BOSTON -
“The credit crunch and looming economic uncertainty have banks tightening their belts,” its analysis suggests. “This contraction will push numerous IT projects out of the picture and will make internal competition for IT resources that much greater.”
Celent said for banks, market share no longer translates into market power or profitability. “Growing profitability requires them to focus on customers more than products and grow balances and fees while lowering cost to serve,” the company said.
That drive for customer centricity will manifest itself in numerous types of implementations: customer profitability analytics, relationship pricing, and dynamic pricing (pricing based on specific market and/or customer factors). In addition, Celent said it expects to see an increase in integrated customer information management and account opening (across products and channels).
Among other trends it is forecasting:
* Banks will build service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based middle layers to reduce application redundancy, assure data integrity, facilitate data sharing, and lower overall maintenance costs.
* Instead of a landslide of core replacements, Celent is forecasting that what will happen instead is core renewal, “where selected parts of the core system will be upgraded, service-enabled, or perhaps migrated to a modern platform, while other parts of the core system remain untouched.”
* Celent said it anticipates new types of products that combine features of loans and deposit products or loans and securities to be launched. Offset mortgages, for example, may drive the need for coupling a mortgage system with a DDA system. Once banks have moved to a SOA, they will be able to mix and match granular services to create new types of products and out-innovate their competitors to offer superior returns, it noted.
For additional info: www.celent.com.
