In view of strict regulatory requirements, low-interest politics and intense cost pressure many finance institutes are neglecting a crucial challenge – the ever accelerating progress of digitalization. According to a recent study by Roland Berger around 63 percent of bank customers in Germany are now regularly conducting their banking transactions online. At the same time, highly innovative FinTechs providing a great competitive advantage are continuously being introduced into the market. They are attacking the traditional banking business with services such as conducting banking transactions or providing loans. In order to fulfill the individual needs of their customers and to stay competitive over the long term, banks should start to develop appropriate digital strategies as quickly as possible.
Banks and insurers need to reinvent themselves
This was the conclusion reached by participants at the Bavarian Finance Summit, which was recently held in Munich. Günther H. Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, for instance considers the development and expansion of the digital infrastructure to be even more crucial than building new roads or train tracks. Dr. Andreas Dombret, a member of the board at the German Central Bank (Deutsche Bundesbank), also appealed to banks and savings institutes to stop shrugging off digitalization as just another one of many trends, whose development they can calmly await. On the contrary, banks will have to reinvent themselves to a certain extent if they want to keep pace with new competitors in the future. This was reconfirmed by Christof Mascher, member of the board at Allianz SE. According to him, the digital world also offers the insurance sector the opportunity to position itself closer to its customers by providing new services which are of everyday importance to customers and extend far beyond only insuring against risks.
Retarus Messaging Services support the implementation of strategies
In fact, the requirements for the digitalization strategies of finance institutes are already enormously challenging. Regulations, IT security aspects and data privacy guidelines have to be considered, customers must be treated fairly and transparent processes need to be both developed and introduced. Retarus’ Messaging Services fulfill all of these expectations, meaning that they offer banks and insurance companies valuable support in the digitalization of their communication processes. Companies in the finance sector profit not only from the high levels of quality, flexibility and transparency that the services offer, but also from ultimate security, efficiency and reliability – and hence also optimized business processes. All services are performed in accordance with local compliance and data privacy requirements at Retarus’ proprietary data centers located at seven sites around the globe.
Find out more about how Retarus supports banks and insurance companies in optimizing their digital communication in our special section «Retarus for Banking».
