Financial institutions have complex portfolios of products presented to customers in a siloed, product-centric fashion, which makes shopping for financial products inefficient and reduces the overall customer experience. However, digital delivery promises to improve customers' shopping experience, CX, and CSAT.  Some firms in other industries have been doing this successf[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended the Infosys U.S. Analyst Day in Dallas, the theme of which was “Being AI First”. It demonstrated clear progress since last year’s conference in Infosys’ thinking and approach to the critical steps for effective implementation and operational deployment of AI. Key components of AI-led operational transformation Infosys and its[...]

  Financial institutions are rapidly starting or growing existing wealth and asset management businesses. In the U.S., wealth assets under third-party management have grown over the last five years by 16.8% CAGR to 2023 (Source: Statista). Wealth advisors are looking to continue to invest in and grow their wealth management businesses because they see continued growth coming from: [...]

  In 2024, the financial services industry will face strong economic headwinds. Usually, this is a formula for downsizing and consolidation. However, today’s headwinds are so strong that the industry will need to: Assess and restructure its supply chains to address new priorities such as ESG reporting Accelerate customer experience transformation to increase personalizati[...]

  ESG services are an emerging set of tracking and reporting capabilities for enterprises. Emerging technologies do not mature in a straight line but cycle through peaks and valleys of development and adoption as they mature. In the past year, ESG services have passed from the euphoria stage of market adoption to the valley stage as the hype has been confronted by the real-world challe[...]

  Financial institutions use legacy ERP solutions to monitor, control, and report on their business activities. At large institutions, most of these solutions were deployed in the 1990s and have inflexible architectures that need the requisite functionality to report on modern products, regulations, and industry practices. In this blog, I look at how Capgemini is helping clients tackle[...]

  Compliance is driving the adoption of ESG initiatives by enterprises, and currently Europe is ahead of other markets in the rigor of its ESG-related legislation and regulatory code. In this blog, I look at what Unisys is doing to make it easier for enterprises to comply with Germany’s Supply Chain Act. Background In 2023, several new regulations have increased compliance [...]

  NelsonHall has just completed the research for a market assessment and forecast report on Transforming Intelligent Automation Services in Banking. We found that banks have accelerated the adoption of IA services in operations over the past two years, a shift that has been driven by: Declining operating margins on legacy businesses Pursuit of new customer demographics to repla[...]

  Capgemini has partnered with Microsoft to develop and market a dynamic hyper-personalization offering for the financial services industry. This blog explores how hyper-personalization capabilities can be adapted to the unique needs of the financial services industry. Background Enterprises want to increase the personalization of their offerings to customers to increase CSAT an[...]

  The securities industry is moving towards shorter settlement cycles to reduce risk and increase efficiency. The last reduction in settlement windows in the U.S. was in September 2017 when settlements moved from T+3 (three-day settlement) to T+2. In February 2023, the U.S. SEC announced that all companies trading securities on U.S. exchanges needed to move to T+1 settlement by May 28,[...]

  The lending business is highly cyclical due to its sensitivity to interest rates, economic cycles, and capital availability to fund loans. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, these factors are currently driving down mortgage originations, which have fallen 60% y/y in the U.S. in Q4 2022. The decline in originations pressuring the margins of this high-cost activity is th[...]

  In the financial services industry, there was an initial expectation that demand for intelligent automation (IA) would fall off as clients changed platforms and moved to a microservices architecture. Instead, the application of IA in financial services has grown rapidly. The initial evidence from my current study shows that despite challenges deploying the technology effectively, the[...]

  NelsonHall recently completed a market assessment and forecast report on Transforming Financial Services with Cloud, SaaS, and BPaaS Services. It reveals that the financial services industry is responding to the industrialization of cloud services from hyperscalers and IT services vendors by transforming its platforms to microservices architectures and then moving them to the cloud. [...]

  2022 has been a very strong year for IT services firms delivering cloud, digital, and AI services to the financial services industry. 2023 looks to be a very different year for these vendors as they are finding it difficult to hire skilled resources, find clients able to fund new large projects, and partner in strategic growth areas. Successful BFS technology consultants will need to[...]

  In NelsonHall’s recently published market assessment, Transforming Mortgage and Loan Services, we found that lenders are changing their approach to mortgage and loan operations from a focus on BPS and integration services to a focus on cloud migration and data management services. The goal for lending institutions today is to be able to support open ecosystem models, new pro[...]

ESG is a hot, but poorly defined, topic. Many firms and investors have started ESG programs, but recent allegations of “greenwashing” and ineffectiveness have undermined confidence in them. So, what are the components of an effective ESG program? ESG is a wide set of dissimilar goals (e.g., carbon emissions reduction is very different than social inclusion). By focusing deeply[...]

  I recently attended the EY Managed Services Analyst Summit. EY’s managed services business just finished a gangbuster year, growing 30% over the prior year, with some sub-segments growing at rates up to 150% y/y. Managed services is EY’s fastest growing line of business, justifying EY’s 12-year-long commitment to this business. Here I look at EY’s managed serv[...]

  Industry background Financial services are very centralized, with exchanges, central banks, and custodians delivering platform-based services to any user who wants to make a financial transaction or own a financial asset/liability. Decentralized finance, DeFi, is a financial system built on distributed ledger technology (DLT or blockchain) that allows a user to transact and own w[...]

  In NelsonHall’s newly published market assessment, Digital Banking Services: Transforming the Financial Services Industry, we found that financial institutions are changing their approach to digital services: from a focus on digital channels and CX to a focus on rapid solution development, cloud migration, data management, and STP. The goal for financial institutions today i[...]

  Digital transformation has accelerated in the banking industry since the start of the pandemic. This blog describes some recent digitalization activities a bank undertook with Xebia to improve its customer contact processes and provide differentiated service with increased efficiency. The challenge A U.S.-based neo bank began experiencing ongoing high call volumes in its call [...]