Banks partnering with FinTech companies to offer a wider range of services is likely to become a significant trend in future, according Microsoft’s financial services industry manager.

“There will be an integration process, with the bank sitting in the middle and instead of trying to push old product, it will help bring customer data from third parties to make better decisions,” said Marcus Martinez, financial services industry manager, EMEA, Microsoft UK, speaking at the virtual Branch Transformation conference.

“A large proportion of these clients would pay for this convenience – small businesses for example; if it will save time, they’d would pay the bank to manage a third party. Banks can leverage working with FinTechs.”

Martinez predicts that the future for bank relationship managers is not selling products but more about acting as an orchestrator.

Traditionally banks have had so many internal capabilities because in the past the transaction cost was much lower than buying elsewhere, he added.

“Now it’s much cheaper to partner with aggregation services, so there will be a push towards partnerships,” explained Martinez. “Banks are still focussed on being compliant, historically this is the most important thing for a bank…but this needs to be balanced with innovation, we need more competition, we need new entrants, the regulation can’t be an obstacle."

He explained:“The reality is the customer is surrounded by different systems is financial services, how to place the customer in the centre. They need to be served by different sectors of the economy and financial services must be embedded and value added.”

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