Bridging the Gap Between Information and Knowledge in Banking

Perhaps one day we’ll ditch the term “banker”?

As I reflected on yesterday’s “meet & tweet” Q&A on Twitter that Bank Innovation conducted with Todder Moning, Product Innovation Director in the Global Payments Innovation Group at U.S. Bank, the thought crossed my mind.

“Bankers” implies simply providing and facilitating banking. But, as Moning pointed out yesterday, “bankers” are more likely to take a far more active role in facilitating commerce in the future. Moning’s colleague, Dominic Venturo, also expressed a similar prediction during a spring payments conference.

Our Twitter Q&A gravitated to the opportunities to use proximity technology in mobile banking. We asked Moning for ideas on other ways mobile payments can work.

Moning replied that “besides proximity (e.g. tap), you can do remote mobile similar to online purchasing, for one.” He added that “the ability to exchange knowledge and commerce by NUIs (natural user interfaces), such as touch, is a big deal.”

And we agreed. The “exchange of knowledge and commerce” goes well beyond the information/data most banks provide their customers today. Perhaps at some institutions there is more robust data exchanged within large corporate commercial banking relationships, but by and large, there is precious little “exchange of knowledge” today. No bank is offering me personal finance insights. It’s all context-less information.

But Moning pointed out that such knowledge can only become a part of the banking experience when it is ubiquitously available. In his words, it has “gotta appear to be everywhere or consumers won’t use it.” When that happens is anyone’s guess — although we suspect it is sooner than most people think.