Mark Sievewright presenting “Becoming Digital: The Path to Frictionless Financial Services” at CUNA’s ACUC in Las Vegas.LAS VEGAS – Early in his session at CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference Monday, Mark Sievewright read a group text conversation he had recently with his three children aloud to attendees. In the conversation, he mentioned he had a 90-minute presentation scheduled at the conference, to which one of his kids replied that he couldn’t possibly hold anyone’s attention for that long.
This raised two points about millennials, Sievewright said: First, they have much shorter attention spans, and second, they have no problem communicating over text but usually refuse to answer the phone. The group chat story also led to a takeaway for credit unions.
“If you don’t adapt to the way new generations are doing things, you’re going to lose and be irrelevant,” he said.
In “Becoming Digital: The Path to Frictionless Financial Services,” Sievewright – who served at Fiserv for 12 years before launching his own company, Sievewright & Associates – discussed ways credit union executives can step up their execution of digital and payments strategies as the financial services industry continues to transform.
Sievewright said the financial services business model is changing faster than anyone can imagine as a result of new technology, demographic shifts and new entrants into the industry that are challenging the incumbents.
“We need to be incredibly focused on strategies that allow us to remain relevant,” he emphasized.
Executives at credit unions, which Sievewright said he believes are only 40% digitized at this point, should keep four things in mind when developing strategies to remain relevant in today’s digital world:
1. Remember the CAMBRIA acronym. Credit unions should keep their eye on seven disruptive technologies that will shape their business over the next five years and can be easily remembered by the acronym CAMBRIA:
- Cognitive computing, which is the ability for computers to simulate human thought. “If they have the right vendor, credit unions can take member data, have it analyzed and determine what to do next,” Sievewright said. “It’s what your best marketing analysts would do, but it can be done in seconds.”
- Artificial intelligence, which allows organizations to make sense of myriad data points and be certain in their tracking of behavioral patterns.
- Machine learning, which piggybacks on artificial intelligence.
- Blockchain, which has seen $100 billion in investments from the 20 largest banks in the U.S. “We should observe what happens and be somewhat fast followers,” Sievewright advised credit unions in regard to blockchain.
- Robotics, which Sievewright said will begin playing a bigger role in member service technology.
- The Internet of Things, which is the ability for devices to interoperate and communicate with each other, often without us knowing, Sievewright said.
- Augmented reality. An example of this would be the ability to begin the process of buying a home simply by snapping an image of the house a consumer is looking to purchase.
2. Leverage the smart hub homes trend. Siri and devices like Alexa and Google Home have made consumers more comfortable with the idea of voice-activated technology. And thanks to the IoT, Sievewright said we can expect more consumers to live in “smart hub” homes, where all their devices and appliances, including refrigerators, TVs and thermostats, will communicate with one another to make the consumer’s life easier.
3. Change the definition of omni-channel. According to data from Cognizant, Marketforce and Pegasystems, when asked how much progress they had made in going omni-channel, most organizations replied that they had integrated a few channels while only a fraction said they had gone full omni-channel, Sievewright said. “We need to redefine and simplify omni-channel to mean 100% integration of the delivery channels you make available to your members,” he added.
4. Understand what generations want. Gen Y and Gen Z make up 45% of the population, Sievewright pointed out. And they may not want what most credit unions think – while it’s commonly believed that young consumers don’t care if their financial institution has a branch, they in fact do want to know it has a branch, even if they never end up visiting it, he noted.
It’s also important to remember what desires are universal across all generations. “Everyone wants the same thing from their financial services provider: Value, availability, speed and ease of use,” Sievewright said.
