The Covid-19 pandemic has been challenging and, at the same time, a transformative experience for banks and credit unions. While banking providers have invested in digital capabilities, the pandemic pushed them to rethink, redesign and re-engineer their business operations, services and products. To ensure business continuity, financial institutions transitioned to remote working models of sales, digital outreach and customer support. Apart from drastic operations changes, the pandemic also brought along a fundamental change in consumer behavior. Through social distancing and work from home, the average consumer's life was confined to home.

Conversational artificial intelligence chat has become central to the digital banking strategy of financial institutions, no matter what their size. The Covid-19 shift to remote banking will never be reversed. Banks and credit unions have an opportunity to build and retain market share in the new environment where customer engagement has shifted so rapidly to digital channels. The ability to self-serve, especially for younger clients, is an essential factor in achieving customer and member success. Winners will be those who make their digital experience most compelling and convenient.

The PACE – Performance Against Customer Expectations – survey has been measuring SMB customer perspectives on banking providers and the impact of technology since 2017. On considering the latest 2019 findings as a whole, four key takeaways emerge: managing customer churn, building out trust, equipping and enabling people alongside technology, and focusing on the user experience. Over the next 18 months to 2 years, I also anticipate a fifth takeaway – embedding social impact by design, as consumers demand a commitment to financial inclusion from their core banking provider, alongside transparent metrics to measure its progress and open dialogue channels to contribute to its evolution. Indeed, SMBs may be small to medium size businesses in terms of employee numbers, but they are increasingly big, innovative and sophisticated business for the banks which serve them and help them to grow. How can you best consider your customers and evaluate their needs alongside the banking, technology and social trends that matter most?

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." That famous line from Bill Gates certainly applies to the banking industry. While banking may still look much as it does today in the next year or two, the springboards for dramatic change already are in place. Those forces -- operating in tandem with shifting consumer expectations -- will have an unprecedented impact in the decade ahead, accelerating the transformation of the banking landscape. It's not too late for traditional banks and credit unions to thrive in this dynamic environment.

The subject of'personalization' has dominated CX conversations in the financial industry recently. But making banking interactions more relevant requires more than just using a customer's first name in the salutation of an email. Here's what financial institutions can learn from pioneering tech firms like Amazon, Netflix and Google who have raised the bar. Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!"Personalization" is not a new or novel concept in banking. For centuries, financial institutions have prided themselves on the personal experience they delivered to each customer.

Banks and credit unions used to think that "service" is what differentiated one financial brand from another. But now, the digital experience is paramount when it comes to separating the winners from losers in the banking industry. Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!Consumers say the overall digital experience their bank or credit union serves up is lacking. According to research by NTT DATA Services, consumers think banking providers struggle with anything beyond simple functional tasks like checking your account balances or looking up your transaction history. In the report, the study's participants said their biggest beefs with their financial institution's digital experience include: NTT DATA says one segment of consumers want simple and reliable Alexa-like interactions for routine interactions (e.g., making a balance inquiry, or checking on the status of a service inquiry).

Regardless of available budget or staffing, there are steps your institution can take to start learning how voice will play a part in your digital strategy. Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!In 2017, we saw large institutions such as Ally Bank, U.S. Bank, and Capital One begin to engage consumers through Amazon Alexa devices, empowering their respective consumers to get fast answers about their finances, receive affordability insights, and pay bills, all via voice. Yet, just because these large institutions made the strategic investment in voice channels, should all financial organizations? This is a great question, but what about the value of simply learning about new voice channels? Waiting to learn about, and experiment with, these channels until the market has fully adopted them may put you too far behind to catch up with the pace of voice adoption by consumers.

Banking providers must continue to step up to plate and meet consumer expectations. Digital banking solutions are table stakes, not something only tech-savvy Millennials crave. Subscribe to The Financial Brand via email for FREE!A crowded marketplace and the speed at which new technologies are revolutionizing banking makes crafting the right digital presence overwhelming for many financial institutions. Consumers now expect their banking provider to provide a secure, frictionless digital experience -- one that's easy to use, convenient and fits seamlessly into their everyday lives. With competition increasing across the industry, the stakes are high.

Here are the top 17 articles published by The Financial Brand in 2017, revealing what concerned banks and credit unions most in the past year. Insights from a crowdsourced panel of 100 financial services influencers, industry analysts and banking providers combined with the results from a global research study helps identify future trends and strategies for long-term growth. AI can improve customer personalization, identify patterns and connections that humans can't, and answer questions about banking issues in real-time. Financial institutions are already finding success with AI. However, what may be'amazing' today will be table stakes in the near future.

Banks and credit unions that don't embrace artificial intelligence and invest in the power of advanced data analytics are doomed. Traditional retail banking providers, weighed down by monolithic legacy systems and ponderous regulations, are in uncomfortable territory. Advancements in fintech have upended the industry, enticing both large financial firms and smaller tech startups to apply disruptive technologies in ways that threaten the status quo. To become more agile and remain relevant, traditional retail banking providers find themselves exploring their technological options with focused intensity. New innovations in data analytics empower financial institutions with systems that are so smart, they learn on the go, automatically refining their algorithms and improving their results over time.