Financial Services is moving from product to platform
We’re seeing a fundamental change in how customers interact with brands, products, and services, and that shift will undoubtedly affect the future of banking. Citi FinTech CEO Yolande Piazza is an advocate of placing customers’ unmet needs at the core of product development, which is why Citi FinTech interviewed over 25,000 customers on behalf of the Global Consumer Bank in 2017.
“Instead of thinking about how our customers’ needs can be addressed by our current products, we need to more importantly understand our customers’ current behaviors, anticipate their needs before they do, and provide personalized value and education seamlessly on the digital platforms where they already spend much of their time today,” explains Piazza.
“Product” companies traditionally adopt a narrow approach to delivering solutions for their customers, pumping out products and services to specific demands in a niche sector or industry. Many companies do this well and there are of course benefits to specialization. But we’re seeing a shift across industries to a new approach, and many new market entrants could be more accurately described as platform companies.
“Platform” companies, such as ride-share or home-share companies, instead take a holistic approach to solving customer pain points and are transforming entire industries through solutions that function in a network, versus simply releasing standalone solutions one at a time.
