Top Trends in Retail Banking: Asia, Europe, and North America

Every year Celent gathers its analysts across the globe to summarize the top trends in banking for the major geographies: Asia, Europe, and North America. We synthesize key trends in each geography, gleaned from bankers and vendors, clients and nonclients, and regulators and central bankers. We see banks now making offensive, rather than defensive, moves looking for ways to grow their business.

The practice of banking became fundamentally more difficult during and after the global financial crisis of 2009. Banks in all geographies experienced the fallout of a challenging economy that has only begun to improve. Banks are also subjected to increased public and regulatory scrutiny as a result of the recent near-collapse of the financial system. In last year’s report, Celent found a triumvirate of global priorities:

• Managing risk
• Reducing costs
• Improving multichannel delivery

In a new report, Top Trends in Retail Banking 2011, Celent’s crystal ball shows many banks moving forward again. Asia did not suffer as badly as other regions during the crisis, and momentum there only strengthens.

• Multichannel remains on the top three list from mobile cash management to user experience in Internet banking.
• Payments are moving to the fore. Cash management is a fee-generating business that has withstood the crisis. Banks are investing heavily across the globe in this area.
• Between channel proliferation, customer profitability, and risk, many are finding that they need to take an enterprise view of architecture and have enterprise needs take a more important place in IT. Whether the discussion is around payment services hubs (PSH), enterprise service buses (ESB), service-oriented architecture (SOA), or enterprise data warehouses (EDW), bankers are thinking about their business more holistically.

“While there are many initiatives in retail banking across the globe, some themes recur. Mobile is hot across all regions, though in different ways. With the proliferation of nontraditional channels, bankers are starting to think about multichannel projects.” stated Bart Narter, author of the report and Senior Vice President of the Banking Group at Celent. “They are also investing in channels such as remote deposit capture from a home scanner or a mobile device, mobile banking from SMS, web or app, and richer Internet Retail banking experiences to link customers closer to the bank.”