Today, users expect intuitive, frictionless experiences for personal banking, payment services, and apps. For financial services security is paramount, but a balance must be struck with low-friction, straightforward, omnichannel experiences.
On top of this, the pandemic has pushed customers and employees to work from home, accessing their funds and data remotely.
In today's world, travelling to public in-branch services is far from ideal. These services can be time-consuming, slow, and create public health concerns.
As more services become available online and remotely, ensuring the right party is gaining access to the right content is crucial. Identity and Access Management (IAM), the group of technologies for user identity management, achieves this.
Computing's latest survey, featuring 150 IT leaders from medium-sized enterprises highlights what fintech and financial services want from IAM.
Great expectations
80 per cent of respondents agree, either ‘strongly' (40 per cent) or ‘somewhat' (40 per cent) that expectations for a frictionless experience are higher than pre-pandemic time, two years ago.
When dealing with large volumes of sensitive data, both customers and employees expect trustful and secure capabilities. Customers do not want complicated clunky interfaces that stand between them and the consumption of a product or services. Nor do employees want complicated MFA barriers obstructing their daily workflow. Offering seamless, secure customer experiences is important.
If accessing personal data or funds is arduous for users, demanding they jump through too many hoops, they may take their business elsewhere.
Rapid digital transformation has kept pace with expectations for remote, device-agnostic access, affording many businesses a competitive advantage if they can provide suitable services.
Authenticating remote staff and ensuring they can only access appropriate data and applications is an overriding concern as remote working and mobility have become commonplace.
Respondents identified that IAM can overcome such concerns and aid their business model. Our survey found cybersecurity risks are of the greatest concern for IT leaders, followed by regulatory compliance, IT burden, and competitive advantage.
Security & compliance
Leaders for the financial sector reported the same order of importance, rating cyber security as the key driver of IAM adoption and competitive advantage as the least important.
A proliferation of ransomware and cybercrime attacks during the pandemic has seen 38 per cent of respondents experiencing either daily (13 per cent) or weekly (25 per cent) cyber-attacks on their digital platforms. 81 per cent of companies have experienced attacks since the pandemic began.
The financial sector must conform to stringent regulations, prioritising security, trust, and identity for users. Respondents from this sphere place greater emphasis on the importance of IAM internally and externally, with 44 per cent rating internal identity and access management as ‘extremely important', and 38 per cent rating customer identity and access management ‘extremely important.'
Accelerating change in financial services
35 per cent ‘strongly agreed' the pandemic has increased the need for capable IAM solutions at their organisation.
However, this recognition does not correspond to market maturity. Less than 30 per cent of survey respondents had adopted IAM solutions. However, 28 per cent were actively rolling systems out, 13 per cent trialling its use and 17 per cent planning their deployment.
Flexible, intuitive and secure access for customers and employees is becoming increasingly important in uncertain times. User expectations demand innovative solutions to remote data access.
From Computing's research, it is clear that IAM is an opportunity for innovation and can improve trust, reduce risk, and enhance customer experience. IAM is critical for collaborative working, secure access and low-friction services, in financial services and beyond.
To find out more about how IAM is driving innovation in the financial services sector, read the full report
This article is sponsored by Okta
