NatWest: Consumers and businesses split on new technological dawn

The findings show that 70 per cent of SME owners currently believe technology has a positive impact on their work whilst just say 41 per cent of consumers agree it is positive.

Similarly 73 per cent of business people say that technology will help them achieve more in their life compared to 63 per cent of consumers who say the same. When presented with a vision of the way technology will transform people’s lives in the future, 62 per cent of businesses expressed positive emotions, a number that falls to 45 per cent for consumers.

Interestingly though, despite SME owners being generally more positive about technology than consumers, 44 per cent of business people feel they spend too much of their time interacting with technology, compared to 37 per cent of consumers who say the same.

There are also divergent views on the rise of large digital platforms such as Amazon and Facebook, with 62 per cent of business people saying they’ve had a positive impact on society, a figure which drops to just 49 per cent when consumers are asked.

NatWest’s comprehensive report explores the five themes of technology disruption that they believe are set to transform the world and analyses the impact they will have on how people live and work and what it will mean for how they will manage their finances. This ongoing annual research will help NatWest determine where to channel investment in the years to come so that the very best banking services can be developed for customers that fully utilise cutting edge technology. It will also help the bank think strategically about how it will be successful in a market place which will be increasingly dominated by those companies that make the best use of technology.

The five technology themes are:

• Personalisation – Personal data is expanding exponentially meaning that vast and diverse data sets will soon be aggregated to help build highly personalised services and products that will be unique to each individual. In banking this could mean that recommendations and discounts are flagged to customers at the exact moment they could be used.
• Permission and protection – With each person soon to have vast amounts of data available unique to them that could be accessed by third parties, new services powered by advanced AI will help people tightly control who accesses their data and how it is used. In financial services this could mean new roles for banks as custodians and guardians of customers personal and sensitive data assets.
• Platforms – People use platforms like Google and Amazon for convenience, but many are uneasy about giving up control of their data. In future, technology could disrupt the current platform model. Distributed ledgers, smart-contracts, and new personal models of data ownership and sharing, could power networks which connect any supplier with any customer – all without the need for a third party platform in the middle. In this de-centralised world, you don’t give power to intermediary platforms – their function has become part of the network itself.
• Digital human interfaces – In the coming years, technology will become more ubiquitous, yet fade into the background as people will organise all the services and products they use through a single digital human interface. These will become so advanced that they will be able to proactively complete tasks on your behalf and suggest how it can help by learning our habits. In banking, this could mean that our digital human interface warns us of the implications of making a particular financial transaction.
• Work 2.0 – The world of work is set to change dramatically, with freelancing, contract work and smaller companies becoming increasingly common, whilst skills sets will change dramatically as technology becomes the main driver of business success. In banking this will mean that new ways of measuring credit worthiness will need to be developed and long established lending models will need to be redesigned.

Kevin Hanley, director of Innovation at NatWest, said: “We have entered a new era of technological change that will be even more profound than the industrial revolution. It’s important our bank is ready to help customers face this dramatic period of change and create new services and products that will help achieve their work and life goals amidst so much uncertainty. As a business, we also need to think about what investments we need to make that will allow us to compete in a market place that will be dominated in years to come by those that can best harness technology.”