Financial services comprise a wide range of activities that help an economy function smoothly. Functions of the financial services sector include deployment, raising, lending, and borrowing of funds, monitoring credit ratings, underwriting, merchant banking, and much more.

Financial institutions follow rigid operational structures and have many security measures in place. However, the dynamic nature of the current global business landscape and changing consumer demographic for banks continue to bring new challenges to the financial sector.

Therefore, the financial services industry needs to constantly evolve and develop to tackle various market challenges. Low-code platforms allow finance officials to build applications that can help them tackle challenges like security breaches, dynamic compliance procedures, changing business models, customer retention issues, and the need for continuous innovation.

What Is Low-Code?

Low code is defined as a visual approach to application development that leverages the power of graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop builders, on-screen guidance, and minimal code. Low code can empower citizen developers with little to no traditional coding experience to create powerful, custom, and high functioning enterprise applications to overcome various market challenges.

A study conducted by Gartner predicts that approximately 75% of large enterprises will be using a minimum of 4 low-code application development tools for IT and citizen development initiatives by the year 2024. Therefore, low-code application development platforms present an unmatched opportunity for enterprises to increase digital transformation and improve general operations in the long run.

What Market Challenges Does The Financial Services Industry Face?

Increasing Competition

 Traditional banks and credit unions are currently facing increasing competition because of the growth of new industry players such as fintech giants. It can be observed that fintech companies tend to focus more on managing customer experiences and thus in turn gain a massive competitive edge over traditional financial institutions. Therefore, traditional banks and unions hence have a responsibility of adopting the digital revolution to keep up with their contemporaries.

Low-code solutions can help traditional banks and credit unions adapt to and overcome constantly evolving market challenges by enabling them to establish communication channels with consumers using drag-and-drop tools and automation features.

Compliance

Financial institutions not only hold massive amounts of funds but also extremely sensitive customer information. They are hence always under excessive scrutiny and observation by the governing bodies. Furthermore, studies have shown that organizations can lose up to $4 million in revenue due to a single non-compliance event.

The government imposes regulatory compliance on the financial institutions to ensure that there is no misuse or mishandling of user data. Complying with these strict procedures is a major administrative and operational challenge for financial institutions that must be tackled with acute tact and precision. However, low-code solutions can help financial institutions automate various time-consuming compliance procedures which can free up organizational resources and time for other business processes.

Rising Consumer Expectations

Today consumers want to be served, informed, and engaged. Studies have shown that 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. Institutions that cater to the modern customers’ mindset and offer personalization in their services increase customer loyalty and decrease churn. Organizations can do this with the help of smart digital platforms that can record, analyze and summarize customer feedback as well as create channels for user engagement. However, these digital platforms can be difficult to build and develop using traditional coding approaches.

However, low-code solutions can help financial institutions manage rising consumer expectations by helping your business create powerful digital communication platforms.

Security and Encryption Issues

Protecting their customers’ assets and data is by far the most important function of any financial institution. However, it is also one of the biggest challenges that banks face on a day-to-day basis. Financial institutions are tasked with collecting, managing, storing, and analyzing large amounts of data and information, which can be challenging if done manually.

Attempts to breach the security measures of financial bodies are abundant and grow more sophisticated with time. To safeguard themselves against these breaches, banks should equip themselves with advanced and latest security measures. Studies have shown that 95% of security and encryption issues occur due to human errors.

However, low-code platforms can enable your business to automate various daily business processes that would have otherwise had to have been performed manually by an organizational employee, hence substantially reducing the risk of human errors occurring. This would also enable your financial institution’s employees to work on higher-level, more intellectually stimulating business processes.

Outdated Features In Mobile Applications

As digital solutions and mobile technology continue to evolve at an exponential rate, mobile applications can quickly become outdated. Therefore, financial institutions may face issues with outdated features that may need to constantly be updated at regular intervals.

However, low-code application development solutions can help your financial institution build and develop powerful features such as automated chatbots, live chat, voice-enabled customer service and much more using visual development. This will not only help improve customer satisfaction levels but will also help your business reduce development costs in the long run.

Build Digital Platforms To Suit All Your Needs

Corteza by Planet Crust is a low-code platform that lets you build high-functioning, complex apps that are tailor-made to the needs of your organization. It comes with a cloud-ready architecture and instant deployment features. Try Corteza to understand how you can leverage the power of low-code to further your business.