The banking industry in Asia Pacific will continue to be stable, but will face persistent dark clouds and headwinds. Slower growth, trade disruptions, financial asset repricing and high private sector leverage emerge as top industry risks for 2019

Banks launch end-to-end digital onboarding for comprehensive account opening

Innovation by financial technology companies (fintechs) has led to many banks opening their doors for collaborations. The strategic approaches, often multidimensional, vary from investments to building an ecosystem and technology partnership

The bank onboarding process should be fast, as the most fundamental attribute of an exceptional account opening experience is speed

Chatbots are another example of relatively low-cost advancements in artificial intelligence adoption within the banking industry. These computer programmes are designed to conduct live chats to resolve common queries and carry out specific tasks; and they are proving to be popular among customers.

Banks are looking at "smarter" chatbots to deliver better customer experience, while also bringing down expenses and improving efficiency.

While much of the focus for quarterly results at DBS was on profits and non-performing loans, the impact of digitisation on expense reduction was striking and the bank’s plans for the next ten years pave the path towards even greater efficiency.

Mobile payment apps have continued to proliferate in countries around the world, with Mercedes Pay soon likely to join the more familiar Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Local apps in Asia, ranging from Paylah! in Singapore to Kakao in South Korea, offer mobile payments as well.

As data analytics becomes nearly ubiquitous in most parts of consumers’ digital lives, leading banks are providing digitised solutions that deliver the right offer at the right time, predict fraud so they can reduce risk, and boost cross-sell rates.

In retail banks around the world, robots are making their way into the back office and reducing costs by as much as 80% while increasing accuracy by up to 100%. Along with bringing lower costs and greater efficiency, they’re also creating the complexity of redeploying people who have performed routine tasks for many years.

Financial institutions are starting to use APIs to create important linkages between their products and services and their customers and important third party value providers. Early movers to stand to gain mindshare of both customers and the wider application developer community.

While many financial institutions in emerging markets are trying to strike the right balance between their physical footprints and digital presence, leading banks in mature markets are proving that digital transformation can boost profitability and efficiency.

Globally, banks and non-banks are testing whether QR codes to merchants and consumers can provide a simple solution for payments.