Digitalization of financial services is creating new products, channels, and business models. New players such as digital banks, payment and remittance providers, and fintechs are emerging and competing with incumbents. Digitalization is also reshaping customer behavior and expectations as they increasingly demand rapid onboarding, instant funds transfer, and a frictionless user experience. The pandemic has intensified these trends.

Meeting heightened customer expectations and improving customer engagement can be constrained by compliance requirements. Financial institutions need to conduct numerous compliance checks starting from know your customer (KYC), identity verification and authentication, watchlist screening at onboarding, through to sanctions screening, fraud monitoring, anti-money laundering (AML) transaction analysis to comply with regulations and prevent financial crime. However, legacy technology used in compliance operations can be a challenge in fulfilling the needs of the digital era. Disparate and disconnected systems and processes, which are built on old and inflexible technology, struggle to facilitate seamless connectivity and rapid processing of customer records and transactions.

Modern technology powered solutions can offer new levers to streamline compliance operations. In the last 3-4 years, the industry has witnessed growing adoption of intelligent automation powered solutions leveraging robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning which are transforming compliance operations. Additionally, these tools and technologies can offer superior insights on what a client's behavior and needs are, and how a financial institution can leverage them to better serve their clients and drive new revenue opportunities.

Another theme that is becoming clear is that financial institutions will need to adopt a best of breed approach to risk technology because it will be hard to find a single solution that meets all requirements. So we see growing importance on seamless interconnectivity and a growing preference for cloud, APIs, microservices, and platform-based models.

Here's a video sit down with my colleague Neil Katkov, Head of Risk, as we discuss what Risk trends we're seeing in customer enagement.

For more customer engagement insights, check out our topic-specific hub page.