According to Vodafone Business’s Future Ready Report 2020, just 26% of financial services businesses are “future ready” and have a positive outlook for the future, with a focus on technological impact and customers’ evolving needs.

Technology is now a major driving force not only for innovation, but in enhancing people’s personal and business lives. The data shows that it will naturally be the ‘future ready’ companies that are better placed to make the changes needed to succeed in this new world. And it is those companies that will be reimagining how business is conducted in the future.

The Future Ready Report has uncovered the key challenges and themes the financial services sector is facing when it comes to thriving in this new business world, including:

Attitudes to the future:

• 58% believe outdated technology is holding back their organisation
• 79% believe old business models are being radically disrupted
• 90% identify the needs of customers are changing
• 92% believe their business embraces change rather than tries to resist it

Sustainability:

• The main challenges the sector faces when it comes to sustainability are: risks involved with moving to new, untested technology (42%); finding enough time to plan effective improvements in sustainability (39%); a lack of sustainable alternatives to current processes (32%)
• The main drivers for the sector to invest in sustainability are: to drive innovation in efficiency and cost savings (43%); a genuine sense of moral obligation (39%); customers preferring to buy/work with sustainable organisations (39%)

Skills and future employees:

• Looking forward to the next decade respondents from the sector believe the skills that present the biggest challenge in terms of recruitment and retention are: higher cognitive skills (50%),; technological skills (44%); and interpersonal skills (43%)

Vinod Kumar, CEO at Vodafone Business commented on the research:

“The financial sector has been working hard for many years to add new channels, simplify processes and remove legacy infrastructure, all with the goal of serving customers better. Experiences over the past few months have highlighted that digitalisation is imperative for businesses in this sector, with those further down the path believing themselves better placed to succeed than their peers.

“As a whole the industry has great potential for change. Insurance, retail and private banking companies all have access to vast amounts of data and are increasingly looking at what technology based transformation can offer them. They have the opportunity to blend deep digital insight with their powerful human centric brands to create real differentiation for customers. If this is done correctly they can become smarter, faster and more resilient, but not at the cost of their humanity.”