Fintech, Innovation & Swiss Banking Advisory The aim of Swiss Banking Advisory is to build a bridge between the innovative financial markets in London and Zurich and to support it to accelerate innovations. Innovations start with thinking out-of-the-box. Find below some examples:
Daniel Kahnemann’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ provided a good foundation for the study of human biases and for the realization that their influence in decision-making can have significant consequences which is largely ignored in the context of day-to-day business. Is it possible to provide new insights from a combination of Kahnemann’s concept of Cognitive Ease with Edward de Bono’s approach of Lateral Thinking when searching for solutions in complex environments? Both fields contribute to a reduction of complexity and to focus one’s energy on the relevant subjects, which facilitates the prioritization of important tasks in a given situation. People’s thinking patterns have enormous power in their lives. Thinking habits are processes with underlying patterns that are unique and which are followed when making a decision." "People’s behavior is based on their habits of thinking. If these habits change, the results of their actions will also change. It is the same with organizations where the same rules apply. The process of making decisions contributed to the way of how organizations are managed today. If we change some of the process patterns in organizations, we will also achieve a change in internal culture. . . ."
. . . There is no doubt that the changes since the crisis established a new behavior in the markets as well as in banks and in interactions between banks and their clients. We tend to make decisions about buying and selling in markets based on recent experiences which has been discovered as a cognitive bias. Once derivatives were seen as intelligent and innovative, whereas today they are considered as being complicated, not easy to understand and risky.
Working in banking lost some of its attractiveness in comparison to previous times. The question is whether the attraction of young talent is going to be a challenge for the industry in the future? . . .
. . . In today’s banking culture it needs to be acknowledged that employees need the same appreciation as clients, and maybe at a certain stage even more. The idea behind this suggestion is the tendency to ignore that in order to serve clients, employees need to be served first, because satisfied employees are not only more trusted by clients, but their contributions will have an even bigger impact. Many studies have shown that the rate of human mistakes is higher when people do not feel satisfied. Companies like Google have understood this already and, based on this understanding, they have developed a culture which has been continuously researched and reported by many distinguished institutions, such as Harvard University.
A shift in investor, employee and client behavior has already taken place, and as usual, this shift has taken place quietly and did not get the attention it deserves. Business as usual still means making use of traditional tools, technologies and cultures in a time of changing requirements and attitudes faced by banks. Bringing together these topics will help to develop a new view about banking in terms of its future culture as well as the attitudes and behaviors of future investors, staff and clients . . .