We’re in full swing for the conference season. We hosted our own Innovation & Insight Day last month in Boston, and recognized 25 winners for their innovative use of business technology in creating business value. Bank of America was our Model Bank of the Year on the basis of its broad range of initiatives united by a thread of better serving the customer. The acceptance speech was full of details on how the bank managed to execute on its ambitious plan. More details are below.

Finovate Spring has come and gone; a link to the blog is below. We participated in several vendor analyst gatherings, presented at the Retail Banking conference, and were at NACHA payments.

What have we seen? Consumer financial planning is making a comeback, but don’t call it PFM. And the most recent voice demos are working very well! Many are speculating about voice as the future of the banking interface. We think that it will be useful in a specific set of use cases, but there’s a way to go before it’s capable of being a rock-solid way for consumers to interact with their bank.

Finally, I’d highly recommend Bob Meara’s recent piece, Delivering Excellent Customer Service: When and How Consumers Prefer In-Person Engagement and What it Means for Banks, based on polling of 2,500 US consumers. You’ll be surprised by some of the results. Spoiler: they don’t need branches very often, but when they do, they really do.

Please let us know if we can be helpful as you navigate through the increasingly fast-moving banking technology waters.

All my best,

Dan Latimore
Senior Vice President
@DanLatimore