Innovation. It’s a make-it-or-break-it requirement for ANY company, and financial institutions are no exception.
So, we were thrilled to sit down with an expert on this very subject, to see how FIs can best create innovation in their organizations. Marwan Forzley, CEO at Veem offers top tips—and a whole lot of brilliant insight—this week on CRMNEXT’s Banking on Experience podcast.
What’s Covered?
Marwan’s take on why innovation tends to stall so much in the financial world.
Our expert doesn’t believe innovation is stalled intentionally. He thinks it has more to do with the discomfort of changing things up.
“Ideas get started,” he says. “You go through the initial excitement. Then you start getting into the details; it turns out the details are painful and very different from what you do today. And that’s where it starts hitting walls.”
How, as younger leaders emerge, FIs can adopt a better strategy around innovation.
Marwan encourages breathing room for new ideas—and the team behind them—and keeping them a bit isolated from the “mother ship.” This creates flexibility, gives the team some leeway, and ultimately leads to better chances of success.
Adopting a better strategy around payments, in general.
One of the things Marwan’s company, Veem prides itself on is having multiple ways to move money around for their customers. Some prefer slow-payment methods, and some prefer faster payment methods.
A lot of success is “born by testing and trying different things with the customers—finding what the customers really like—and innovating quickly,” he says. When you adopt that methodology, customers become participants in the growth strategy, which Marwan believes is of paramount importance.
Marwan’s top tips to help FIs get started.
In a nutshell, Marwan’s first suggestion comes down to responding to needs quickly. It’s a simple concept to understand, but—as our expert points out—not that simple to implement.
“You have to find ways to collect that feedback, to categorize it… to roll out the changes. If you take too long… the customers will have moved on or the market will have shifted on you.”
Using innovation to help drive better experience.
Marwan highlights 2 key actions here for FIs:
- Team up with fintechs
- Remain agile
And when he says agile, he means the whole company. “It’s not only the engineering team; it’s the product team, the marketing team, the operations team. You need the whole company to be agile.”
Veem’s role in helping FIs innovate.
According to Marwan, Veem is “fixated” on customer experience. And so, they’re keen to team up with FIs to essentially offer the same experience they give their customers directly—that they can then give to theircustomers.
“All there is to it is plugging what we have built into their infrastructure,” says Marwan. “And the way we designed the system… any partner can plug in through components… You can take components of the Veem experience and plug in the component that you like into the environment that you have. So, it’s a quick way to roll innovation and new features, new functionality and new ideas, into your existing customer base.”
Changing the world (yes, really).
We love asking our guests this question, and Marwan offered some fantastic food for thought. If he could change the world with just one thing? He’d eliminate poverty, because “that’s what causes all the dysfunctions in society.”
Want to contact our expert?
You can reach Marwan via any social channel. His twitter handle is @forzley, and Veem’s company twitter handle is @goveem.
Find this interview, and many more by subscribing to Banking on Experience Podcast on iTunes. You can also find us on Spotify, Google Podcasts, or visit our page on Casted.
