Efma Review 2020

While this review focuses on 2019 and highlights the innovations and successes the industry enjoyed the past year, 2020 is set to be defined by the Covid-19 outbreak and its ensuing impacts on the globe. The pandemic is touching every part of our lives – personal, professional, and everything in between. Businesses, banks, and insurers are adapting to a completely new reality as they work to maintain operations and serve their customers.

The challenges are enormous for the financial services sector and you can rest assured that Efma will be playing an extremely active role in supporting you, our members, through innovative solutions and the sharing of insights from our global membership, as well as developing a new strategy as a business to adapt to the ‘new norm’. Please enjoy looking back at a successful 2019 and be confident we will support the membership in the uncertain times ahead.

This past year, the financial services industry continued to undergo a major transformation driven by technological advances. With digital at the center of peoples’ lives, the world of finance has changed irreversibly. Many technologies, such as machine learning and cloud data storage, have now achieved widespread adoption, driving transformation in both front and back end banking operations.

The pace of change is only quickening. While barriers to transformation remain, such as legacy systems, integration, and culture, we are seeing an industry-wide understanding of the imperative to innovate in order to stay competitive. The need to evolve has led to an unprecedented number of bank and fintech partnerships. Fintechs are able to achieve scale much quicker through the infrastructure and network of an established institution, while banks can capitalize on the new technologies developed by fintechs to deliver more value for their customers.

We have seen the advent of new business models based around personalization. Utilizing new technology, banking service models are evolving from one-to-many to one-to-one personalized service that can meet the unique needs of all clients. Those firms that have embraced technological disruption, and made the necessary investments, have placed themselves in pole position to reap the benefits for many years to come.

Efma members continue to demonstrate the very best in innovation. In this year’s review, you will learn about the latest offerings, technologies, and leading personalities in today’s hottest topics, including financial services of the future, fintech, channels and customer experiences, innovative payments, CSR, SME’s, affluent, and insurance and insurtechs.

At Efma, we firmly believe that collaboration is key to success. This is why we continue to focus our efforts on cultivating a network of top financial institutions and sharing their best practices to drive the industry forward as we enter the third decade of the 21st century. Leaders from banks throughout the world provide us with their unique insights and we profile the most exciting new developments that these institutions have brought to market so far.

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