Leading companies are also facing competition from a myriad of non-traditional providers and as we’ve seen, banks of all sizes have been burdened with increasing regulations and mounting demands for skilled resources. One bank executive summarised the environment best — we are operating in a marketplace under siege.

The goal for leading banks is twofold. First, to proactively capitalise on disruption by growing market share and increasing margin; and second, to vigorously protect high value segments and clients. Banks who are successful at both will create shareholder value and a long term competitive advantage.

While simple in concept, the path to implementation requires a keen understanding of digital disrupters and enablers, customer experience, and strategic value drivers such as:

• The demographic shift
• New technology
• Unstructured data
• Digital labour
• New payments infrastructure
• Cyber security and strategy
• Digital identity
• The sheer speed of change

Digital disruption will create winners and losers. Winners will be characterised as those with a clear strategic vision, an appetite for customer analytics and technology, and a stomach for volatile innovation returns.

This paper looks at these and other themes in order to provide insights into a successful digital strategy.