The zero-interest era and digital transformation pose extensive and manifold challenges for the financial services industry. Customers and business partners are also increasingly demanding more and more of banks and insurers. For example, they expect quick and easy access through multiple channels and devices, as well as faster processing times and high transparency. At the same time, competitive pressure is increasing from innovative pioneers such as Amazon, Google and WeChat, as well as digital financial services and fintechs who are entering the market aggressively. The continued low interest rate environment in the capital markets also increases cost pressures, while stakeholders are constantly pushing for productivity growth. To address these challenges successfully, it is essential to rethink your strategic direction.
A consistent digitalisation strategy allows financial services firms to make processes more productive and transparent. Urgently needed flexibility can be achieved through enterprise-wide digitalisation that impacts all the business processes and systems. However, a basic prerequisite for this is that banks and insurers can rely on an IT landscape that is able to change and expand dynamically.
Digital transformation of core systems
For this, outdated, expensive and silo systems in your system landscape have to be transformed. Banks and insurance companies have now recognised the need to modernise legacy IT, but many organisations are fearful of the risky, complex and costly remodelling of existing core systems.
Therefore, we recommend a “wrap and renew” process, which first decouples the legacy systems by inserting an interaction layer. This approach allows for the step-by-step replacement of legacy systems, while the process-oriented interaction layer at the same time enables digital multi-channel / device connections and an associated end-to-end processing of business transactions. This allows the customer to be offered a modern and innovative customer experience at an early stage.
The interaction layer bundles types of business functionality into services. This interaction layer interacts with the various back-end systems, which assist the interaction layer in mapping out customer journeys from end to end. This mapping of services can be done step-by-step so that the functionality of the legacy systems can be integrated rapidly with modern applications. The advantage is that legacy IT can be maintained if required as a persistence layer and to ensure stability, but can be replaced iteratively at any time (the “wrap and renew” approach).
You will find an overview of the core processes and systems here.
Interaction layer capabilities
By also combining BPM frameworks and artificial intelligence within the interaction layer, you can upgrade it to become an intelligent layer, providing banks and insurance companies with more opportunities to reap the benefits of digital transformation.
This allows financial services firms to streamline and improve their processes through process automation and standardisation together with the use of artificial intelligence. This can reduce costs and save significant time. By accelerating work flows and reducing processing time, you can also become more responsive and focused on customer needs. This in turn increases customer satisfaction, strengthens customer loyalty and guarantees a successful long-term competitive position.
In an intelligent interaction layer, these customer-centric, automated end-to-end processes can be combined across all divisions and communication channels. This provides the prerequisites for a multi-channel solution that networks sales and communication channels and delivers a consistent information base across all channels. This allows synergies to be generated in the planning, management and evaluation of processing. In addition, all parties involved have equal status in the process, and their actions are bundled in the interaction layer in real time. This creates a consistent customer journey across all channels and devices, without disconnects between media or loss of information.
Other benefits of the interaction layer include:
- Faster time-to-market
- Sales and marketing automation
- Applying next-best-action, next-best-offer, and next-best message strategies
- Integrating chat and call bots
- Creating self-learning fraud detection models
The interaction layer also creates and stores a fully automated audit trail in the back-end system.
Our team will give you the best possible assistance
We can help you implement an overarching digitalisation strategy that creates value in your organisation. We see ourselves as your partner, and thanks to our extensive experience in the digitalisation world, we can bring you pre-modelled and defined end-to-end processes, then work together with you to refine and improve them. We tailor our services to the exact needs and goals of your business:
from the design stage to implementation and operation, we act as the general contractor.
Our team has many years of expertise in complex and digital projects involving consulting and implementation services in the area of business technology. The KPMG network, with its extremely diverse portfolio, has proven in the past to be very valuable, particularly in digitalisation projects and their associated challenges.
Have we got you interested? Feel free to contact us.
