Companies across all industries are faced with the urgent need to transform the way they do business, including financial services, but changes abound with governance, security, and culture. A shift in mindset and perspective away from “the way things have always been done” is key to a successful digital transformation and to providing the frictionless customer experience banks and other financial services businesses strive to offer.

To stay competitive in the wide-ranging fintech landscape, says Michael Ruttledge, chief information officer and head of technology services at Citizens Financial Group, banks need to become more agile and embrace new technologies. He described the five pillars he has used to guide digital transformations at financial institutions: “The first pillar is moving to agile. Second is moving to a more modern architecture. Third is doubling down on the engineering talent at the bank, and fourth is being more efficient and transforming the technology cost structure. Finally, the fifth pillar is maniacally focusing on security and availability.”

Ruttledge says automation is key to delivering the frictionless experience customers want:

“As we're developing these platforms, we're looking at where can we automate. We're trying to make it frictionless for our customers—for instance, we don’t want it to take a long time for them to open an account because of the amount of information they have to enter. Is there data we can pre-populate? Are there notifications and terms and conditions we can automatically route to the customer, as opposed to them having to send in a document with a signature? We've used a lot of robotics technology. For example, we're using chatbots in our call centers to reduce the call volume to be more efficient.”

By creating the right infrastructure from the bottom up, Ruttledge was able to help Citizens better meet customer needs and expectations. Restructuring has also placed the bank in a good position to take advantage of emerging technologies, says Ruttledge:

“Another area we've touched on in the network space is 5G, which is at least 10 times faster than 4G. We're using it now in some of our branches. As a customer comes into the branch, they're met by a branch member with an iPad, and they're able to complete an application together. That wasn't possible before 5G speeds. Looking further ahead, blockchain is another area where there's a lot of promise for the future. Whether it's in contracts or in trading, the fact that it gives you immutability in terms of the data could facilitate a number of future use cases in the financial services industry.”