Précis

Although the concept of economic exchange has remained the same, its practices have evolved from the industrial to the information age to keep pace with changing requirements.

While banking differs from the real sector in several ways, both are inextricably linked. Therefore, the challenges, expectations, processes and structures surrounding real manufacturing activity apply equally to banks and the way they design their products.

Thus, manufacturing’s supply chain management concept makes its way into banking as financial engineering and another concept, namely co-creation,is set to follow suit. The future banking product will be created where it is cheapest, designed where there are knowledge networks, distributed where there’s a market and serviced from where it is most efficient. This ideal can only be achieved in an environment of widespread collaboration.

Staying relevant is the biggest challenge facing ‘banking product next’. It must fulfill new expectations made by a breed of new consumers: personalization, fairness and profit sharing. At the same time, it must battle competition not only from the real world but the virtual one as well.