an exotic novelty, AI has firmly entered the mainstream and we saw a number of interesting stories. Among operating banks, Intesa Sanpaolo shared a most impressive experience with a comprehensive approach to AI adoption. They established a dedicated AI Centre of Excellence and deployed AI in practically every main area of baking activities, to some remarkable results. Nobanks (see below) have also embraced AI and had interesting mentions in their stories. Among them Nest!Bank even call themselves an ”AI bank”.

On the vendor side, most ID providers benefit from AI in their biometric solutions, but some have taken it beyond that into KYC/AML (Evrotrust) and intelligent Credit Risk Decisioning (Provenir).

Digital Banking Case Studies and Best Practices

This was naturally the bulk of content at the Summit. Interestingly, nobody even mentioned terms from previous years like ‘challenger’ or ‘disruptor’ banks – because those are rapidly becoming mainstream, and many incumbents are successfully responding to the challenge. Apart from a few ‘pure plays’ (Starling, Nest) most digital banks presenting were subsidiaries of ‘incumbent’ universal banks. Notably those are set up as separate entities with their own operating structures and independent branding (ON, Mashreq). They all share the vision – and best practice – of bridging operational efficiency with customer centricity. For years considered antagonistic (you can’t be low-cost and offer great service?) those two dimensions now coexist under the same roof, allowing fast and simple service with great CX, thanks to digitalisation. Today we no longer see a stark division between ‘old’ and ‘new’ banks – but simply the only viable way to the future.

Objectway’s Contribution

We presented a story touching all above themes. Despite a focus on Wealth Management (while much of the audience came from retail banks), our strengths in end-to-end digitalization, use of advanced technology, deep customer centricity and fully integrated approach resonated with all participants, who felt encouraged and enriched with ideas from what Objectway had to share.

To recap all above observations: Digital Banking is not only here to stay, but rapidly becoming ‘the only way’ to do banking – embracing technology for intelligent operations and superior experiences of all stakeholders: customers, employees, investors and partners in the ecosystem.