Banking
Five key themes to watch out for in 2022
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on November 24, 2021
7 min readLast updated: January 28, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Jessica Weisman-Pitts
Posted on November 24, 2021
7 min readLast updated: January 28, 2026
Discover five transformative themes in banking for 2022, focusing on purpose, customer experience, platform innovation, and sustainability.
By Sudeepto Mukherjee, Financial Services Lead at Publicis Sapient, reveals insights from the Publicis Sapient 2021 Guide to Next report and points to the five themes that will dominate transformation in the year ahead.
Twenty twenty-two will see unprecedented changes in banking and other financial services, with new innovations being added at scale and wholesale transformation programmes deployed to engage new demographics and change the customer experience forever.
We predict that the following themes will dominate the financial services sector over the next year.
1.Purpose as the new profit
We have seen in recent times that consumers, employees and shareholders are looking for far more than simply financial performance from their chosen organisations. Regulators are taking a zero-tolerance approach, as can be seen from the recent events at Barclays. Banks and other financial services firms are facing this added level of scrutiny on how they conduct their business and, even more so, from their consumers, who are now highly watchful. The triple bottom line will, going forward, become a higher priority for senior FS executives. We have seen firms such as Natwest publish their first ESG supplement to shareholders that detail their non-financial performance providing more disclosure on purpose, sustainability and ESG factors. Financial services firms will need to articulate a sense of purpose that extends beyond profiting shareholders.
The generic journeys and products currently offered by most financial services companies, that offer only a thin veneer of personalization and barely scratched the surface of feeling tailored, are no longer going to work in appealing to the customer. We see in recent surveys that the big banks in the UK consistently trail the new digital only new entrants when it comes to customer satisfaction. The future will be significantly different.
Companies that don’t modernise their IT infrastructure and move to an open platform-centric architecture will fall behind. Platforms and ecosystems are replacing standard distribution channels. We have seen in areas such as insurance and wealth that customers demand access to a broader set of products and services that can only be enabled by being part of a larger ecosystem. Regulations like open banking and PSD2 also facilitate this transition. To stay competitive, all established companies need to accept that the recent rise in platform businesses will continue and adjust accordingly. They can build platform businesses or partner with them—but they cannot afford to ignore them and go at it alone.
We will see new patterns emerging:
Financial institutions have lagged behind Big Tech in utilising data to drive competitive advantage. While banks and insurance companies have huge amounts of very valuable data about their customers, strict regulatory frameworks, a strong controls mindset and inability to access complex legacy data stores have prevented these organisations from fully leveraging data to drive differentiation and competitive advantage. This is likely to change as technology and modern processes begin to allow companies to overcome these barriers. As data becomes more accurate and easily available, AI & ML will also come to the mainstream and help make processes like fraud detection and customer onboarding more efficient. Executing the right data strategy will ensure that products/services can respond to customer feedback quickly and better decisions are made across all functions.
This is more a wish than a prediction. But as the trends above take shape – more customer centricity, platform enablement and dataful products and services – institutions will have a unique ability to go beyond their traditional space to open up new opportunities for customers. We have already seen banks expand their portfolios of banking products with Goldman and now JPMorgan launching new digital retail banks. However, the opportunity is there to go further as we have seen in Asia, where banks like SCB have ventured into food delivery and travel services.
All in all, 2022 will be a hugely transformative time for Financial Institutions. The recovery from the pandemic with renewed customer demand and high expectations will create a unique, once in a generation opportunity for financial institutions to reimagine their purpose and the services that they provide to their customers.
The article discusses key themes in banking transformation for 2022, focusing on purpose, customer experience, and platform innovation.
Customer experience is crucial as it will become highly personalized, leveraging data and AI to meet individual needs.
Sustainability will be integrated into financial strategies, with banks playing a major role in the transition to a sustainable future.
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