Banks are fundamentally redesigning end-to-end customer journeys to meet the demand for real-time, frictionless financial services. In the latest episode of CGI’s Transactions to Trust podcast, CGI's Global Industry Lead for Banking, Andy Schmidt, and Satu Kiiski, Vice-President of CGI’s Finnish banking business, explore why true banking transformation is less about bolting on new technology and more about redesigning operating models from end to end. They discuss the impact of open banking, the challenge of legacy systems, and why true AI ROI requires holistic process transformation.
Customer expectations for service are evolving at a breakneck pace, driven by the seamless, instant experiences offered by digital-native tech companies. For traditional financial institutions, the race is on to deliver not just digital features, but fundamentally transformed, customer-centric journeys.
A fundamental shift is underway in the financial sector: banks are no longer the exclusive gateway for their customers' financial lives. As Satu Kiiski notes, daily financial activities are increasingly embedded elsewhere.
Whether a consumer is making a frictionless payment during online checkout or a small business is managing cash flow through a third-party accounting app powered by Open Banking APIs, customers are engaging with financial services outside of the bank’s proprietary digital ecosystem.
This displacement puts banks at a strategic crossroads. They must decide whether to compete fiercely to remain the primary customer-facing interface, or pivot to ensure their financial products are relevant, secure, and easily accessible, embedded wherever the customer is in the digital world.
Today’s consumers expect immediacy and radical simplicity. They demand a frictionless experience—instant answers and zero friction. As Andy Schmidt highlights,
For example, a potential homebuyer now expects to simulate their borrowing capacity instantly without navigating a cumbersome formal application. Similarly, a small business owner expects digital onboarding for a new commercial service to take minutes, not weeks. Any process that introduces latency, such as requiring a user to "request a quote" and wait 48 hours for an email, risks high abandonment rates. This demand for real-time engagement and instant fulfillment is forcing banks to re-evaluate every friction point in the customer lifecycle.
While the mandate to innovate is clear, banks face significant internal roadblocks. Kiiski and Schmidt highlight three primary obstacles:
The core consensus from CGI's experts is that measurable ROI from emerging technologies only materializes when banks rethink the entire workflow. The financial institutions that will lead the market are those that move beyond applying digital patches to analog systems.
Instead, they must reimagine the end-to-end customer experience and their internal operating models. This requires designing seamless, intelligent journeys built natively for technologies such as AI and cloud from the ground up. By fully integrating these modern architectures, banks can move from reactive service to predictive anticipation of client needs, solidifying trust and driving new, sustainable value.
- Chapter 1: The challenge: Displacement of the banking interface
-
Andy Schmidt
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Transactions to Trust. My name is Andy Schmidt. I'm going to be your host today. I am the global industry lead for banking here in CGI and I have been in financial services for my entire career as a banker, as a consultant, as an industry analyst. And it's my pleasure to be joined by my friend and colleague, Satu Kiiski from the Finnish business.
We're going to be talking today about banking transformation and innovation and sharing points of view and some insights on what we're seeing around the market and around the world. So, first question to you, Satu, just to start us off: we're talking about banking transformation and innovation. Why do banks need to be transformative and innovative?
Satu Kiiski
Hi, and thanks. And it's really nice to be talking here with you today. So, in my opinion, the biggest shift right now is that banks are no longer the only interface that customers use for their finances. So, in other words, this means that it's really not enough to optimize the bank's own mobile app or NetBank.
And in many cases, that's not where the daily financial activity happens anymore. It's obvious when you do online shopping that you are paying there, not using your bank. But then there's another example from the small business area. A friend of mine who runs a small business told me this, that he is using his accounting firm’s app every day. And what he does is that he's scanning the receipts, creating invoices, tracking payments, and even checking his account balance in that accounting app. And this happens through the payment services direct (PSD) to an open banking interface. So, he actually said he hasn't used the bank app for six months because there is no reason to.
So, this puts banks in an interesting position that they really need to think about that. Do they want to be the customer facing interface or do they also want to make themselves relevant wherever the customer is in the digital world, because they are not always in the banking app. And this PSD too, it has really affected the market here. There are many use cases where this happens. So that really the bank isn't the first user interface for the consumer or the enterprise. But how is it Andy there in the US and what do you think are the biggest reasons for banks to transform?
Andy Schmidt
Sure, I mean the biggest reason to transform and be more innovative is what you just touched on, competition and the fact that it's the data that's important right now. Service is also key, but having access to the data that you need when you need it through the channel that's most convenient to you at the time that's most convenient to you is what's driving a lot of activity right now. And certainly, banks here in North America have come a long way in terms of mobile banking and even providing, for example, AI-enabled advice on new products and so on. But for a few years now, we've been seeing the approach that banks take to serving their customers change and change across all elements of banking, retail banking, corporate and transaction banking, asset management, wealth management, et cetera.
While we don't have the same regulations in terms of say, the payment services directive 2 (PSD2) and so on and open banking as a regulation, open banking as a concept, the market forces here are certainly gravitating towards greater use of APIs, greater availability of data and banks really serving the client, not just through the app, not just through the physical branch, but through their partners.
Whether you call it open banking, open finance, embedded finance, the banks here are certainly powering certain parts of their customer journey, whether it's simply the data or the underwriting or other key factors, other key services that the customer might want.
Satu Kiiski
Sounds interesting and this is really what is happening and it's a challenge for the banks.
- Chapter 2: The mandate: Meeting the expectation of "now"
-
Andy Schmidt
It is a challenge for the banks and understanding what the customers’ needs are is really where we're seeing a lot more attention and optimizing that customer journey when the bank does truly own the customer.
Agentic AI is certainly something that a lot more attention is being paid to these days and was just having a conversation this morning about agentic powered commerce and how that's going to change the banking world as well. But, you know, we've been seeing that agentic is anytime, anywhere, mobile-first, mobile-only are certainly key hallmarks of changing customer expectations.
And I wanted to get a sense from you, I wanted to get a sense from Europe, what kinds of expectations are you seeing bank customers having these days?
Satu Kiiski
Yes. Thanks. So, I think most importantly, clients really want to get immediate answers to their questions. They want this ChatGPT experience, and they don't want to have any friction in the process. If there is some friction in the process, they try some other service. I saw this with my own eyes when my son was establishing his own first enterprise and I could see him swiping his mobile and he just didn't do anything that was complicated.
If you think about like regular consumers, then a good example is the mortgage process. So, when a person wants to buy their new house and they are dreaming about it, they don't want to usually go and formally apply for a loan. They first want to really see if it's even possible. They want to get a quick understanding that is this even realistic for me? How much would I need to earn to buy a house one day and how much can I borrow with my current income? And they do want to this kind of simulation without giving their credentials or anything. And this is often not possible. It's often so that you really have to sign in and give your credentials before you get any indicative price. To this case, my son actually said that I hate it when a service says that push this button to request an offer. He said that “I will never go back to my email two days later and read that answer email.”
So that just doesn't work. The answers have to be instant. The person has the need now and they want the answer now. But what else do you see, Andy? What are the main expectations from today's consumers?
Andy Schmidt
Well, the concept of now is front and center and everything from being able to get assistance in picking the right products, picking the right offers, picking the right funds, and then onboarding as instantly as possible so that you don't have that time lag of hours, of days. And look, everyone's busy and we have a wealth, a flood of information that we're exposed to.
So having an email get lost in one's inbox later on in the cycle, it really breaks the onboarding process. So that real-time onboarding, especially and primarily really on the retail side of the house is where we're seeing banks gravitate towards. But still, shaving weeks, even months off of customer onboarding has a significant positive impact across all elements of banking because your conversion rates will be higher and your in-year revenue will be higher because you'll get that much more time with each paying client.
So that immediacy, especially given that we've all got at least one mobile device, has become a hallmark of financial services across multiple dimensions, across multiple sectors right now.
Satu Kiiski
How do you feel about personalization? I know that it is said that's what clients expect, but I don't see that too much or I just don't recognize it in my services yet here. How is it in the US? Do you feel you get personalized banking services?
Andy Schmidt
There's certainly a trend towards that. The idea is to help you self-serve, self-select, self-manage as much as possible and use AI to do it if you can. The challenge is always going to be privacy and comfort in sharing information. Now, the more information you share, the more tailored your recommendations are going to be.
And even if the bank monitors behavior over time and, say, updates those recommendations or presents you with a new offer based off of recommendations, that will be helpful to you. The challenge, though, is how much do you share to start and what your comfort level is. I think it really does, from the data that I've been seeing, it does differ by generation.
Younger generations are much more open in terms of what their goals are and what their finances look like and makes personalization much easier, much more targeted, much more helpful. Older generations, a little more circumspect, but that's more point of view and experience and comfort with the technology than anything else. But I think that as succeeding generations come along, the requirement will be for more tailored recommendations based off of the information that I share.
And firms that have challenges with that tailoring will see longer conversion times from first interest to actual sign-up to become a client. And may see higher attrition rates as a result because they're not keeping up with those recommendations. They're not keeping track of what the customer is focused on.
Satu Kiiski
Yes. And I want to add that although I said that I don't see much personalization, I don't know if it's there. Also, in general, the banking apps here in Finland are really high-quality and very smooth to use. So, the level is high, but I think consumers are still expecting even more. And I think banks are trying to do more in that area.
- Chapter 3: The three major hurdles to banking innovation
-
Andy Schmidt
Yeah, I think that's right. And you're also right that the Nordics in general, Finland in specific, have a much better understanding or much better track record in terms of leveraging interfaces like mobile across financial services. I am seeing other banks catching up for sure. And there are a lot of projects that I'm looking at right now that are focused on optimizing that customer journey, understanding what the customer persona is and how best to serve them.
And recognizing that personas are going to change over time and being able to read those predictive signals in advance puts you in a much better position to not only retain the client but even help them move to whatever that next phase is that you're seeing in the data that they're presenting to you.
What do you see as being the main challenges that banks have shared with you with regard to the things that we're discussing?
Satu Kiiski
Yes, first of all, there's a lot to do and a lot of money goes to regulation. But then if we put that aside, then I see three major challenges. First of all, many banks really now try to improve the customer experience by leveraging AI, doing the personalization we just spoke about. But there is often a challenge with data quality and data accessibility. So that's really one thing, because AI simply doesn't work well if the underlying data is fragmented or inconsistent or not available.
And then the second challenge, very general challenge still is legacy. There are ways to overcome that, but it still is slowing things down. And I remember that in the latest CGI's Voice of Our Clients research, 46% of banks said that legacy is still a top constraint for their digital strategies. So that's quite a lot still. That number keeps staying high year after year.
Then finally, I think even an even bigger challenge than these individual technical issues is the end-to-end process design. Banks are big organizations. have departments which are focused on certain parts of the process or certain products or certain customer groups.
And it is not often that the actual client journey is considered end-to-end. There is a lot of service design, a lot of human-centered design done.
But I think the AI, especially, is now at the phase where we have AI here and there for the same process, and it doesn't really feel like a full experience. I think that if the overall customer journey and operating process are not redesigned holistically and you just add AI somewhere, it can even make things slower and can even make the customer experience worse.
So, I think the next step for banks is not just to deploy AI or some other fancy technology, but to redesign the end-to-end customer experience and operating model, which is using AI. And that's the next challenge I think banks have.
- Chapter 4: The solution: Reimagining the end-to-end journey
-
Andy Schmidt
Yeah, I agree with that. Data quality is something that we've been wrestling with as an industry for some time and whether it's different systems different infrastructures, banks or really any financial institution that grows through acquisition, those problems can be amplified.
Legacy infrastructure for sure. We're talking about transformation. Legacy infrastructure is also an ongoing challenge, ongoing burden. We are seeing some progress in terms of, whether you call it modernizing the core or hollowing out the core, leveraging a mix of legacy and cloud-based or real-time systems so that services like giving you real-time advice live in a more flexible infrastructure. But the accounting system, the name and address records live in more of a batch system like core because that's a great purpose or a great use for that.
And then I think you're spot on in terms of redesigning the end-to-end process for AI. As we've seen multiple projects progress and talked to many of our clients around the world, the realization is pretty clear that merely sprinkling AI on top of existing processes, it'll give you some benefit. But where you really create ROI, where you really create measurable benefit is when you rethink the process, redesign the process to take advantage of AI, have a process that is as seamless as possible.
When you were talking about the customer journey and being optimized in some places and a bit bumpy in others, the image that came to mind was driving on a road that in some places is beautiful, smooth, seamless, looks like it's brand new. And in others, there are lots of potholes that can kind of take you off track.
The banks that are really going to, in my opinion, really succeed in terms of their transformation journeys, succeed in terms of their innovation, succeed in terms of improving the client experience are the ones who are going to have that process that has been optimized to take advantage of newer technology, has been optimized to take advantage of AI appropriate, and has been rethought, reimagined so that that customer journey is as smooth and as seamless and as personalized as possible.
And certainly, these are all topics that we're talking to our clients about and working with our partners on. And certainly, looking forward to seeing where the market goes as a result of this. But that measuring piece of it, the measuring what matters piece of it, and being able to calculate that ROI is going to be key. And for those of you who follow our colleague Diane Gutiw, she recently wrote a blog on that very topic, the AI value paradox. So, that is going to be of any transformation of any discussion.
We have drawn to the close of this latest episode of Transactions to Trust. Satu, thank you so much for joining me today. It's great to see you and look forward to seeing you again soon. And as always, please reach out with any questions, comments, or needs that you have. So, thank you and have a great day.
Satu Kiiski
Thank you, Andy. Nice to talk to you. Bye-bye.
