The financial services industry continues to evolve and 5G, or 5th generation, wireless communication technology is poised to help jumpstart another wave of digital innovation.
Consumers are becoming increasingly mobile and are demanding more personalized, digital experiences. In addition, fintech companies continue to enter the market challenging the traditional way of doing business.
To stay competitive financial service companies, including retail banks, credit unions, insurance companies and wealth management businesses need to utilize technology to help innovate, differentiate and mobilize their services.
A financial future with 5G
5G is the next evolution of wireless communication for consumers and business beyond 4G. While 4G brought speed that helped improve viewing a video on your mobile devices, 5G brings much greater value and will have benefits for both consumers and businesses.
5G’s low latency, high-data capacity, and reliability will eventually help finance companies create new ways to deliver mobile, online and in-branch services. Not to mention, combining 5G with new technologies like edge computing and software defined networking will ultimately give businesses flexibility to customize their networks for optimum performance – and let them create new experiences for both their employees and their customers.
Rene Dufrene, general manager in finance industry solutions for AT&T BusinessIt will ultimately create significant new economic opportunities and better experiences for people and businesses across the industry. But what does this future potentially look like?
According to Frost and Sullivan, almost 50 percent of the world’s population now has access to the internet, and with the rising use of smart phones, consumers will demand more mobile financial services. 5G will help manage this growing demand, especially in high-traffic locations such as city centers, retail outlets, stadium events, festivals and areas impacted by natural disasters.
Because of the fast speeds and security of 5G, we could eventually see mobile becoming the main avenue for all things financial.
With 5G’s ability to handle more data in high-traffic locations, we will start to we could see smaller, mobile financial centers popping up in places like a crowded football game. These mobile centers would feature all the services that a brick-and-mortar site would, but they could be transported easily from one location to the next.
A real-world example: A large retail bank tested 5G’s ability to power a full service, mobile banking center in a high-traffic retail location. They were able to set-up services untethered over 5G that typically could only work in a branch office over a wired network. These services included an intelligent, video-based ATM, a telepresence pod with a financial advisor, a guest Wi-Fi network, digital signage and DirecTV.
Highly personalized services and other possibilities
Businesses have already begun to provide personalized products and services to customers such as AI assistants and robo advisors. 5G eventually will only help improve these technologies. And we’ll start to see new personalized banking, wealth and insurance experiences on mobile devices.
For instance, by combining 5G with AI, companies could be able to better harness the always on, real-time data coming from devices to better predict customer preferences and behaviors. We could see more accurate lending decisions, better wealth management and highly personalized banking assistants. In addition, customers could summon AI or human representatives for “anywhere” consultations over high-resolution video.
5G could eventually help enable advancements in ATMs such as using facial recognition to verify a customer’s identity. This would allow the customer to quickly access their account without having to use a card and it will help make transactions more secure by reducing the possibility of fraud. Not to mention, we could also eventually see consumers using facial recognition to make a payment.
Untethered augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) devices will get a boost with 5G and we could see multiple use cases popping up in the finance industry. Remote wealth management agents could use AR/VR to provide a more immersive and engaging customer experience. The technology could also be used to train or assist remote employees on complex issues that typically need to be taught in person. For instance, it would allow a remote expert to “see” what the local field agent is seeing and provide support.
5G will significantly impact how financial businesses work and engage with their customers. We’re likely to see enhanced personalization, better security and improved mobilized services. And when combined with other innovative technologies such as edge computing, machine learning, AI and IoT, the possibilities will continue to expand.
Financial service companies that embrace the technology and start to prepare for 5G will lead the way into the future.