Verizon Business Identifies 10 Key Trends Changing the Face of the Financial Services Industry

Technological advances, regulatory changes and blurring lines between professional and personal lifestyles will significantly shape the financial services industry's landscape throughout the next decade. Verizon has identified 10 emerging trends that are key factors in this transformation, and that will create an even stronger focus on advanced security measures within the industry.

The industry perspective, "Top Ten Trends of the Decade in Financial Services," written by Chandan Sharma, global managing director of Verizon Business' financial services practice, identifies the trends that will likely reshape the way financial services firms conduct business in the future.

"The combination of these 10 trends shows that technology is increasingly blurring the line between personal and professional lifestyles," said Sharma. "For example, for consumers, the same features that are in physical bank locations will now be available on their mobile phones. As transactional self-service becomes the norm, especially for personal banking, the industry is going to operate in a new style and pace. By analyzing the intersection of these changes, we are advising financial firms to prepare for the expected and unexpected opportunities that lie ahead, such as an increased focus on security for the amount of consumers adopting mobile banking."

Here are Verizon's top 10 emerging financial services trends:

1. Transactional self-service will become the norm: Mobile, online and telephone banking channels will become the avenue of choice for personal banking. As branch networks significantly shift toward advisory services, mobile security will become even more important.

2. Applied intelligence at the point of sale and service is about the only thing that will matter: To attain and retain high levels of customer service and satisfaction, banks will seek to develop superior relationship intelligence to build high levels of customer trust and retention.
3. The war between privacy and personalization will reach a truce - creating a win-win for consumers and financial institutions: Bank customers will not be put off by institutions making use of their personal data if they can see a benefit. Institutions that successfully track behavior and lifestyle preferences can significantly improve the customer experience.
4. Liquidity will become more fluid or more volatile: Convertible assets will become more transient, requiring much more efficient systems to access liquidity globally.
5. Non-traditional competitors will emerge -- and create disruption: New rivals will emerge both in the retail and payments segments of the industry, threatening current business models.
6. Automated teller functions will evolve: To benefit the customer experience, ATMs will morph into localized shared digital commerce kiosks. Digital payments will grow at the expense of cash, and there will be an increased adoption of shared commerce kiosk-provider networks.
7. Multi-enterprise communications underpinning e-commerce will get a facelift: Purpose-built financial ecosystem infrastructures will emerge where applications and services are securely delivered on an "as-a-service" basis by trusted global providers.
8. The network will become the business infrastructure platform: The network will become a strategic business infrastructure platform where the delivery of business and technology services will be orchestrated securely.
9. Sourcing models will be redefined: There will be shift to an extended digital virtual financial enterprise, offering consistent and verifiable operational controls regardless of where or by whom the work is performed.
10. 'Everything as a Service (EaaS)' IT and information architectures will deliver efficiency dividends: Digitization, virtualization, standardization, and flexible services-oriented cloud architectures will be increasingly adopted and deliver improvement in efficiency.

"We're applying our expertise delivering advanced technology and security solutions with professional consulting services to help our clients make the most of these trends," added Sharma. "Verizon Business' strategic direction to deliver everything-as-a-service -- and the company's experience in developing and delivering some of the world's most sophisticated business platforms and leading managed security solutions -- will play a key role in helping financial services customers to capitalize on the trends identified by the report, and create a modern and sustainable competitive edge."

To find out more about how Verizon Business is helping provide security, solutions and services to the Financial Services industry, visit www.verizonbusiness.com.

Verizon Financial Services is a business solutions and technology advisory services practice within Verizon. The practice is focused on helping banking and financial institutions, insurance companies and the broader financial ecosystem improve business agility, increase business performance, manage risk, and drive innovation in an increasingly complex and fast-changing digital market place. Verizon's solutions framework for the financial services industry draws upon market-leading communications, IT, security, identity, mobility assets, consulting/professional services capabilities and strategic vendor relationships to provide integrated solutions in a number of flexible delivery models, including everything as a service (EaaS), premises-based, or hybrid models. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com/solutions/finance.

About Verizon Business
Verizon Business, a unit of Verizon Communications (NYSE, NASDAQ: VZ), is a global leader in communications and IT solutions. We combine professional expertise with one of the world's most connected IP networks to deliver award-winning communications, IT, information security and network solutions.  We securely connect today's extended enterprises of widespread and mobile customers, partners, suppliers and employees - enabling them to increase productivity and efficiency and help preserve the environment.  Many of the world's largest businesses and governments - including 96 percent of the Fortune 1000 and thousands of government agencies and educational institutions - rely on our professional and managed services and network technologies to accelerate their business. Find out more at www.verizonbusiness.com.

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