Banking Relationships at Risk: The Technology Ecosystem and Service Connection

Your financial institution, regardless of its size, plays a crucial role in the communities you serve.

You’re not just a financial entity; you’re an integral part of the community ecosystem, providing essential services that allow individuals and businesses to thrive. Over the decades, the way you serve your communities has evolved dramatically.

In the past, banking was a highly personal, face-to-face experience, with accountholders relying on their local branches for all their financial needs. Today, the digital age has transformed these interactions, making it imperative for you to adopt modern technologies to meet the changing expectations of your accountholders, drive your growth, and realize efficiencies.

The Symbiotic Relationship Between Financial Institutions and Communities

The relationship between your financial institution and your accountholders is symbiotic: you provide the necessary infrastructure and services that enable individuals and businesses to manage their finances effectively. In return, your accountholders contribute to your growth and stability through their deposits, loans, and investments.

This mutual dependence requires a strong bond of trust and reliability. As you adapt to new technologies, you enhance your ability to serve your communities, offering more efficient, secure, and responsive services. This, in turn, helps your accountholders feel more confident and supported, ensuring that the financial ecosystem remains robust and resilient.

Your financial institution and your accountholders share a symbiotic relationship: you provide essential services, and they contribute to your growth and stability.

 Modernizing Financial Technology

Updating your banking technology ecosystem is crucial to ensure you can effectively serve your communities and remain competitive.

Historically, the failure to modernize began quietly, with the “bolting on” of digital services into a tech stack incapable of capitalizing on new capabilities. This approach led to a mismarriage of technologies, eroding accountholder trust and damaging the relationship.

Many of us recall the months of headaches when scrambling to roll out digital services during the sequestered days of COVID-19. These challenges highlighted the importance of a cohesive and efficient technology ecosystem.

When the Relationship Fails

In the cases where the symbiotic relationship between financial institutions and their accountholders fails due to an inefficient or inadequate technology ecosystem, the consequences are severe for both parties.

Financial institutions struggle to provide the necessary infrastructure and services, leading to operational inefficiencies, increased security vulnerabilities, and a lack of responsiveness.

This erodes the trust and reliability that accountholders have in their financial institutions, causing dissatisfaction and potentially driving accountholders to seek more technologically advanced alternatives (which are extremely easy to find).

The inability to offer a full-featured and modern ecosystem, with ease of integration and modern security measures, leaves financial institutions lagging their competitors, ultimately impacting their reputation and eroding their accountholder base.

As accountholders lose confidence in their financial institution, they withdraw their deposits, reduce their investments, and seek loans from more reliable sources. This exodus of accountholders undermines the growth and stability of financial institutions, leading to a decline in revenue and market share.

The weakened financial ecosystem struggles to support the needs of the community, resulting in reduced access to essential financial services for individuals and businesses. Healthier financial institutions will see an opportunity that they can swoop in and capitalize on.

The overall economic health of the community suffers, as financial institutions play a critical role in facilitating economic activities and fostering local development.

An inefficient technology ecosystem disrupts the delicate balance between financial institutions and their accountholders, with far-reaching negative consequences for both parties and the communities they serve.

Updating your banking technology is crucial for serving your community and staying competitive. An inefficient tech ecosystem erodes trust and drives accountholders away, undermining growth and harming the community’s economic health.

 Substandard Vendor Service: The Silent Risk

The ability of a banking technology provider to deliver top-quality client service on the technology ecosystem is paramount for the success and stability of your financial institution. Providing high-quality client service ensures that you can effectively address the needs and concerns of your accountholders, fostering trust and loyalty.

On the other hand, subpar client service can lead to frustration, dissatisfaction, and a loss of confidence among accountholders. This can result in accountholders seeking alternative financial institutions that offer better support and services, ultimately impacting your reputation and market share.

Jack Henry consistently boasts industry-leading client service satisfaction: 4.60/5 overall satisfaction based on 54k post-resolution responses over two years. Is this the level of service you currently experience?

In an industry that depends on trust and reliability, the quality of client service provided by a banking technology provider can make or break the symbiotic relationship between financial institutions and their accountholders.

Even if a financial institution has an acceptable technology ecosystem, relying on a vendor with subpar service poses very significant risks. Poor client service can lead to unresolved technical issues, delayed updates, and inadequate support during critical times. This often results in operational inefficiencies, security vulnerabilities, and a lack of responsiveness to accountholder needs.

The Evolution of the Revolution: Meet the Banking Ecosystem of the Future

In the ever-evolving landscape of financial technology, Jack Henry™ currently delivers powerful solutions that serve the majority of financial institutions in the United States, but is also orchestrating a paradigm shift.

This vision is being realized through the development and calculated rollout of the next-generation banking platform that will start a financial institution technology transformation and drive a revolution in community-driven banking.

This holistic perspective and vision is being realized through the development and calculated rollout of the next-generation banking platform that will help drive a revolution in community-driven banking.

The Jack Henry Platform™ modernizes banking technology and services by transforming traditional core functions into a flexible, cloud-based ecosystem of services and solutions. These can be seamlessly combined with one another and with third-party fintechs through an open architecture structure, all within a unified platform.

Evolving to cloud-based technology – powered by Google – means every product on the platform will offer a variety of benefits:

• Extremely high uptime (around 99.999%), meaning your financial institution is virtually always up and running.
• Real-time processing capabilities allow for real-time fraud detection and reporting as events happen or KPIs change.
• Rapid scalability ensures that as your institution grows, you can effectively scale your operations to meet changing needs. The resulting operational efficiencies will make it easier, better, safer, and more cost-effective to operate your entire ecosystem of solutions.
• Modern security standards, including ransomware resilience and zero-trust principles, ensure continuous verification and protection against threats.
• Seamless integration means that the technology is internet-based and ready to connect with any other internet-based product or fintech. The platform also offers a unified identity and authorization infrastructure for each accountholder and employee, seamlessly integrated throughout the system.
• Fear-free outages eliminate the need for elaborate disaster recovery exercises, removing restore times and data loss exposures. Driving your organization’s ability to utilize data and activate the power of AI will allow better access to critical data, create efficiencies, deliver more effective relationship banking, and more.
• Immediate, continuous upgrades mean no more waiting for annual releases, with continuous new features, fewer bugs, enhanced security, and compliance updates.
• Automated enforcement of regulatory compliance policies, woven into the code, reduces manual labor and the risk of security breaches and fines.

The Jack Henry Platform is not just a technological upgrade; it is a comprehensive transformation that empowers financial institutions of all sizes to thrive in a dynamic financial landscape.

By leveraging cutting-edge cloud technology and integrating seamlessly with third-party fintechs, Jack Henry is setting a new standard for community-driven banking.