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The Bottom Line

Major League Baseball just completed its All-Star Break, which is traditionally seen as an opportunity to assess the season’s performances to date. We at SRM do something similar, revisiting our annual list of industry trends impacting banks and credit unions’ growth strategies and vendor contract relationships.

It’s been an action-packed first half of 2019. The trends we highlighted at the beginning of 2019 are actively shaping the financial services market and decisions being made by banks and credit unions. Here’s a quick summary to detailed analysis of the topics we’ve provided throughout the year. 

Today in 2019, a mere decade since texting overtook voice calls in cellular bandwidth use, it can be difficult to find someone even willing to engage in an old-school telephone conversation. Voicemails are declining even faster. According to Forbes, several large corporations have offered to retire voicemail for non-client facing employees and were surprised by the level of uptake.

Against this backdrop, it’s interesting to note the prominent role played by voice technology in the next generation of financial solutions. The growing interest in Robo-advisors could see this become a popular model among those seeking a digital banking breakthrough, and everyone is racing to enable their products through the likes of Alexa, regardless of vertical.