Raising Happy Children

Raising children is hardly ever easy. You feed them, clothe them, and they reward you with a temper tantrum every bedtime. But don’t tear your hair out. Losing your temper will get you nowhere and might even make the situation worse. Follow these simple, research-backed strategies for raising happy, well-adjusted kids. And in the process, spare yourself (and your child!) those terrible tantrums.

Apply the following strategies to isolated problems or mix and match two or more to correct general behaviour. 

1. Be a role model Parents always talk about how easily children pick up swear words after hearing them from adults. Children are sponges when it comes to learnt behaviours. Do you raise your voice when you get angry or excited? If you do, chances are, your child will too. So be a role model. If you want your child to greet your elderly relatives, make sure you do it yourself. 

2. Praise your child Be free with your praise and stingy with your criticism. Parents often have difficulty here. After all, it’s easy to find fault with kids – they are clumsy, they don’t listen, and often test your limits. But shouting at them is not going to help. Instead, look for opportunities to praise their behaviour. Perhaps your child kept away her toys without being asked. In which case, tell her, "You made me very happy by picking up your toys." Rule of thumb: Give your child 3 positive comments for every 1 negative comment. 

3. Talk face-to-face If you need to tell your child something important, or if you simply wish to have their undivided attention, kneel or squat down next to your child. This way, you can compete better with other distractions and your child can focus more easily on what you are trying to say. 

4. Listen to your child Remember how frustrated you felt when your child was still a baby, crying away, and you couldn’t understand why. Well, children get frustrated too when unable to express what they want. When this happens, a tantrum is not far away. You can help your child through ACTIVE LISTENING. Listen carefully to what your child is trying to say. Then use a bit of guesswork and repeat what you understand back to your child. Ask her if you got it right. 

5. Keep your promises The world is unfair, but your child shouldn’t have to learn that from you. If you promise your child something – maybe a trip to the neighbourhood tid-bits store as a reward for completed homework – make sure you keep to the bargain. 

6. Exercise flexibility You definitely wouldn’t want your child playing with matches, or anything combustible. But if she insists on playing with a torchlight, what’s the harm? So choose wisely on when to enforce the rules and when to allow your child a bit of leeway. This will help you observe the 3 positive: 1 negative comment ratio mentioned in No. 2 above. 

7. Guidance As a parent, the best you can hope to do for your child is to provide proper guidance. Don’t try to control their actions, because it’s just not possible. Instead, guide their actions by gradually giving them more responsibility for their own behaviour. This allows them to experience the natural consequences of their actions. Explain these consequences beforehand and then let your child decide. If she refuses to eat her dinner, don’t get annoyed. Simply explain that she will get hungry later and allow her to experience that hunger. 

8. Give clear and simple instructions If you want your child to do something, give instructions in clear and short sentences using a calm voice. This way, your child knows what you want her to do. For example, try saying, "May Yee, stop hitting your brother. Keep your hands to yourself", instead of, "Don’t do that". Remember, having well-adjusted and happy children starts with you. So start them thinking in a positive direction early. 

9. Don’t nag Say it once, whatever you want to tell your child, and if she refuses to do it, remind her of the consequences and count to five. For example, if you want her to pick up her toys, set the boundaries by telling her exactly what is expected and the possible consequences if she does not do it. You do not need to repeat yourself; simply enforce the rules you have set. 

10. Prepare for challenging situations There will be times when your child will test your patience because they are over-stimulated by the situation. Take heart because this is normal. It is simply part and parcel of how children develop and is actually quite normal for children not to listen to their parents one-third of the time. Anticipate in advance situations where your child may misbehave, then talk to your child to prepare her. For example, the rules for traveling on the bus might be stay in your seat, use a quiet voice, keep hands and feet to yourself

Digital Banking Trends

1. Drive-to-Digital

No trend has impacted the financial services industry as much or as quickly as the drive-to-digital. In fact, according to two recent reports from Accenture, 35 percent of banks’ market share in North America could be in play by 2020 as traditional branch banking gives way to new digital players. The research also indicates that 15 to 25 percent of today’s roughly 7,000 North American financial institutions could be gone as a result of consolidation before 2020.

With the rapid expansion of ownership of smartphones and tablet devices, today’s consumer wants to be able to research, purchase and manage their financial services on demand using the device(s) of their choice in virtually any location. Reinventing the financial services purchase funnel, the way people conduct daily banking, the delivery of insight, and the interaction between channels, the drive-to-digital will provide both opportunities and challenges for financial insitutions of all sizes.

“In 2014, we’ll see greater experimentation in new products and revenue build around mobile, web and social commerce,” according to Moven CEO Brett King. “We’ll also see the emergence of Drive-to-Digital competing with Drive-to-Branch. Mobile and web have all been about brochureware and transactional services to this point – finally we’ll start to see a concerted effort to revenue fulfillment digitally.”

Bryan Clagett, chief marketing officer at Geezeo also believes it will be the ‘year of the digital bank’ in 2014. According to Clagett, “There will be a realization that channels are owned by consumers, and not banks, and thus must meld into a digital experience that exists seamlessly regardless of channel or device. The silos of traditional retail delivery channels will begin to erode and a more holistic approach to a digital banking experience will take hold.”

“In a mobile-first environment, banks will begin to support more complex types of functions and transactions on the small screen, new forms of authentication that better balance security and convenience, and more relevant, contextual information delivery via alerts, push notifications, and other forms of messaging, predicts Bryan Yeager, financial institution analyst for eMarketer. “Banks will also likely promote mobile banking to an older, more risk-averse cohort than in the past.”

An example of this more complex integration is provided by Stessa Cohen, banking industry analyst and research director for Gartner, referencing a recent report entitled, “The Best Thing to Do With Your PFM Tools May Be to Get Rid of Them”: “Driving revenue for banks will require that personal financial management (PFM) tools evolve to become true digital personal financial advisors (DPFAs). These digital advisors will use a customers’ own data and other business intelligence to learn about a personal financial habits. It will enable the bank to proactively help the customer perform the intermediate steps involved in accomplishing short- and long-term personal financial goals.”

The drive-to-digital will impact all areas of the bank and all levels of customers in 2014. April Rudin, founder and CEO of The Rudin Group predicts, Fewer private banks will have street addresses and more will have IP addresses – HNW clients want the bank to come to them.”
Chris Skinner, chairman of the London-based Financial Services Club and author of the book Digital Bank believes banks may begin to move beyond traditional mobile in 2014 embedding services in devices, citing the advances by Banco Sabadell with Google Glass Banking and Westpac’s Smartwatch banking app.

Alex Bray, retail channel director at U.K. based Misys agreed with Skinner saying, “I believe Google Glass will drive a whole new device category for banking. Customer value propositions and bank’s transaction, marketing and sales processes will have to adjust accordingly – just as they did for mobile banking.” He also believes the appearance of thumb print readers points to a more biometric future for retail banking in 2014. “We will see easier payments and quicker sales processes – further underlying the drive-to-digital.”

Realizing that not all banks even have mobile banking yet, Bryan Yurcan, reporter and editor for Bank Systems and Technology recommended, “If I’m a tiny community bank and I don’t even offer mobile banking, I would set out to do that. The point being, as consumers continue to become more comfortable conducting transactions online, I want to at least keep up with what they expect from a mobile experience in other industries.”

2. Payment Disruption

It is virtually impossible to keep track of the new players hoping to disrupt the payments marketplace. With so many steps and interactions in a normal P2P or retail payments process, there is no shortage of players trying to grab a piece of the payments pie. And for good reason . . . since the scale is so large. For instance, FIS, the company atop this year’s FinTech 100 list, moves more than $5.5 trillion annually (which is larger than all but three of the larges economies in the world).

Of greater consequence than the loss of steps in the payments process to non-traditional players is the potential impact of losing the insight connected with payment transactions. This ‘big data’ is the crown jewel of the overarching financial relationship and the foundation of a contextual customer experience and future loyalty.

Dave Birch, director at U.K. based Consult Hyperion says, “In the next year, I think technology will continue to drive competition in the payments space, with the emergence of new competitive structures based on APIs.” He continues, “Nobody really knows how this will pan out, but that’s what makes it fun.”

“The move to create a joint standard for tokenization of payments credentials will create new opportunities for payments improvement in the digital realm,” offered Dominic Venturo, chief innovation officer for payment services at U.S. Bank. He also wasn’t the only contributor who believed BitCoin will continue to get buzz and maybe additional traction in 2014.

Zilvinas Bareisis, Senior Analyst at Celent believes that payments will take a backseat to the overall purchase experience, with merchants continuing to launch their own apps. “All payments players will focus on engaging the customer early and throughout the shopping cycle,” says Bareisis. “In 2014, it will be even more important for banks to make sure their issued payment instruments are used to facilitate transactions.”

“I think real-time payments (or at the very least real-time notification of said payment) need to become a reality,” offered Paul Amisano, vice president of electronic money movement and emerging payments at BB&T. “Banks need to work together on this for it to happen, but I think the pressures they are all facing from regulatory bodies and non-financial start-ups may be the best thing that ever happened for bank “coopetition” – see clearXchange for a glimpse into what could happen if banks work together, and most importantly, KEEP IT SIMPLE.”

Cherian Abraham, Mobile Commerce and Payments Lead at Experian Global Consulting, is most concerned about the impact of courtroom battles in 2014, citing the interchange settlement in front of Judge Gleeson in Brooklyn and the NASC v Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. “The rulings will have a domino effect – starting with severely impacting the economics around debit.”

“Payments (especially mobile) will reach a critical mass with Apple, Paypal, Square and Google providing some attractive use cases for both consumers and merchants using technologies like iBeacon, Beacon, Real-time P2P and HCE emulation,” offered Deva Annamalai, SVP of marketing technology and data insights at Zions Bank, “The player(s) who play nicely with the card providers and FIs by sharing data will definitely see more traction in the market place,” he added.

Alex Jimenez, SVP of Rockland Trust agrees. “We’ll start to see the eventual winners of mobile wallets clearly emerge. Personally, I think that Apple, Amazon, Visa and MasterCard will be the leading providers while ISIS, PayPal, Google and others will falter. I also think Apple and Amazon will finally make their wallet plays in 2014, with Amazon being first.”

David M. Brear, principal consultant at Infosys Lodestone in the U.K. sends a cautionary note regarding Apple, by predicting, “Apple will finally get into the payments space in 2014, and all hell breaks loose with banks beginning to be disintermediated from their customer data.”

Veteran banker P. Andrew Will, formerly from Norwest, Wells Fargo and BMO Harri points to the rollout of EMV chip enabled cards (particularly in the second half of 2014) in advance of the October 1, 2015 POS liability shift date in the U.S. He also foresees other new innovations in the payments space as transactions become more mobile and less card based.

A somewhat sobering thought came from Starpoint LLP partner and payments industry investor Tom Noyes who believes that banks will begin to realize that they are not in control of mobile payments and can not force the use of credit cards. “Payments are NOT about banking,” Noyes stated. “Payments are only the last (and easiest) phase of a long commerce process.”

3. Increased Competition

In 2014, the trusted role of banks and credit unions as the collector of funds, provider of loans, processor of payments and advisor of financial relationships will continue to come under fire from non-traditional players including new financial organizations (neobanks), hardware providers, third party payment processors, and mobile app developers that merchants and consumers are using to chip away at the traditional financial services model. And as anyone who attends Finovate knows, crowdsourcing options for investment and lending are just a regulator’s approval from going mainstream.

Jim Bruene, founder of Finovate and publisher of the Online Banking Report boldly predicts, “Debt crowdfunding (aka P2P lending) will become hyped in 2014 with Lending Club going public in potentially the biggest fintech startup IPO of all time”. He continues, “The alt-lending sector will begin to be taken as a serious competitive threat to mainstream lenders with an outside chance that one or more mid-size or larger financial institutions will begin offering P2P lending services of their own.”

Serge Milman, principal consultant of SFO Consultants warns that while personal financial management (PFM), mobile, P2P and other ‘things that glitter’ will continue to receive buzz, most community and regional banks and credit unions will be unable to benefit from these solutions. He recommends proactivity in pursuing these opportunities.

“It strikes me that a number of conversations have shifted from the ‘big vs. small’ to ‘smart vs. stupid,’ stated Al Dominick, managing director and EVP at Bank Director. “That is, leadership teams that both identify and implement innovative strategies and tools have a chance to more realistically compete with the BofA’s of the world.”

Banks and credit unions that take a fast follower position can also leverage innovation of neobanks and non-banks or can invest in the best customer engagement and new product development advances, eliminating the need to build from scratch.

4. Branch Optimization

Current branch-based distribution models are no longer sustainable and are unable to meet the rapidly evolving customer needs for real time access and simplicity in banking interactions. Brett King’s Bank 3.0 vision of a branchless future may be a ways off, but there is no arguing his belief that ‘banking is no longer somewhere you go, but something you do’. In other words, while not branch-less, we are definitely moving to a less-branch distribution model.

As a result, retail banking and credit union executives will be focusing on ‘smart-sizing’ distribution networks in 2014, closing offices, shrinking footprints and integrating new technological breakthroughs to digitize transactions without dehumanizing interactions.

Sherief Meleis, Managing Director at Novantas concurs that a new round of cost reduction is coming in 2014, with banks turning to more fundamental transformation, particularly in retail distribution. “Banks will begin to figure out how to achieve ‘perceived convenience’ much less expensively than in the past.” P. Andrew Will also believed branch automation pilots will become more prevalent in the coming year, improving the integration of systems and platforms.

“Branch transformation has already moved from talk to action, albeit in a small minority of banks and credit unions, states Bob Meara, senior analyst at Celent. “The efforts will pick up steam as growth in mobile banking usage and the resulting inexorable erosion in branch foot traffic leave banks with no choice.” He also predict that mobile RDC will be offered by nearly a fourth of U.S. financial institutions by year-end 2014, while he doesn’t see significant growth in other mobile photo apps.
Sam Kilmer, senior director at Cornerstone Advisors predicts, “At least a dozen banks will announce significant branch network realignments under the guise of technology and customer experience next year, but under the covers, most of them will be largely about distribution cost take outs.”

The branch reduction efforts have not just occurred in large financial institutions. Dominick from Bank Director mentioned, “I’m hearing that more community bank CEOs are thinking about – or actually closing – branches due in part to mobile’s impact.” Jim Perry, senior strategist for Market Insights, Inc. also expect that 2014 will be a year when many smaller institutions stop wringing their hands about the “future of the branch” and actually develop strategies for the incremental evolution of their branch network and delivery channels.

The impact of regulations and costs related to ‘keeping up’ will even push some credit unions and smaller banks to consolidate and/or close at a faster pace than in 2013, according to Sarah Cooke from the Credit Union Times. George Hofheimer, chief research and innovation officer at Filene Research Institute concurred, reiterating that the cost of regulations will force more organizations to gain scale through consolidation.

Closing offices doesn’t come easily, however as mentioned by Jeff Marsico, EVP of the Kafafian Group. “I think the decline in bank branches will challenge financial institutions to minimize customer attrition and maintain their community commitment to those locales affected by consolidations. This will require a disciplined and multi-channel approach that includes media (traditional and social), participations in community organizations, charitable giving, lending, and a strong digital distribution platform.”

Alternatively, Patricia Hines, director of financial services industry marketing for GXS sees a geographic expansion of global and super-regional banks.

The importance of moving the sales process out of the branches is more difficult than moving transactions as many banks and credit unions have seen. David Hodgkinson, principal advisor for KPMG in the U.K. agreed, saying, “As mobile banking adoption accelerates, banks will need to work harder to develop non-intrusive sales techniques through this channel or risk losing cross-sales opportunities as customers shift much of their online and in-person banking to mobile.”

“Banks will start to offer video-based services for higher value, complex sales such as mortgages and investment products,” Hodgkinson added. “Expect to see second screen usage to sit alongside the video call – so customers can review the numbers on their ipad while conversing with the bank agent through their SmartTV,” David M. Brear from Infosys and Accenture also believed that banks will begin to invest heavily in video conferencing capability to maximize the use of existing staff.

Finally, Tom Pritzker, EVP at John Ryan provide this glimpse into the future of branches in 2014 and beyond:

• Increased and innovative use of technology to transform the branch into more collaborative and relevant sales and information centers including:
• Enhanced use of tablet technology for side-by-side selling applications
• Greater use of mobile, and digital interactivity within the branch – particularly with a view to starting conversations, understanding customers’ needs and generating cross sales
• Sophisticated targeting of marketing messages within the branch based on improved cross channel customer data.
• Use of geo-fencing to provide highly relevant and location based offers and to lure customers into the branch.
• Novel uses of technology to start conversations — Use of augmented reality to prompt sales demos.

5. Focus on Customer 3.0

Customer 3.0 is digitally connected, highly informed and demands a highly personalized approach in their communications, their products and the service they receive. This customer begins their bank and credit union product shopping experience at their desk, in their car or on their couch, relying on friends and family reviews and published reviews across social media channels. Instead of walking into a local branch office and sitting down to open an account during banking hours, these customers purchase their banking services much like they purchase music, books or other products… online, 24/7.

The bar for engagement is set high for these customers, since their frame of reference are the best digital retailers and social marketers. Neobanks and banks with a simplified mobile-first strategy are the strongest competitors for these customers.

Scott Bales, Director of User Strategy, Innovation Director for Next Bank and author of the soon to be released book, Mobile Ready reminds bankers that digital natives, the same age as Google, will begin to need banking services and that their vote on providers will be a huge leading indicator for industry shifts for the next decade.

“When implementing a mobile-first strategy for the digital consumer, banks will need to be sure to include the same service fundamentals that were found in staffed branches, recommended Wade Arnold, founder and CEO of Banno. “Effectively migrating customers to a unified mobile solution that will last requires support at an individual level; anything less is a transactional commodity and will simply be viewed as replaceable by these connected customers.”

According to Arnold, “The bar has been raised for mobile self-service to satisfy more than OLB parity. In 2014, organizations will have to provide improved levels of individualized engagement and simplified consultation. If done well, institutions will be rewarded by gaining intimate customer knowledge that can be used to improve revenues and communication. Once we get there, our industry will never be the same.”

6. Breaking Down Silos

“As non-bank competitors continue to materialize, banks will discover their entanglements to antiquated and siloed core systems along with a lack of agility in utilizing data, will present quite a challenge in 2014, according to Mike King, founder and president of Bankwide.

In order to manage customer information more effectively, banks will begin to eliminate both human and insight silos by integrating data, systems and processes across different product lines. Moving to a service-oriented architecture (SOA), data will be shared and leveraged in real-time on all of the bank’s touchpoints, allowing the bank to provide more personalized service based on a complete customer profile.

“The single biggest priority of 2014 should be innovating in a customer-first and lean startup manner.” stated Mark Zmarzly, business development executive of Deluxe Corporation. “Too often banks have made product-first decisions that are designed to solve the bank’s profitability problems instead of the consumer’s problems. Then the bank wonder why adoption is in the low single digits.”
“Instead, banks need to understand current customer financial product problems, break down current silos and build a pilot project to solve, test in beta, and measure the results. Then repeat. ‘Build, measure, learn’ is the lean startup mantra, and it works,” continued Zmarzly.

David Sosna, founder and CEO of Personetics predicted, “Some leading banks will try to move from a product approach to a customer focused strategy especially in the digital channels. FIs have been ‘talking the talk’ for a while and now a few will be in the position to execute on that strategy as silos are eliminated.”.

In 2014, we’ll start seeing banking examples of cross-channel experiences, driven by insights and powered by channel analytics, according to Danny Tang, worldwide financial transformation leader at IBM. “The leaders in the industry will eliminate silos, starting the convergence of mobile and online banking and building a linkage between the digital and physical channels. Conversely, the laggers will unfortunately realize that a siloed mentality and the lack of multi-channel platform is an inhibitor to success.”

Mike Bartoo, regional manager for Marquis challenges financial marketers to go beyond just advertising and branding and to break down data silos. “Hopefully, we’ll see the trend of actually USING insight from across the organization to drive revenue. While it is great to have the insight, it’s more valuable to use it.”

7. Simplifying Engagement

At a time when everything around us seems to becoming more complex, consumers are searching out those products and companies that can simplify our lives. But it’s important to recognize that simplifying an interaction with customers does not mean that the underlying product or service is simple. Instead, the key is to rethink as opposed to append and look for ways to eliminate steps, paperwork and processes that overly complicate.

In 2014, financial institutions will begin to realize that simplicity is mutually beneficial to both customers and the organizations. Not only will those firms that simplify see improved trust and loyalty, they will also realize savings from redundant and outdated processes, reduced customer inquiries and fewer refunds and reversals.

Jin Zwicky, vice president of experience design at Singapore’s OCBC Bank and publisher of the Designful Co. blog that focuses on simplicity in financial services, told me in an interview that, “Simplicity is the ‘forever’ black”. Brett King agrees with Jin when he said, “Removing friction will become the catch cry of 2014 though – whether it is a real-time core system replacement, or trying to get application processes streamlined, the big push will be for simplification of the engagement.”
Beyond mobile deposit capture, Kofax and Mitek have taken mobile simplicity to a new level by leveraging the photo taking capability of a mobile device to eliminate keystrokes, simplify applications, facilitate bill payment and account transfers, provide digital security for documents and validate customer information. Both firms also say new simplified processes are on the way, making mobile banking easier and even fun.

Some additional ways banking will be made simpler in 2014 will include voice and gesture recognition, multichannel video chat, branch-based digital billboards and real-time spending updates via a customer’s mobile device according to Accenture. Penny Crosman, editor for American Banker agrees that simplification and innovation in mobile banking will continue – with voice recognition and video conferencing potentially becoming part of many banks’ apps this year, as well as contactless payments.

Responsive web design will also become more prevalent in 2014 according to Melanie Friedrichs, analyst for Andera.

Finally, as Jill Castilla, EVP of Citizens Bank of Edmond mentioned in an email for this post, even compliance processes will be simplified with new decision tools that allow bankers to better assess adherence to new regulations.

8. Improving Contextual Experiences

According to Aite Group senior analyst, Ron Shevlin, a new type of marketing will emerge in 2014 — activity-based marketing — or marketing within the context of an activity being performed by a customer or prospect. There are a number of examples of financial institutions already doing activity-based marketing: 1) USAA’s Auto Circle app; 2) Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s home buying app; and 3) Caixa Bank’s ticket-purchasing app.

The common threads in the examples is the creation of a new point of interaction for banks based on the context of the interaction. Activity-based marketing changes the point of interaction for banks, moving that point much closer to the identification of the need or want for the product or service using advanced customer insight.

As Bradley Leimer, vice president of Mechanics Bank wrote in his great American Banker article, “There Will be Blood: The Era of Engagement Banking,”: “Delivering contextual financial services with beautifully crafted interfaces and experiences is becoming a necessity to maintain relevance with the digital consumer.” To achieve this, banks will focus on personalizing engagements with a wider range of insight, going beyond demographic and account level data to include transactional, locational and social insight.

In the coming year, new location-based merchant-funded reward platforms will emerge that improve the targeting of offers and social media channel insight will be used to improve service and delivery. Finally, banks will continue to improve real-time alerts and notifications that will strengthen loyalty and engagement.

According to Brett King, “The new skills we’ll see in demand in 2014 include Data Scientist and User Experience specialists… more around trying to build great contextual revenue opportunities, not ad campaigns.”

“Digital channels will mature from being transactional to being engaging in the coming year,” stated Nicole Sturgill, research director for retail banking at CEB TowerGroup. “Financial Institutions will also focus more on developing the channels to improve customer service and to help customers better manage their finances.”

Fred Hagerman, chief marketing officer of Firstmark Credit Union, believes that organizations need to focus on the mobile, online banking and lending experiences in the coming year since these are the primary areas of 1:1 contact between the consumer and most banks. Both Hagerman and Hofheimer from Filene also believe that organizations need to make sense out of the mountains of data within their firewalls to improve the customer experience. Gertjan Reinders, senior IT manager for ING Bank in Amsterdam concurred when he offered, “2014 is all about being data-driven—not just in marketing and sales, but within the entire organization. For improving the customer experience, big data will become more of a game changer.”

“Banks will get serious about using analytics to assess customer interactions across channels in 2014—to identify needs, trends and complaints and take corrective actions to improve customer experience and increase satisfaction” predicted Jenni Palocsik, marketing director of retail financial services at Verint. “We’ll also see ‘Identity 2.0′ emerge as FIs learn how to combine voice biometrics plus data science in their evolving models to more accurately detect and reduce contact center fraud.”
Steven Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc agrees that the mobile banking experience will rise to the top of the strategic agenda in 2014. “Simply having a mobile app will not be enough. Leaders will re-architect the relationships they have with customers using mobile to provide personalized offers and mine the data to further increase the effectiveness of the platform.”

“The most successful credit unions and banks preparing for business in a digital economy will begin to focus on optimizing their digital user experiences built upon a marketing automation platform to target, capture, nurture and convert leads within the market segments they have identified,” predicted James Robert Lay, CEO of CU Grow. He also is a strong believer that financial institutions will expand their use of personalized digital and video content in the coming year.

Paul Kadin, financial category development officer for AOL agrees that the importance digital content and video will increase in 2014, as mentioned in his recent tweet: “Digital content and video grow quickly as the way for marketers to communicate with authenticity and rebuild credibility with consumers.”

Scott Bales goes a step further, saying that user experience design and Design Thinking will shape not only the mobile experience, but a bank’s web site and product development as well.
James Anthos, SVP of BB&T may have summed it up best when he said, “As banks focus on the holistic client experience in 2014, no matter what the channel, banks can create an environment that fosters constant connectivity between them and the client, which should allow for deeper relationships, bigger share of wallet, and increasing confidence of the client in managing their finances.”

9. Differentiating Brands

In The Financial Brand post written by Simon Clough, Partner and Group Board Director at U.K. based Clear, it was accurately stated that “Consumers view most banking brands as undesirable and wholly undifferentiated”. The digitalization of the industry is further commoditizing our brands, with fewer face to face interactions limiting our ability to set ourselves apart.

That’s why Clough’s battle cry of ‘Differentiate or Die’ has never been more relevant. Banks and credit unions will begin to find ways to stand out in a crowded competitive marketplace in 2014, leveraging all channels to make their message heard.

“The most significant driver of improved results in 2014 will be the ability of leaders to manage through ongoing, ever-changing regulatory changes to focus on key customer segments with innovative products, new technology and exceptional customer experience across all channels,” stated Debbie Bianucci, president and CEO at BAI. “Leaders who can balance innovation and customer experience with the pressure of regulatory compliance will differentiate their brand and win,” she added.

JP Nicols, CEO of Clientific and co-founder of the Bank Innovators Council predicts that many banks and credit unions will continue to pull the familiar levers of price and promotion to drive new business in 2014, which will put further pressures on already compressed margins. Alternatively, he states “The winners will be those institutions that differentiate their brands by innovating new client experiences and leverage better targeting and segmentation.”

New and/or improved products can also help differentiate banks in 2014. “We will see a massive growth in online and mobile banking in the coming year,” stated Hansjörg Leichsenring, Germany-based consultant for Meniga. “More and more banks will adapt tools like Personal Finance Management (PFM) to improve their brand, increasing retention and loyalty and to keep their customers away from independent new players in the market.

As a note to financial institution marketers, John Mathes, director of brand strategy at Weber Marketing Group, warned, “More banks and credit unions will realize that most of their marketing content is just noise and they will embrace the art of storytelling to help differentiate their brand in the crowed and commoditized world of financial services.

10. Global Innovation Perspective

Some of the most exciting (and award winning) innovations have been occurring in the Asia Pacific and Eastern European regions as well as the unlikely regions of Africa and South America. Beyond unique mobile and online banking applications, banks in these regions have developed entirely new ways to structure a financial institution and deliver services to customers.

Banks and credit unions will begin to look beyond our shores for innovative ideas in 2014, learning from overseas organizations that in some cases are far ahead of our domestic offerings.

“This year’s study of bank innovation indicates a global convergence of innovation practices around overcoming the barriers presented by legacy technology and ensuring that customer experience is optimized,” stated Patrick Desmares, secretary general at Efma. “Many retail banks are now creating innovation strategies by looking in other regions and underpinning these strategies with increased investment.”

Edward Chatham, managing director of Mapa Research reinforces this viewpoint as the demand for his company’s global online and mobile banking research continues to escalate. “More banks are realizing that innovation is being done beyond their own borders. In fact, some of the most interesting innovation is being done in some of the least likely places in the world.”

Finally, JP Nicols from the Bank Innovators Council shares, “Banks in the U.S. need to raise the periscope and take a broader look for inspiration. There is some great innovation going on all over the globe, and too many banks here are only focused on the incremental moves of local competitors.”

 

Learning in the 21st century

We live in a digital and mobile world where Google, the Internet and mobile technologies have disrupted traditional classroom learning and requirements for immediate recall.

Internet-accessible resources are extensions of our memory. There are over 30 trillion links and 2 billion plus users. Our students are using these resources from all around the world to learn. Tomorrow, there will be more and more technologies that thrust information at students, stimulating curiosity and thinking.

Our challenge is how to adapt our learning strategy in a way that leverages and maximises these opportunities, to facilitate what will be needed of our students in future.

Unfortunately, remembering facts and regurgitating them in exams has limited real-world value today. The need to store facts in our head is vastly reduced because of the expansive store of knowledge now at our fingertips. What is valued is the ability to use knowledge critically and analytically.

Students today need more skills and competence than ever before to function in tomorrow’s world. One of the most important skills is the ability to reinvent themselves for lifelong learning. They also need to develop both technical competence and emotional maturity.

METHODS STILL OLD-SCHOOL

While the world has changed, schools and educational systems, however, have been slow to adapt.
New ways of delivering content online through massive open online courses (MOOCs), such as those organised by Coursera and Udacity, have become popular with millions of students around the globe. These methods are in their early stages; most still use a lecture format, albeit delivered to an audience of millions.

Indeed, traditional lectures remain the dominant method of teaching around the world, even though numerous studies indicate that this approach is ineffective by itself. At best, these methods provide only basic information; conceptual understanding comes from more interactive learning.

Teaching is not simply presenting ideas and insights, nor filling students’ heads with what we know or transmitting information. Learning is not just committing facts to memory but the ability to critique, synthesise, analyse, use and apply information.

However, the curricula for most subjects are packed with vast content — those facts that faculty feel students should commit to memory; facts that are now available at their fingertips. The packed curriculum leaves little time for students to acquire a conceptual understanding of the subject and how to use that knowledge.

The addition of greater interactivity is essential to make knowledge transfer in universities more meaningful in today’s world. But how do we integrate the digital world’s resources into classroom-based learning?

How do we create the foundation for lifelong learning, so that someone recognises what he knows and what he doesn’t know; knows how to seek information; knows how to use and critically assess multiple resources; and can effectively articulate his rationale for solutions to problems? These are key issues that educators around the world are beginning to tackle.

REAL-WORLD USE

To accomplish these aims, we have to be clear what is it that we want students to learn. We have to understand that recall of knowledge or fact, as traditionally assessed in school, is only the first step.
A key element in any directed learning environment is the assessment of competence in that knowledge. Psychologist George Miller developed a simple framework for assessing levels of knowledge in relation to competence, specifically in medicine, but it is applicable to other subjects.

The first step — “knows” — is knowledge about a subject, such as recalling facts. The second is to “know how” to use the knowledge, such as in analysing a problem. The third step is to demonstrate proficiency in applying the knowledge — “shows how”. In medicine, for example, this is assessed by observed examination of patients or actor-patients.

The fourth step is to see how the knowledge is integrated into the real world. This requires assessing competence when a person is working and, in the case of physicians, is part of the ongoing assessment after they enter practice. The final step, “mastery”, refers to the competence of an expert who teaches the next generation.

 

The field of medicine is fortunate in that the bedside clinical experience — where students talk to and examine the patient and relate what they find to lessons or go back to their resources to fill in the gaps in their knowledge about the condition — assists in the long-term retention and better conceptualisation of knowledge.

 

But this approach, of linking what is learnt to the real world, can just as easily be adapted to any other field of learning, helping students to consolidate and learn to apply concepts.

This is the start of a weekly series on learning and education. In the articles to follow, Professor K Ranga Krishnan will use what is known from pedagogical work, psychology and the neuroscience of learning, as well as experience at Duke-NUS, to contribute to the ongoing conversation in Singapore on approaches to education.

Are schools really teaching lifelong learning?

In today’s world, knowledge is constantly being updated. Often, entire approaches and systems are replaced, so we need to create new methods and skills to deal with them.

Those in higher-skilled jobs need to have a deep conceptual understanding of their specialised areas, and use that knowledge to create new ideas, apply them to new areas, developing new products. They need the critical thinking to integrate and use their new knowledge, rather than recall compartmentalised information and poorly-linked, memorised facts.

Students have to take responsibility for their own continuing learning. At the same time, schools should promote such lifelong learning rather than focus on the acquisition of static knowledge — education is not completed when a student leaves university. In practice, though, few — if any — educational systems are geared towards broad success in developing students with a proclivity for lifelong learning.

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has measured the outcomes of education systems every three years since 2000, involving well over a million 15-year-olds in 60 countries. The PISA results show that too many students are not well-prepared to understand concepts and solve problems.

EXPERIENCE, THE BEST TEACHER

Our goal must be to develop our students’ ability to adapt to changing requirements and circumstances, so that they can apply knowledge creatively in different circumstances. They must be willing to augment core competencies and move flexibly across areas.

To achieve this goal involves learning not only in schools through formal learning processes, but also through informal methods, which occurs increasingly through social networks. In general, at least three approaches are possible.

The first is to develop work at home that interfaces with and expands what students already do — that is, allow more collaborative projects to search, find and apply information. Learning from each other through face-to-face or online interactions can teach them how to learn on their own and in teams. These are valuable skills often required in the real world, and they can be the basis of adult lifelong learning.

The second approach is to introduce true experiential learning in real settings for short periods — maybe during off times, holidays and so on. Experiential learning in areas of interest can foster students’ motivation, one of the most important elements for self-guided lifelong learning.
Such learning would have to be age- and knowledge-appropriate. For those leaning towards the health profession, for example, this type of learning and exposure to the workings of healthcare institutions can stimulate and enhance their interest.

Experiential programmes are likely to be critical building blocks of education for the new generation, especially of junior college students and undergraduates. Such programmes are available in science and research — but in too few areas and too few locations for too few students.

EXAMS FOR EXAMS SAKE?

A third and key element is the development of assessment systems that reflect the goals of teaching students to ask questions, conduct their own research and follow their interests.
The typical examination system is designed to assess knowledge, and a few are built to assess application of knowledge.

But, at the core, it is still based on knowledge acquisition — and not on what is needed for the new century. The exams are evaluative and are given at the end of periods of study. Ultimately, they teach students to be good at taking exams (often by cramming).

Rather, formative assessment tools have to be built to guide the development of lifelong learning. These are ongoing assessments to ask whether students are learning what they are supposed to; whether they are heading in the right direction, and what can be done to help them along.

These methods do not replace current educational approaches but, when properly balanced, they can enhance and promote effective learning. Experiential learning becomes a vehicle for differentiating interest and competency, and thus promotes personalisation in education.

All these are critical to the development of lifelong learning. In turn, they lead to a more productive knowledge economy.

Learn what you desire, not what is required

Learning can be of three kinds: Learning that we desire, learning that we need and learning that is required (compulsory learning). The third kind is often what children feel they learn at school and the first is what they want to learn (such as getting better at the World of Warcraft game).

Plato and sometimes Socrates are quoted as saying “compulsory intellectual work never remains in the soul”. There is truth in this saying — if we do not desire what we learn, we may not remember it long enough. Therefore, maybe we need to work on making learning desirable and interesting. In this regard, a set of simple experiments illustrate desirable self-learning.

A dozen years ago, computer scientist Sugata Mitra in New Delhi carried out a fascinating study. He took a personal computer and placed it in a room full of children who had never seen or used a computer.

He then watched them from the outside — hence the name for his experiment, the hole in the wall. What he observed was children playing and figuring out how to use the computer even though they were not provided with any instructions.

The children were learning by doing, helping each other and experimenting, a desirable form of self-learning. In a subsequent study, a computer was placed in a kiosk and loaded with learning games in a village. The games were free downloads from the Internet. Mathematics games covered numbers, shapes, sizes, quantities, addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and algebra.

The children did better in tests and their performance was related to the time spent in the kiosk. Obviously this did not work for everyone, but it shows that a learning environment can be productive for children.

SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING

But how much can children learn without the help of teachers who are experts in their key subject areas? Another experiment, which involved Tamil-speaking children aged between 10 and 14, showed they could learn a limited amount of basic molecular biology by themselves using a public computer facility, but demonstrated improvement when a helper was present, although he or she was not knowledgeable in the subject matter. In fact, the learning outcome of the children without a helper was similar to children at a nearby state government school taught molecular biology by a teacher.

The children who had a helper performed just as well as their peers in a privileged private urban school.

Could this learning be used as a tool in regular schools? I had the privilege of watching a class that promotes self-directed collaborative learning at MacPherson Secondary School with Dr Chew Lee Teo, who is a lead specialist (Learning Partnership in Educational Technology) from the Education Ministry. They used a knowledge-building approach, where students and teachers collaborate, brainstorm and learn together. They also conducted a simple experiment to enhance learning and serve as a focal point.

The learning was interactive, with questions and answers building a knowledge base for the entire class. The teacher served as a mediator and facilitator, and not the one with all the answers. The learning environment kept the children engaged and more importantly, they were able to relate to their own real world experience.

In other words, the learning was less based on a compulsion to learn and more on a desire to learn. They worked on laptops with access to the Internet and software that promoted learning. The software and the teacher became the tools to excite, adapt and improvise the learning process and build context to the learning exercise. The entire class became a self-learning environment.

We have evolved as human organisations by organising ourselves into structures that adapt, learn and evolve. We have evolved through self-organising. Each time we meet new people, we learn about them or the world around us. This environment for organising ourselves to learn has been called the self-organising learning environment (SOLE). While we as humans are always self-organising to learn or accomplish things, one place that SOLEs do not always exist are in learning institutions.

Building an environment and structure to develop self-learning is what schools and colleges should strive for. The MacPherson school experiment demonstrates the development of a self-organising teacher-facilitated learning environment.

The learning environment and the class was a study in excitement and energy. Its collaborative approach is much closer to what students will encounter in the real world, where they will not have to regurgitate answers, but work on projects that function in the real world.

The sooner schools and universities move from a compulsory learning approach to a desirable learning one, the closer we will get to learning for the soul.