{"id":166333,"date":"2024-09-10T07:06:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T11:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.interac.ca\/?post_type=content&p=166333"},"modified":"2025-05-30T16:27:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T20:27:52","slug":"everyday-trust-customers-data-and-trust-in-financial-services-with-melanie-subin","status":"publish","type":"content","link":"https:\/\/www.interac.ca\/en\/content\/business\/everyday-trust-customers-data-and-trust-in-financial-services-with-melanie-subin\/","title":{"rendered":"Everyday Trust: Customers, data, and trust in financial services with Melanie Subin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Trust was once static; now it\u2019s fluid and dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brands and institutions used to build relationships with their customers through face-to-face interactions. Now that we\u2019re living in a \u201cdigital everything\u201d world, can we regain that feeling of familiarity? Is it possible for consumers to enjoy digital, remote, and around the clock access and conveniences while feeling the same level of trust that kept them loyal to brands and institutions in decades past?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyday Trust <\/em>is a series of conversations in which I discuss the role of trust in a rapidly changing technology landscape with leading thinkers in business, technology, and government. In this episode, I spoke to Melanie Subin, Managing Director of the Future Today Institute (FTI)<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Melanie\u2019s definition of trust is simple: \u201cTrust is another word for relationship.\u201d As she observed, \u201cBanking 15 years ago, you would go into a local branch and you would know your teller by name. You knew these people. And you trusted them because they handled all your finances and they saw your family grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge for the financial services sector (and other sectors) is that technology is altering customer relationships, in large part because a digital relationship can be harder to authenticate than a face-to-face one. In a digital interaction, how do we elevate the importance of verification so that we\u2019re comfortable that we know who we’re speaking to?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In digital interactions, bad actors can pretend to be someone they\u2019re not, which erodes trust from both the customers\u2019 and organizations\u2019 perspective. This opens the door to fraud. In another episode of Everyday Trust<\/em>, I spoke with Amy Webb, Founder and CEO of Future Today Institute, about the increasing number of opportunities bad actors are capitalizing on today<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, organizations want to grow by expanding their customer bases. How can they safely onboard new users and customers against a backdrop of increased fraud? Organizations also want to drive growth by leveraging and deepening their customer relationships, which means more transactions (and more kinds of transactions) with each customer \u2014 including transactions that require customer verification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As organizations \u2013 including the financial services world \u2013 grapples with these questions, this episode of Everyday Trust <\/em>deals with how organizations can leverage verification technologies to help ensure our interactions are authentic \u2014 because authentic relationships are the foundation the economy is built on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The opportunity: Reshaping the customer relationship for a digital future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s little question that leveraging digital technology to help manage finances delivers efficiencies and benefits for consumers; they are now able to handle many transactions that used to require a bank visit, all while relaxing at home. We like the conveniences that digital technologies bring. It makes our day-to-day lives easier. And with more innovation on the horizon, we aim to make transactions even easier. (Imagine completing the entire mortgage process digitally, from our own living room? Someday you might.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For financial institutions (FIs), digital banking means being able to offer around-the-clock and personalized service, creating a richer, improved customer experience while controlling operational costs. It means growth through digital onboarding of new customers. Digital banking can also facilitate data-gathering that informs new and innovative offerings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But before we truly realize all these benefits, we must make it easier for organizations to authenticate and validate the relationships they have with their clients and customers. Not least so that FIs and other organizations can answer the all-important question: Is this person who they say they are? Getting this right could itself be a major boon for the economy: The Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) estimated that validation, verification and authentication could unlock around $15 billion of value for the Canadian economy through efficiencies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I expect these technologies will also be valuable tools in the fight against digital fraud, which has continued to rise. (The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre received fraud reports with a value totalling $569-million<\/a> in 2023. Statistics Canada says fraud cases doubled from 2012 to 2022<\/a>. And a TransUnion study said<\/a> 5 per cent of digital transactions originating in Canada in 2023 were suspected to be fraudulent.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against that background, Melanie and I spoke about the questions Canadian leaders in business and government are working through around trust, data security and data sharing \u2014 and how these will all shape the way organizations develop and maintain relationships with their customers in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital customer relationships and trust: A few of the big questions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1. How has the financial services sector seen its relationships with customers changed?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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