Virtual reality has emerged as a hot topic in banking with the rise of artificial intelligence, innovation labs, and the death of the physical bank branch. There’s a way to tap into the mind of the customer through VR, but how it should fit into the business is still a mystery for most.
Venture capital funding in VR totaled $2 billion from 2015-2016, according to Digi-Capital and revenue from VR is expected to hit $162 billion or more by 2020 from $5.2 billion in 2016, according to IDC Research.
It’s still early for banks interested in bringing VR into their business. And like any new technology, VR is going to face some opposition before it’s more widely adopted across financial services. Just because banks can use it, doesn’t mean they should use it everywhere, or at all. Banks are experimenting with how to use it, when it’s appropriate, and who their partners will be. One thing is for certain, though: if customers like it, banks will want it.
“Banking customers have rarely seen a channel or a way to interact with a bank that they didn’t like,” said Raja Bose, global retail banking consulting leader at Genpact. “Branches, contact centers, online, mobile; banks are now letting customers interact with them via social media. The more ways you get consumers to touch their banks the better and there are always going to be some consumers that like it and want to do it.”
However, some banks have dabbled in the technology already. Below are examples of three banks’ brushes with VR.
BNP Paribas
On Tuesday, the French banking giant BNP Paribas introduced a VR-based app for retail banking that allows users to virtually access their account activity and transaction records.
The experiment is perhaps the first to actually touch the financial services parts of banking, unlike the marketing approach banks like Citi and Wells Fargo below use to cultivate their brands.
“Banking concepts and savings and saving for retirement — all this stuff is often very intangible,” Bose said. “You’re not buying anything, you’re not walking out of a branch holding something. To some extent VR becomes a way of helping customers get a little more tangibility. Virtualizing is a good tool for visualizing data. If you can come up with a way of showing how the $100 you save today turns into a big pile of money in 20 years it might make it easier for people to grasp the concept.”
The bank’s real estate arm also partnered with French startup Vectuel & RF Studio to develop “the POD,” a teleportation “capsule” that allows people to step inside and view new apartments and buildings under construction or for sale in three dimensions and in 360 degrees, and move through the journey of a real estate purchase.
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Source: Digiday