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1 month ago | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
When banks digitalized their customer interactions the benefits were huge: greater convenience for customers and vastly improved efficiency for the banks themselves. But this came at a cost that was underestimated, if it was anticipated at all. The removal of people as the interface between the bank and its customers, and their replacement with computer and mobile-phone apps, had far-reaching consequences.
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1 month ago | 
bankingblog.accenture.com | Jared Rorrer |Accenture Banking |Keri Smith |Michael Abbott
Despite significant investments in cybersecurity, customers lack trust in the banking system’s ability to protect their data. "Trust is the bedrock of business.
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2 months ago | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
The question I get all the time is will generative AI lead to a vast reduction of bank jobs. It’s easy for bankers to be nervous. Recent Bloomberg Intelligence research estimates that Wall Street banks will eliminate up to 200,000 jobs over the next three to five years due to AI. Meanwhile, a published last year said that more than half (54%) of bank jobs will be displaced. Our own research shows that 67% of working hours in the industry could be transformed by the technology.
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Jan 13, 2025 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
As banks continue to reinvent themselves using AI, data, cloud and other technologies, the industry finds itself in a paradox. A quarter century of digital has completely transformed banking, making it faster, cheaper, and more efficient than ever, with customers moving money in seconds, 24x7, through the push of a button. But, as a result, it’s made banking impersonal and created a sea of sameness as banks become less differentiated and lose the human connection fostered at the branch level.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
Banks continue to face a variety of risks: some are familiar and have been publicly scrutinized, while others are less predictable and lurk in plain sight. The banking landscape is only getting more complex, with the introduction of new technologies, including gen AI, heightened regulatory pressure and more sophisticated bad actors and security threats.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
Much has been written about whether generative AI will conform with the familiar technology , and if so, whether the Trough of Disillusionment awaits. Fueling much of this debate is the current high cost of deploying, training and using the technology. I believe there are two factors that aren’t receiving enough attention in this discussion: credible projections of a sharp decline in cost, and the likely impact of generative AI on banks’ revenue.
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Jun 25, 2024 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
Most people today take the internet for granted. Want to find an obscure report published years ago, or the best place to stay in Timbuktu? No problem. We forget that it wasn’t always that simple. In the early 1990s, if computers wanted to talk to each other, they often had to jump through different networking protocols. Most of the names have been lost to history: there was Novell NetWare, Systems Network Architecture (SNA) from IBM, even Apple had its own protocol – AppleTalk.
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Jun 13, 2024 | 
bankingblog.accenture.com | Jared Rorrer |Michael Abbott |Keri Smith |Chris Scislowicz
In May of 2024, the Aurora Borealis, also known as the Northern Lights were on full display for the largest proportion of the United States in decades. The Northern Lights are caused by geomagnetic flairs or “solar storms” from the sun, which can lead to extremely disruptive events on Earth. In 2003, an extreme solar storm knocked out power in parts of Sweden and damaged electrical transformers in South Africa.
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May 13, 2024 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
One of the things I’ve not been shy about is that banks, in their effort to master digital, have created an efficient servicing experience that is functionally correct, but emotionally devoid. Think about it. Nearly all banks’ mobile apps have similar features and achieve similarly high customer satisfaction scores. But they fail to provide the emotional connection that would routinely develop between customers and their bankers in the branch.
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
forbes.com | Michael Abbott
Fifteen years ago, the US housing market crisis brought the global economy to its knees and almost 10 million US homeowners either lost or walked away from their properties. Today, the shoe is on the other foot: while the US market appears to be stable, mortgage borrowers and their banks in other countries are heading for stormy weather. Despite the trauma caused by the 2008/9 crash, there was a silver lining for US consumers.
