Summary
Technology is changing at a pace never seen before. What is new today could be obsolete tomorrow. The financial services organizations are at the forefront of this technology revolution. Newcomers in the financial service segments, i.e., the FinTechs are forcing banks to adapt and simplify the customer experience. As banks compete in this era, it becomes imperative to understand where they stand from a digital maturity standpoint.
Cedar has been assisting global clients across industries to formulate innovative strategy and ensuring its effective execution. Cedar has a well-proven track record of providing in-depth insight and execution to conduct digital diagnostic review across digital strategy, channels, product convergence, processes, and technology. We make strategy and innovation work.
How we add value
Cedar’s digital strategy approach is about understanding the digital and banking domain and how the industry will embrace and grow ‘Digitally’ in the next 3-5 years. A 4-6 week quick digital diagnostic review helps determine the readiness across 6 different dimensions, and validate the degree of maturity from a comparative industry standpoint. Cedar’s approach validates the current state across 6 key dimensions:
- Customer Experience: Understanding the ability to address customer needs & enhance customer experience.
- Digital Onboarding: Validating the readiness from digital onboarding perspective & front-office services
- Product Convergence: Understanding the ability to sell/cross-sell to fulfil product needs through the digital channels.
- Process Fulfilment: Agility – including Straight through processing (STP), e-documents, e-KYC.
- Channel Adoption: Evaluating the readiness of segment aligned channels to offer products and services.
- Technology Platform: Validating the digital banking architecture, initiatives, alignment with the overall digital roadmap.
Cedar determines the critical implications based on the assessment including areas of alignment, met/unmet needs, and specifically identify potential areas of additional focus across the 3 key areas of the digital value chain that include:
- Driving Digital Adoption | Enhanced Customer Acquisition: This ensures existing customers are migrated into self-service channels that are digital-enabled and facilitate a robust digital onboarding experience. This applies both for individual as well as institutional customers.
- Build a Digital STP operating model | Improved operating efficiencies: Having the customer channels alone digitized is not enough. It is essential that the bank’s enterprise architecture be enabled for straight-through processing (STP), robotic process automation (RPA), and artificial intelligence (AI) that allows for end-to-end digital enablement.
- Connect to the digital ecosystem | Institutionalized sustainability: The livelihood of a digital banking ecosystem is not simply dependent on the digital onboarding of customers and having the target operating model digitally enabled. It is significantly reliant on a tight coupling with the digital ecosystem, including a digital core processor, payments, and open banking enablement through Application Programming Interfaces (API).
Based on the diagnostic review findings, Cedar helps identify the way forward initiatives and the Critical Success Factors that need to be addressed to tap into potential future opportunities. The initiatives also prioritized based on the complexity and their relative benefits, with a view on timelines, investments, ownership, and dependencies.
