Page 42 - Banking Finance April 2023

ARTICLE

interactions and seamless customer experience across already started using 5G to deliver better customer
touchpoints will be smoother. Combination of physical and experience.
5G enabled digital banking channels will give a more true
omni-channel experience. PWC has estimated that 5G will Customer on boarding and customer care service via video
calls will become the norm. Artificial intelligence and
bring around $85 billion to financial services sector by 2030.
machine learning based bots will be able to resolve the
customer issues in time efficient and highly personalised
Impact of 5G on Banking
manner.
Banks will be able to increase their reach and footprints
without building physical branches. Portable micro branch
setup or Pop-up branches infrastructure can be transported
to remote locations as the connectivity is fast and better to
provide a completely authentic banking experience through
Virtual Reality. These pop-up branches will be a better tool
to take financial inclusion to remote and unbanked areas
with VR powered digital banking services. Smart devices will
be able to provide bank connectivity to remote and rural
areas. 5G will help real time language translation and thus
banking in local language be made available on mobile
services, kiosks and wearables. Santander bank, the first
bank to implement a 5G network has established a smart
pop-up branch near Madrid.

5G will also help banks in achieving greater operational
resilience and business continuity in case of natural disaster
to provide traditional banking services to the affected
population.
Faster speed will lead to faster transactions and superior
connectivity will allow millions of devices per square We are already witnessing a shift in customer behaviour and
kilometer. Latency (delay between action and result) will be people are preferring digital payments over physical
almost nil making video streaming smooth. All this will ensure currency payment. This trend will further pickup pace with
further adoption of digital banking and payments and help high-speed transaction capabilities of 5G. Digital wallets will
banking sector in giving a seamless banking experience for be available on wearables and IoT devices besides mobiles,
their customers. Banking services will become more making them more popular and lucrative compared to
personalised as they will be available on wearables devices physical wallets to both masses and merchants.
and IoT devices.
5G high-speed real-time data flow will make big ticket
Physical branches will get converted into "Smart Branches". purchases as quick and seamless as grocery shopping. Since
By virtue of technologies like video analytics, virtual reality, real time high quality live stream consultation is possible,
augmented reality, and instant facial recognition which are big ticket purchases can be presented to lenders for
better enabled and supported by 5G, better customer verification and approval through virtual reality. Big ticket
identification and branch monitoring will be possible. purchases which involve securing a loan will become
Customer gait pattern and footfalls can be analysed to instantaneous as AI backed loan sanctioning tools will comb
manage branches. The utility of ATMs will increase as with relevant data to sanction loan and fix the terms of the loan
faster connectivity ATMs can work as kiosk branches with including applicable interest based on customer risk and
AI backed personal financial services offerings. While many reality. Banks will be able to do their routine inspection of
banks are running pilot testing some banks in China have financed businesses by virtually visiting the business units.

36 | 2023 | APRIL | BANKING FINANCE