Challenger banks were beginning to rethink what a banking relationship could look like. Secco was particularly interesting because its premise went beyond simply putting a traditional bank account on a smartphone.
Beyond putting banking online
Since the rise of social media, banks have had a persistent weakness: they were designed around processes rather than the way people increasingly interact with digital services.
By positioning itself between offline and online banking, Secco exposed what I saw as a flawed assumption in incumbent strategy: that moving banking online automatically constituted innovation.
“With every new mobile banking app in the market, the public perception has moved from innovative and essential towards complicated and unimaginative.”
Consumers deserved a banking process that was simpler and more streamlined. The question was whether banks could stop treating digital as another delivery channel and start treating it as a different relationship with the customer.
Re-imagining banking
I had previously argued that banks needed to re-imagine banking for the 21st century. Secco and other challengers were attempting to do exactly that.
What I found particularly interesting was the idea of transactions as interactions: banking and payments should fit into the customer’s ordinary digital life rather than requiring a separate “banking” moment.
That meant reducing friction and allowing people to focus on what they were trying to accomplish rather than on the mechanics of banking.
Why was I interested in Secco?
Because I was tired of simply testing banking apps that were introduced as the next ideal banking experience and then became increasingly crowded with features. Even multi-banking capabilities often failed to deliver the simplicity they promised.
Secco was attempting something more fundamental: to rethink the relationship between the customer and the bank.
“We are not talking about ‘disruption’ anymore. It is the beginning of the ‘re-imagination’ of banking.”
At the time, I thought that could put pressure on incumbents to rethink what they considered innovation.
Other UK challenger banks were pursuing different models. Tandem focused heavily on personal financial management; Starling was building a smartphone-managed current account; Atom was pursuing digital banking; Civilized targeted business banking; Lintel focused on foreign students; and Mondo was experimenting with real-time spending notifications.
The important question was not which challenger would win. It was whether the challengers could change the expectations customers brought to banking.