GRIT - Ed.04 - Flipbook - Page 12
REIMAGINING THE ROLE
OF FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
IN THE WAKE OF COVID-19
would change our trajectory amidst
the crisis.
By Hossein
Rahnama,
Founder and
CEO, Flybits
A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
Inspired to be a catalyst for change and empowered by our entrepreneurial spirit, we embarked on a
bold mission to redefine the role of
financial institutions in society.
Flybits is a
NEXT Canada
Champion
Supporter
without a doubt, was the toughest year
2 020,
on record for most startups and Canadian businesses. As the founder and CEO of Flybits, an experience platform built for the financial services industry,
we were not immune to the challenges posed by the
global pandemic.
Flybits, along with our customer base, was impacted dramatically, not only from a revenue growth standpoint but also at an organizational level where we had
to quickly mobilize our entire employee-base to a new
working environment while working closely with our
customers who faced significant challenges.
Most financial institutions entered a crisis mode of
accelerating and building digital capabilities to catch
up to where they should have been. It was at this time
a critical question had to be asked of ourselves—when
all this is over, what is the story we want to tell? This
12
GRIT
HOW WE SAVE
The customer-bank relationship
has remained fairly static for hundreds of years — banks safeguard
people's money, help them pay for
things, and manage wealth. Today
people are banking less in-person
and there is a mass migration towards digital banking. Most financial institutions risk losing the emotional relationships they once had
with customers as banking continues to become more and more
transactional.
That is, until now. We see financial institutions in a unique position
as trusted gatekeepers of their customers’ data. They can play a critical role in renewing the health and
prosperity of the communities they
serve, by acting as community hubs.
DATA ALLIANCES - A NEW BANKING
ECOSYSTEM
Financial institutions are sitting
on a wealth of consumer data,
with deep insights into consumer
demographics, behavioural patterns, life milestones,
service preferences, and more. An insights-driven
ecology ensures the interests of consumers, their financial institutions, and other businesses are better aligned. It can empower the customer to choose
when to share their data, and for what purpose.
In turn, businesses provide value to customers by
offering them what they need when they need it. The
data alliance enables organizations to move from big
data to shared data, and create the next generation of
AI and consumer interactions with banks at the center,
acting as the trusted gatekeeper of their data.
In doing so, financial institutions will be able to
accurately predict and fill consumer needs, arbitrate
consumer data usage, and collect permissions between
partners over the network, ensuring that participants
are compliant with regulations. As partners from different industries join the ecosystem and share their
insights, the network gains a better understanding of
consumers across different contexts. For example, web
traffic patterns from a telecom, joined with a bank’s
transactional data, might shed light on an individual’s
purchasing behavior at different geo-locations and
times of the day.
Flybits can help financial institutions build and
power data alliances in a privacy-preserving way that
truly impacts the well-being of individuals and SMEs.
The pandemic has shaken the industry, but it has also
given us the opportunity to reinvent how we partner
with financial institutions.
A WAY FORWARD
Coming out of this pandemic, the businesses that
thrive are not just reacting to the current crisis — they
are thinking creatively about how to evolve their business model and recognize that their own success is tied
to the well-being of their customers.
Despite the hardships we endured at Flybits over
the past 12 months, we’ve been fortunate to be able
to share a positive story. We invested in product
innovation, expanded into new geographies, and still
managed to grow the company. We took this opportunity to reimagine the role of banks in society, and have
secured additional funding towards R&D in 2021 to
explore this even further. This has been a true testament to the people behind Flybits and their resilience.
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