The possibilities that technology opens up to banking go far beyond assessing costs or adapting to the growing digital habits of its customers. According to the president of Accenture in Spain, Portugal and Israel, Domingo Mirón, “only 8% of the technological processing of Europe in banking is oriented to the cloud” and the sector “could generate a recurring margin of 10% in the coming years if it is actually used, not as a purely technological thing, but to generate a positive impact on business processing. “
The expert indicated that a more intensive use would also lead to “reducing, not the cost of the technology, but the cost of the operations of certain processes by between 15 and 30%”, during his speech at the ‘IV Banking Forum’ organized by elEconomista in collaboration with Accenture. Said improvement would come from the possibility of incorporating decisions on marketing, risk management or fraud in real time; in addition to creating models to provide services to third parties or even collaborate “with other businesses and economic sectors, incorporating offers from third parties to the bank’s offer.”
Its application would also have, in the words of Mirón, three immediate effects: “achieve a higher speed for what customers really ask for”, create intelligent or autonomous processes without the need for human intervention and be able to adopt decisions “much more based on data almost unlimited because the cost of processing makes it possible. “
The head of Accenture defended that the bank could also act as a catalyst for digitization to reach SMEs as the Government wants through the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, thanks to its “impressive” traction capacity in many economic sectors, something that “does not happen in other countries”.
Mirón made a positive balance of the situation that Spanish banks are going through based on the latest known accounts, which show double-digit growth in the business, a good evolution of income from commissions and the relief in the provisioning of provisions; together with that “silent, but very deep transformation” in which it is immersed to adapt to the new, more digital habits of customers and achieve a more efficient operation.
The expert believes that concentration operations “could also continue in 2022” after those carried out this year between CaixaBank and Bankia and the integration of Liberbank into Unicaja, and even believes that they will continue to reduce branches given that the ratio of branches per 100,000 inhabitants it is at 46 and “is well above the European average”. Among the challenges faced by entities and along with digitization, he cited the entry of neobanks or digital rivals and sustainability.
