Disrupt or Be Disrupted

by Paula da Silva, Deputy Head of Transaction Banking & Head of Working Capital Management, Merchant Banking, SEB

When I think about the future of banking, I feel encouraged. No matter the area – retail banking or corporate transaction banking – it’s easy to see giant leaps forward ahead that will both change the view of banking and make banks as intermediaries between lenders and investors all the more important. I see three key ways to disrupt rather than be disrupted.

Digitalisation

Huge advances have been made in digital banking, yet it’s only the beginning. Many talk about Know Your Customer, or KYC. But I think in terms of KYCB: Know Your Customer’s Business. When you grasp customer needs, you can meet those needs digitally.

In transaction banking, there’s only an interface for the actual transaction. The client logs in and looks at a screen to make an additional payment or check balances. This happens all day, every day. But what about the rest of the process? Banks are good at transaction processing. We exchange enormous amounts of information with our clients through a vast amount of channels, but it is unsynchronised. We should rather spend time and money analysing the data and suggesting measures to improve our clients’ processes, but make it automated.

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