How banks can leverage technology to explore the digital economy

The classical banking world is in a state of radical change.

Interest rates are low and revenues are dwindling. Challenger and neobanks are dominating the customer interface. Traditional players design their digital opportunities primarily from their viewpoint, focusing on their banking products, and becoming financial superstores for customers.

With open banking and open finance, financial institutions are now required to work more closely with non-banking players, often outside the world of finance.

Digitisation of key spheres of a customer’s lifestyle provides a plethora of opportunities for both banks and non-banks to create value services across shopping, housing, recreation, and healthcare. A winning strategy will be to surround end-customers with convenient digital services with easy access and the right pricing.

Customer expectations are quickly adjusting to a digital world where products and services are recommended based on past behaviours and preferences, and where location-based offers are provided instantaneously on their mobile devices.

Banks have powerful inherent advantages – they have their customers’ trust along with the data on their financials and spending patterns. Additionally, they have the brand recognition to attract partners to shape digital ecosystems. These ecosystems enable banks to embed themselves into their customers’ lives and influence behaviour patterns – enabling them to buy their new home, next car, or shop for home appliances via their mobile.

China’s ICBC has launched a B2C mall in Argentina to provide a wide range of lifestyle services and white goods. Russian bank Sberbank has also attempted to surround customers with services with their ecosystem including groceries, entertainment, health, auto, travel, and even logistics In the MENA region, an Egyptian fintech named valU, backed by EFG Hermes, has shaped a new digital marketplace with embedded lending. ValU, supported by its platform partner JMR Infotech, has gained significant traction via its ecosystem approach and ability to link everyday lifestyle needs alongside lending.

ValU has won three fintech awards and is growing much faster than the market. ValU is powered by JMR’s Genie De Banca (GDB) – an agile digital platform that enables banks to function as a value aggregator, enabling fulfillment of customer’s life-needs.

It enables banks to explore the digital economy and ensure that they meet requirements in a customer’s daily life, delivering all products and services through E2E digital channels. Apart from banks, GDB can also be seamlessly adopted across diverse businesses like real estate, automobile, consumer goods, education, and travel and tours, among other business verticals. JMR Infotech has recently signed a strategic joint venture agreement with the Seed Group (UAE), a company of The Private Office of Sheikh Saeed bin Ahmed Al Maktoum, to enable value-based, technology solution offerings for banks and financial institutions in the MEA region.

Jayafar Moidu, founder and CEO of JMR Infotech says, “The key focus of the joint venture will be to create opportunities for banks and financial institutions to shape digital ecosystems for customer digital engagement and fulfillment journeys.

These ecosystems will be future ‘game-changers’ with re-imagined customer journeys through automated processes, combining digital e-commerce with embedded finance including payments and lending.”