Financial services not for the faint-hearted

CHALLENGES from new entrants . . . Pressure to create new revenue sources . . . Ensuring agility while managing growth of their core business. Financial services companies know that they need to transform, but many are unsuited for the kind of constant, vibrant change needed to remain relevant in the future. To avoid falling by the wayside, decisive action is needed.

Compared with many other industries, financial services (FS) is a fairly tranquil place today. A recent Accenture survey of 3,600 of the world's largest companies ranked 20 different business sectors for their current level of disruption. Banking ranked 14th, with a score of 0.46, below the median of 0.51, and insurance ranked 19th, at an untroubled 0.35.

Despite their industries being relatively "stable", FS executives are well attuned to the difficult path ahead. Seventy-four per cent of senior bankers and 63 per cent of insurance executives believe that their organisations will be "transformed beyond all recognition" by intelligent technologies within the next five years. And our disruptability index shows a similar trend: When the focus shifts from current to future disruption, banking jumps from 14th to second place, with a disruptabilty score of 0.70, and insurance jumps from 19th to fourth place, with a score of 0.68.