As the iGeneration starts to seek out banking services it will be looking for a radically different experience than that currently on offer from most of the major banks. In ten year’s time organisations delivering successful banking services will be those which are able to unlock the value of data about their customer in order to deliver tailored financial services with “profound meaning” for individual customers.

Speaking at the Australian Information Industry Association’s Bank of the Future event in Sydney on Friday Murray Howe, executive manager of group digital strategy and innovation at Suncorp, said that until now most banks have focused their technology investment on lifting operational efficiency rather than delivering truly innovative products and services.

Speakers at the event indicated that while that may have worked when the banks uniquely controlled banking, this is no longer the case with the arrival of non traditional payments and financial services models, including digital currencies and peer-to-peer services. At the same time other sectors are delivering compelling end-user experiences and expectations which the banks were finding hard to match.

Howe reminded attendees of Bill Gates’ famous remark that while the world needs banking it didn’t need banks.

Micheal Gindy, chief technology officer of IAG, said, “When I look at the competition I worry about the Googles and the PayPals. They have the attention of younger people and the customer base.” Alvin Singh, co-founder of PocketBook, a cloud-based financial management system that provides users with a single window into most, if not all, of their financial transactions, said that to survive and become a bank of the future banks had to “think more like a technology company”.

Andrew Rothwell, co-founder and chief technology officer of Tyro Payments, said that retail banking was now, “a horse race – the person or company that produces the ultimate consumer experience will win,” he said.

But he warned that to be able to compete with new and nimble players banks would need to approach innovation with a fresh perspective, using Agile development techniques rather than massive waterfall-style programmes in order to get customer feedback quickly and if necessary tweak a development direction.