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5 technology trends that will dominate banking in 2024

Banks represent one of the most computerized industries in the market. At the same time, they face growing expectations from customers, requirements from regulators and the need for constant innovation. The pace of adaptation of technological innovations varies at each institution, making it difficult to clearly identify specific areas that will dominate their development. On the other hand, from the perspective of a key IT solutions provider, working with almost all representatives of the financial sector, it is possible to identify the factors that will influence technological changes in banks:

  • 1) Cybersecurity - due to the increasing digitization of the banking market and the growing complexity of cyberattacks, the need for customer support in the area of security has been growing. We are not only talking about the technological sphere and the implementation of detection and anti-fraud solutions, but also in-depth customer education. More often than not, it is not the lack of security features, but the user's ignorance that makes a social engineering attack possible. Banks, regardless of what security features they have, will certainly invest in more solutions in the following areas:
  • customer: behavioral biometrics, U2F dongles;
  • bank’s IT: threat detection systems using artificial intelligence, tools for automating security procedures in the context of customer identification (e.g., in call centers);
  • software building: additional elements of development processes focused on security, i.e. threat modeling, static and dynamic security testing (SAST and DAST tools).
  • 2) Migration to the cloud and the use of various models that delegate responsibility for IT areas - after a temporary increase in bank profitability thanks to higher interest rates, we will most likely return to lower financial results in 2024, which will directly affect the need to reduce costs on the IT side. To this end, banks will continue to move some part or even whole of their IT to IaaS, PasS, SaaS (infrastructure, platform, software as a service) models, respectively. The vast majority of these services operate in the public cloud, hence we will see further investment in cloud solutions. It is also important to note the greater availability of public cloud regions within Poland, which gives impetus to increased interest in such services among banks. So far, the use of external data centers has been problematic, due to legal aspects. Nevertheless, now, having at least two big players in the public cloud market (Microsoft, Google), the transfer of their services will be much simpler.
  • 3) Ecological banking - banks are increasingly focusing on sustainability and taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint, both operationally and in the products and services they offer. This will entail investments in both software that can reliably measure the carbon footprint, as well as in IT services that contribute to its reduction. An example of this is migrating from an in-house data center to the public cloud, where the negative environmental impact may be lower, thanks to the sharing of resources among the many institutions using such services.
  • 4) Digitization of business processes - in order to reduce the cost of operations, while allowing the learning curve of processes operating in the bank to decrease, they will continue to invest in workflow class systems such as Asseco ABP. This solution enables automation of many activities and simplifies the way complex products such as loans are handled. This includes sales, as well as hundreds of different types of post-sales processes.
  • 5) Artificial intelligence (AI) - it can be said that we are beginning to get used to the widespread presence of tools based on various types of artificial intelligence algorithms. Banks have long been the forerunner of the use of such tools in the area of sales support (cross-sell, up-sell), and in the coming time we will see the adaptation of more solutions. Banks are sure to find widespread use for generative artificial intelligence (LLM - large language models such as ChatGPT), for example, in supporting online banking users (making it easier to navigate banking systems) or in communicating with customers.

It is worth noting that there are also problematic aspects of using AI, such as the appropriate approach to privacy, respect for copyright or other legal issues. A major challenge will be to properly "explain" the decisions made by AI-based solutions. In such a heavily regulated industry, it will start to become important for banks to use not only "classic" AI methods, but, above all, to have solutions based on XAI, or Explainable Artificial Intelligence, which allow a clear representation of on what basis the bank made a particular decision.

 

Wojciech Nowak,

Head of Commercial Banking Division, Asseco Poland.

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