2020 had a different plan for all of us. We began research on the future of financial services in late 2019. Our mission was to understand how rising consumer expectations, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) would shape the next decade of finance. Then the pandemic struck, triggering a series of crises that dramatically changed every industry. In the face of a new reality, we regrouped with financial services leaders, and launched a second survey to investigate how the world is changing – and what it means for the industry.We found that questions around AI, automation, and customer experience are more pressing than ever.

If anything, the need for a digitally transformed customer experience has only intensified – a hypothesis we confirmed in our second survey. Our research suggests that to succeed, institutions dedicated to long-term growth have an opportunity to:

• Support individual client journeys and wellbeing via scaled personalization
• Automate back-office processes to create efficiencies
• Automate front-office services to create new value streams