When you invest in industry conferences, what do you expect in return? Education and Entertainment? Are you hoping to see the ‘latest and greatest’ financial products/services? Do you stick with credit union/community FI specific events or are you broadening your market reach? Perhaps you lean towards the forum full of well-known industry experts, technologists, and keynote speakers.
After you return from these conferences and vendor jamborees, how do you set about transforming YOUR OPERATION and creating YOUR FINANCIAL SERVICES PRODUCT to support the shiny digital objects we so frequently see at such events? Instead of bartering your member data for third party technology solutions, what if we flipped that narrative, making you the steward of local data and the epicenter of commerce in the digital age?
If you’ve already attended an industry conference this year, you’ve heard the buzz about ‘rapidly decreasing’ fee income, increasing demands for ‘self-service banking’, new financial products to support pay day advance and buy-now pay later (or “BNPL,” because we LOVE acronyms in our industry!), relationship based rewards, and services to support the evolving use cases for digital currencies like cryptocurrencies and digital assets. Along with this buzz come the questions you’re asking yourself: How can my institution get involved? Can I compete with the banks or global entities offering these new services? How will we remain relevant in our communities? If your conference experience is anything like ours, you know vendors are itching to bolt-on solutions to your core in as few as 3 months, trading your member data for their technology quick fix.
Any vendor can stand up software but how can you take your local institution beyond the limitations, encumbrances, inefficiencies, duplicate costs, and disparate data challenges of traditional platforms and bridge legacy finance and modern digital delivery?
Let information and data drive your strategy. There’s an urgent need for community banks and credit unions to compete in this digital market. In fact, as a local, trusted institution you have a distinct advantage in this era; no one knows your members and communities better than you do. Local financial services are at a crossroads…will you outsource offerings that enrich third parties, effectively paying them to control your data? Or, will you commit to own your data, controlling it to return value to your members? Will you use your data to digitally anchor your operation as the nexus of commerce in your community? If you choose the latter, and your institution focuses on collecting data and understanding how to use the data you’ve collected, YOU will be in the best position to extend these financial services to your members, without the need for third party applications or bolt on platforms.
Modernize your financial literacy lingo. Money is morphing; data is currency; and we are living in an era where consumer can “bank” through various apps right from their phones. It’s only logical to mention that with this rapid evolution of currency, financial literacy now also requires a shift in understanding to incorporate the revolutionary terms and technologies prevailing in this market. Theses cutting-edge technologies are the ones that consumers increasingly use to reduce fees, speed transactions, and save and invest for their futures. Since traditional banking products and services are rapidly losing relevance, local institutions will need to learn about these emerging data processing technologies to strengthen business strategies and maintain relevance. How? Seek out innovative conferences, panels, strategy seminars, articles, blogs, and videos from trusted sources. Immerse yourself in this digital realm and learn about the dynamics that impact the future of local access to financial services. Don’t expect big bank, corporate operations, or regulatory regimes to perpetuate payment and money movement technologies that are already obsolete, expensive, inefficient, and insecure. Lead innovations that serve democratic access to finance and strengthens your communities.
The Relevance Equation. The way we bank, move money, exchange value, and plan our finances have all changed. If you are wrestling with the norms and standards of the past while also striving to come to terms with the increasingly clear and immanent demands of the future, we get it! That’s why we’ve created the formula for your local, trusted institution to interact with your community. The formula focused on use and extension of data from your core. The formula designed to lead our partners in this digital journey, generating relevant experiences that will preserve local financial services, foster financial literacy, and advance local economies, digitally. The Formula for Relevance, an elegant tool to visualize the three step equation essential to sustaining relevance in the digital age. Our Next-Gen CUSO is here to undertake that digital transformation with you; crafting a modern strategy, optimizing operations to bring that strategy to life, and extending your core data to these worlds of digital commerce and data-driven community connection through frictionless digital interactions.
Our hope is that these industry and cross industry events will catalyze a renaissance in community stewardship of wealth. That together, we will shift focus away from the priorities of the past that slow industry response and hamper industry relevance and, instead, turn our attention to the historic opportunity to optimize banking operations, grow community wealth, and increase consumer engagement to explore new ways to protect assets and grow personal financial health. After all, it’s our industry’s mission to promote and protect financial wealth and health.
If you're looking to control data, modernize your operation, and extend that relevant operation to cost effective and integrated digital channels, the dedicated team at DaLand is ready to deploy Strategy Protection and CODE Engine as your path to move beyond buzz words and into the realm of bad**s.
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