It has been a whirlwind year for the financial industry; 2019 saw the number of digital challengers rapidly increase and in the UK Brexit was a source of anxiety for the financial sector. Mike Hampson, CEO of Bishopsgate Financial, writes

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The year that was 

2019 has mostly been overshadowed by economic and political uncertainty; as a result, many initiatives have not progressed as we would have expected. In the UK, Brexit uncertainty is a drag on the economy, affecting investment and resulting in deferred projects and initiatives.

The Challenger banks have continued to make progress but have yet to impact on the incumbents truly, and indeed we have seen some of the larger challengers run into issues, for example, Metro with their balance sheet problems and Revolut who needed to bolster their senior management.

Open banking and PSD2 arrived, at least the first implementation, but again this has not yet had a seismic impact on the industry with most banks doing the minimum to be compliant.

The year that will be 

Looking at 2020, our annual Change Perspective report shows a number of things:

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There will be a continued push to improve digital offerings and customer experience. For instance, RBS has recently launched Bó –a greenfield digital bank. To support the first point, there will continue to be a focus on cloud migration and particular concerns about cybersecurity.

As a result of the push to digital a number of skills will be in short supply, including Data Scientists, Agile practioners and others. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and associated robotics and AI augmentation will continue to receive attention, but it will be some time before it begins to become mainstream.

Climate change will go much higher up the agenda, with regulators looking for climate Change plans, it will be a board-level agenda item.

Collaboration will become a major focus, for example, the emergence of utilities for sharing compliance data, and potential consolidation of the challengers.