In May, Newired will participate in the event “It’s all banking and insurance”, in Milan, Italy.
For the occasion, our CEO Stefano Rizzo gave an interview where he talks about the challenges offered by digital transformation to banks and the FinTech community. It is available in Italian on this link. Below you will find a translation to English.
How does the so-called digital transformation influence the activities of banks and its customers?
The digital transformation has changed the way we see banks and the services they offer. To take a trivial example, digital payment methods are used more and more often: contactless cards and applications such as Satispay have become part of our daily life. The same applies to banking services: fewer and fewer people are willing to show up in person during the bank opening hours, or even just to make a phone call to their branch, as they do not wish to face waiting times.
Internet banking portals therefore become a fundamental resource for banks and their customers, offering a wide range of services on a single platform, available to the customer at any convenient time. Customers now carry out transactions on their accounts and savings remotely, from different devices (computers, mobile) and when it best suits them.
The result is that customers have become increasingly independent and have minimal levels of contact with their banks. In turn, banks must prepare themselves for a great challenge: find ways to be present in their customers’ lives while offering efficient services in an ever more anonymous and digital way. The only way to do this is on the digital channel itself, by offering excellent services through the internet banking channel, including customer support services, also at a technical level. In other words, by guaranteeing a remarkable digital experience.
What solutions can help banks deliver a remarkable digital experience?
There is much talk on Digital Transformation, and it is often taken for granted that offering customers and employees more and more digital resources is the solution to many problems. As true as it may be, we cannot forget that all which is digital concerns, first and foremost, people. Simply becoming more digital, without bearing in mind the client’s needs and user experience, is of little use – in fact, doing this can turn digital transformation into true digital frustration. Today’s users expect their experience to be not only efficient, but also fun. The ability of being efficient in a fun way thus illustrates the main challenge which the banks of the future are and will face.
Applications, web portals and all digital resources therefore need to be, as well as safe, easy to use, intuitive and need to offer a satisfying experience. On the other hand, portals and internet banking must offer a plethora of services and functions which can hardly be made immediate and enjoyable. Our proposal is a solution which can help banks, as well as other companies, make their applications, both internal and open to the public, more accessible and enjoyable, for their employees and for customers alike.
We talked a lot about banks. Can you elaborate on the value of your solution in other areas of interest for the expo “It’s all Banking and Insurance”?
As said, we talk about Digital Transformation in all fields. When it comes to Finance, the theme of Financial Inclusion, which interplays with Digital Inclusion and Onboarding very intensively, are in the limelight. In the field of insurance and FinTech it is not different, there are ever more resources and platforms to engage the user and to carry out different operations, where the presence of companies is often felt through anything which is digital. Being successful in the digital sphere becomes crucial and is in the interest of both users and companies. Newired can, without too much effort, be of great help in this mission.
Our solution allows for the creation of contextual and real-time guidelines to help users directly on the application, leading them to carry out precise operations or, in other words, to learn by doing. All of this without requiring coding and web development skills. This way, users become more independent already in their first access, as Newired significantly enhances their user experience, giving an increased impression of modernity and considerably reducing interactions with call centers.
There are similar attempts on the market, but they were conceived without taking security and privacy issues into due consideration, which banks and insurance companies are even more sensitive about. For us, this is an absolute priority.
As confirmation of our commitment and to better address the needs of users in the fields of Finance, Insurance and FinTech, we have recently welcomed Matteo Rizzi as a member of our Advisory Committee and as an investor. Matteo is considered one of the most influential FinTech leaders in Italy and in the world, and concretely brings Newired closer to this important community.