Tomic: Banks are old school, but they are changing

As many as 71 percent of American millennials would rather go to the dentist than a personal banker, said Anton Tomic from SAP, backing up the trend with data that in 2017, 9,100 branches were closed in the EU, 50,000 bankers lost their jobs, and a total of 48,000 branches have been shut down since 2008. These are alarming figures for the banking industry, which has been hit hard by the financial crisis and the impact of new technologies.

– Banks are increasingly using new technologies in their operations. It is unlikely that we will see something like Airbnb in our sector. Banks are old school, but they are changing, Tomic said.

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Thanks to modern technology, we are faced with significant changes every day. They affect all aspects of life, and there is hardly an area that has not been impacted, including banking. This was heard at the conference ‘Banking of the New Generation – Driven by Innovation’, organized by Lider in collaboration with SAP and EY.

– Artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning are just some terms and technologies that are bringing a revolution in business, or rather, disruption. In the future, banking will be very different from today, said Sonja Popović, director of SAP in Croatia, emphasizing that innovations are the foundation of changes in the financial industry and banking.

Banks have trust

Zvonimir Madunić, a partner at EY, said there is no doubt that the advancement of digital technology affects all industries, especially banking.

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– New technologies affect clients, regulation, and the way of doing business. There are many changes, and we will see which direction all this will take, Madunić said.

Interestingly, banks have something that others do not – trust. However, as soon as we post our family photos on Facebook, we can say that we trust it. As soon as we shop on Amazon, we can say that we trust it, and Alibaba is entering banking services. They had about three trillion dollars in payment transactions, which is an impressive figure, Tomic said.