Finance and Banking Opportunity
The relationship between financial services institutions and their customers is at an inflection point. Numerous online financial management services are beginning offer to consolidated bill payment, credit card, banking and investment services from multiple service providers. As more people and small businesses perform financial transactions online, demand for consolidated services is guaranteed to accelerate. The convenience factor is too persuasive for financial institutions to ignore.

Financial Service Bundling
There are some hurdles for financial institutions in providing bundled services. For one, a regulatory wall exists between banking and brokerage services. Offering new services also requires domain experience including the ability to evaluate associated risks. For instance, financial institutions that ventured into mortgage loan origination have discovered serious subprime lending problems in their portfolios.

There is also the issue of cooperating with potential or actual competitors. For instance, few consumers and businesses have just one credit card or one bank account. The complexity involved in sorting out the relationships and policies might seem overwhelming to a financial institution, but this financial service bundling can be managed with the help of a Selectica configurator. Those institutions that can offer one-stop financial services will be well rewarded.

Configurator Demystifies Delivery
In many cases financial institutions already have organizational affiliates which can deliver parts of a financial service bundle. For instance, telecommunications carriers have protected their market share by offering broadband, cellular, paging, long distance and even video programming. These services are typically operated by affiliates, but nevertheless, configured and sold through the carrier itself. The Selectica configurator provides a way for financial institutions to consolidate similar choices into a manageable model, and present bundled services to new and existing customers for ordering online.

With 26 million small businesses in the United States, financial institutions have an excellent opportunity to improve the scope of services to small business. There are over 50 million households using an online banking service to just pay bills. For both markets, consolidated services allow customers to budget better, borrow more intelligently, and invest more productively. Financial institutions are in an excellent position to improve the scope of these offerings and preserve their market position though service bundles.

If you would like to learn more about Selectica and/or see a demonstration of Selectica’s solution for the finance and banking industry, please contact one of our configuration and pricing experts by clicking here.