Augmented Reality is starting to make an impact upon many industries, but could it have a future in financial services too?
Augmented reality (AR) made the headlines in March with the approval of Apple’s patent for “enhanced face detection using depth information”. The innovation could inspire the creation of hundreds of millions of 3D images – a crucial building block for the interactive digital layer that may soon appear over our real world.
The multi-layered experience of AR will change many industries, with sweeping potential changes – as well as opportunities – for financial services.
The big deal
So why should banks care about AR? First, AR enables users to view and understand information in a clear, engaging, and interactive manner – an area where banks face deep challenges. AR supplements a user’s view of the real world and allows the individual to manipulate that vision in real time. For example, displaying easy-to-understand graphics that can illustrate how a customer’s savings account is performing. Ultimately, AR could even facilitate realistic face-to-face interactions with specialists from the comfort of a customer’s own home.
Second, a failure to step up and make the most of this new technology tool at a time when Apple, Google and all the big players are on the hunt for the Next Big Thing for their personal devices would be a huge missed opportunity.
If Apple is investing to the degree that is rumoured, the next iPhone could well have reasonable AR capabilities. That means there will soon be mass adoption of AR technology by retail customers; banks will need to act fast or risk falling behind.
Failure to act
If banks don’t fill this gap, a startup will. Imagine an account aggregator with an AR interface connected to a money supermarket. A disruptive FinTech company could deliver transformational customer experience, explain complex financial products in simple engaging ways and save customers money.
Or imagine buying a product on the high street where the customer is using a digital app to provide them with AR illustrations, creating a slick seamless experience. Customers look at something they want to buy. Their finance app recognises the specs and price, and overlays this data on their real-world view, possibly including options for a loan, and even illustrating repayment amounts.
The revised Payments Services Directive, or PSD2, in Europe, which will help level the playing field among banks’ and start-ups’ access to a customer’s account information, makes the possibility of FinTechs gaining an edge increasingly likely. Banks that fail to take heed and innovate could be cut out from the customer-facing aspect of the industry, relegated to becoming back channels of data – nothing more than a utility.
What’s next?
At this time, the smart thing for banks to do is focus on the journeys and interactions that matter to customers. Banks have an opportunity to orchestrate the data they hold into a more meaningful proposition for their users.
To start, banks must integrate back-office customer data with middle-office decision management processes to provide useful information to front-end applications. In essence, they must integrate their access to vast customer information with all their systems to create a seamless experience.
From here, it’s a relatively short conceptual jump to see how AR could expose this information in a new and engaging way to banking customers.
Source: UK Tech