Pub. 8 2018-2019 Issue 5

O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S - H E L P I N G C O L O R A D A N S R E A L I Z E D R E A M S March • April 2019 13 b. 72% of bankers cite expanding digital channels as the primary means to im- prove the customer experience. c. 4 out of 5 bankers are confident in their institution’s mobile banking app. The average P2P transaction is $150+, clearly not the small-dollar, meal-split- ting transactions originally thought. So why the hold-out for the remaining 25%? “Is it that they think it’s too expensive relative to customer demand, or simply that they don’t think their customers want it?” says Dan Latimore, senior vice president and head of banking with Celent. “And fair enough, if they’ve done their homework, but if it’s just a gut feel that their customers don’t want it, that’s not great.” In addition, while bankers plan to strengthen digital capabilities, they should remember that customer-facing technology that’s delivered through seamless core integration empowers customer engagement. Kari Book, human resources and com- pliancemanager for The FairfieldNational Bank in Fairfield, Ill., wholeheartedly agrees: “It is glaringly obvious that if we don’t make thingsmore convenient for our customers, both through digital channels and with our customer service in general, we’regoing to lose themtoother companies like Amazon that know how to do it.” Cybersecurity Key Data: a. 44% of bankers say the number one issue affecting the financial industry is cybersecurity. b. 72% of bankers said they will spend up to 20% of their budget on cyber- security. c. Nearly all bankers (96%) noted that employee education is the most im- portant tactic to pursue in 2019. It’s no surprise respondents called cybersecurity the number one issue for 2019. This illustrates that cybersecurity awareness is finally accepted as a funda- mentally important concept of business. Cybersecurity is an enterprise wide issue and affects all aspects of an institution. It’s also great to see employee ed- ucation topping the list for 96% of respondents as the best cybersecurity tactic, as it’s one of the strongest control’s institutions can implement to provide tremendous security value in a cost-ef- fective manner. As to other tactics for battling hackers in 2019, on-going vulnerability assessments came in at 78%; social engi- neering/penetration testing at 79%. The survey’s overall responses demonstrated