What will banking look like in 2020? One major change will be the rise of the 'social bank'.
In the aftermath of the credit crisis, many felt that a pure focus upon capitalism and trade was a misplaced ideal and created peer groups online to pressure governments to support social finance schemes. Many of these schemes are based on the ethos of social, or complementary, currencies and have the intent of improving the planet.
These movements will be supported by governments as ageing population needs and tight budgetary policies place pressure on them to find innovative new ways to finance healthcare, education and related services. As soon as banks see that these alternative credit systems are viable, they will jump on board the bandwagon.
Soon, credit schemes from all sorts of organisations will be traded through bank systems such as gaming credits, airline credits, community credits, health credits and government credits. But it goes further than this.
Customer reach-out
Leading banks of the world will launch customer reach-out schemes that leverage technologies to engage in dialogue with their clients. Interactive chat via media 24/7 will become the state of the art with banks determined to be at the front of the game by being responsive, honest and transparent. Therefore, the social bank will become an integral part of daily life in a constructive and interactive dialogue about more than just money.
Equally, the social bank becomes far more caring about their customers as it evolves into more of an advisor rather than just a provider of products by using personal financial management proactively in real-time. This leads to a clear delineation of banks: those that are social and focused upon retail relationships; those that are commercial and focused upon the commercial banking trade for corporate clients; and those that operate in the investment markets.
By 2020, then, banks are no longer universal. Banks have a clear mandate and objective in who they serve and how they serve them and the old days of smudged and overlapping objectives between investment, commercial and retail operations has disappeared.
This change will be as much forced by society, customers and communities as by regulators, policy-makers and governments. And the banks that realise this first will be the most successful by the time 2020 rolls around.
