Two years on from a Citi Digital Money Symposium discussing how banks can deliver better, Megan Cooper from Barclays, Michal Kissos from Pepper and 10x’s Dr Leda Glyptis, reconnect to discuss why banks need to change and how best to do that.

The trio got back together for a panel discussion moderated by Ronit Ghose, Global Head of Banks Research at Citi, as part of its latest Digital Money Symposium (see our instructions at the bottom of this post for accessing this video).

Their focus – the Bank of the Future   and what can we expect to see given advances in technology, big data and artificial intelligence. Megan is Head of Digital Strategy at Barclays. Michal is CEO of Pepper, Israel’s first mobile-only challenger bank. Leda is 10x’s Chief Client Officer.

Early in the discussion, Ronit asks why the impact from incumbents has been somewhat ‘uneven’ over these past few years.

“In order to have seamless, digital experiences, quite a lot of heavy lifting has to be done where it is least visible and most complex,” says Leda regarding industry trends.

“The journey has been meaningful up until now but it is not complete. Do we have digital capabilities? Yes! Do we have digital banks? Few and far between. Are they on the journey? Absolutely! But the journey is nowhere near done and I would say that the last two years since we last met have not been as transformative as I would have liked them to be.”

Leda outlined four primary strategies banks have been adopting when it comes to dealing with transformation and change management agendas. They effectively fall into four buckets. Firstly, there are banks with a strong vision and strategy. For them, the pandemic did not necessarily accelerate digital thinking amid COVID-19 because they had already taken the hard decisions. Then there are the banks that perhaps ‘dither’ or ‘hunker down’.

“They had been using technology hedges, hoping to pick an easy solution,” says Leda. “They hire people to patch solutions. That is a leadership challenge.”

Up third come banks with limited budgets. Nevertheless, these are banks that make decisions and commitments. Beyond them, come banks in smaller geographies that have an opportunity to leapfrog peers.

“If you see one thing that all of these buckets have in common, it is leadership. Leadership with the courage and vision to say we will do this and we will not do that and we will stick with it through the messy middle and the hard parts.”

To watch the full Citi Digital Money Symposium Bank of the Future panel discussion follow these steps:

• Visit www.citi-dms.videoshowcase.net
• Enter your details to access all of the fullDigital Money Symposium library
• Navigate to 'March 8th' and click to view the gallery of videos
• Scroll to the bottom for Bank of the Future