Sparkassen Innovation Hub: How banks must respond to the change in values
"The current situation presents the entire financial industry with unprecedented challenges, but also accelerates innovation processes and forces a rethink in the interests of customers," says Jens Rieken, Head of the Sparkassen Innovation Hub. In its new whitepaper, the Sparkassen Innovation Hub - think tank and central contact point for FinTechs within the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe - highlights eleven current trends and theses on the changing understanding of values and the resulting opportunities and challenges for savings banks and banks. The whitepaper is based on the Values Index 2020, the Values Index Corona Update study and an update of the social media monitoring up to August 2020 by Trendbüro, Bonsai Research, Kantar and measury Sozialforschung.
The ongoing Corona pandemic has shown how strongly and quickly values can change. "Our white paper makes it clear how much the entire financial industry is called upon to accelerate innovation processes and to think even more radically in terms of customers," says Jens Rieken.
Co-author Prof. Peter Wippermann, founder of Trendbüro, had first presented results of "Value Change in the Next Normal" at the end of November at the New Work theme day of Symbioticon, the hackathon of the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. Concrete conclusions can be drawn from this for the financial sector.
What customers expect from savings banks and banks
Digital & contactless: In particular, the demand for digital, for example AI-supported solutions (artificial intelligence), to avoid physical contacts in counselling is increasing. Possibilities of digital identification and verification, for example via digital identity card, are also gaining in importance.
Family Finance: In terms of family, Savings Banks could score with intelligent solutions for joint accounts, children's and pocket money accounts or an easy entry into family and old-age provision. Gamification, i.e. the use of playful elements in products and services, ensures a more comprehensible and manageable presentation for the target group.
Regional versus global: Regionality is becoming even more important in times of globalisation. For banks and especially for savings banks, this is an opportunity to reflect on their corporate purpose: To enable people in the region to live a financially self-determined life, to offer a platform to develop their region and to promote community and solidarity. This is the goal of "WirWunder" or "Einfach.Gut.Machen. - two platforms from the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe that enable non-profit organisations to advertise their project and collect donations. In addition, there is the voucher campaign "Gemeinsam da durch".
New solutions for new customer needs
Jens Rieken is convinced that "we should not only take note of the current needs, but rather use them to design suitable solutions entirely in the interest of our current and future customers. The use cases and product ideas mentioned in the white paper provide a possible outlook on how savings banks and banks can interact with the customer in the future and what opportunities and possibilities arise from this."
About the methodology of the white paper
The publication is based on the recording of 15 fundamental values in German-language social media networks. The updated values ranking was created from more than three million German-language social media posts, which were first sifted quantitatively, then qualitatively. Based on hypotheses from trend and futurology research, the content of the collected posts was sifted in order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the revolutionary effects of the COVID 19 epidemic on the users' discussion of fundamental social values.
