Smart money: transforming financial services with Okta and AWS
Perhaps more than any other service industry, financial services (FSI) has seen a profound change in the way customers interact with its offerings. Bricks-and-mortar branches are vanishing, giving way to always-on digital experiences that customers expect to access anywhere and from any device.
As a generational shift in customers takes place, their expectations are rising fast. Millennials have overtaken Baby Boomers to become the largest adult cohort of the global population. This generation has grown up in a digital world, accustomed to smooth, Amazon-style experiences when accessing services online — standards they now expect from their FSI providers. If their experience falls short, they’re more than willing to shop around: 70% of US customers under the age of 55 say they would switch banks for a better experience .
What do customers want? Simple, seamless access to their finances. But currently, many are getting clunky logins, inconsistent experiences, and convoluted flows that require them to repeatedly input the same information. For example, a customer might have separate logins, portals, and apps across banking and investment products offered by the same organization — a frustrating experience that drives churn.
Of course, there are also the non-negotiables of security and compliance. Financial data is an attractive target for cyber criminals. Synthetic Identity fraud alone costs banks $6 billion a year and is one of the fastest growing financial crimes globally. At the same time, companies are under pressure to comply with ever-tighter regulatory requirements, imposing stiff compliance needs on payments, data protection, cybersecurity, and operational resilience.
Delivering a frictionless, secure user experience is all-important. For FSI providers, shifting to the cloud is opening exciting new possibilities for faster innovation at lower cost. But to harness the cloud’s full potential, a robust Identity & Access Management (IAM) strategy is crucial, allowing businesses to balance strong security with user demands for an exceptional experience.
The power of a unified solution
At the heart of this is a unified approach to Identity. A single, centralized platform like Okta’s Customer Identity Cloud for Financial Services makes everything easier for you and your customers to manage. Administrators have a console from which they can manage users, devices, and apps in one place. Meanwhile, customers enjoy personalized, omnichannel experiences across all services and devices, accessed via a single set of credentials.
This holistic approach also enables faster innovation by replacing fragmented systems with streamlined processes. Instead of wrestling with disconnected infrastructure, FSI providers can rapidly experiment and prototype ideas at scale in response to evolving customer needs. With Okta, go-to-market is six times faster*, helping you outpace competitors and delight your customers with compelling new features.
Okta’s seamless integration capabilities also help you quickly realise the benefits of mergers and acquisitions. A unified Identity platform eliminates the friction of bringing together disparate systems and data silos, allowing you to unlock value immediately.
Introducing Okta Highly Regulated Identity
Leaders in highly regulated industries like financial services need a solution that prioritizes security and user experience equally. It’s why we’ve introduced Okta Highly Regulated Identity (HRI), a financial-grade solution suite built on Okta Customer Identity Cloud, which seamlessly integrates with AWS’s secure cloud infrastructure. Financial Grade APIs (FAPI) and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) help FSI providers elevate security and privacy for sensitive customer scenarios beyond login, while maintaining compliance and easy user experience. In this way FSI providers can securely manage all their apps and services — portals, payment systems, CRMs, and partner ecosystems — on a unified Identity platform. HRI also helps FSIs deliver the next generation of financial services, enabling open banking standards and regulations such as PSD2, UK Open Banking, FDX, and the new US rule, PDFR.
Last, but far from least, Okta and AWS work together to enhance compliance. FSI providers are already leveraging the cloud to simplify and automate compliance and internal audits. Highly Regulated Identity supports all leading global financial standards, including FAPI, PCI DSS, and Open Banking, ensuring your organization remains compliant while building customer trust and maintaining agility.
The pace of change in financial services is surely set to increase, alongside rising customer expectations. In these exciting times, FSI providers can prioritize innovation provided they have a sound architecture in place to ensure security and compliance. A powerful Identity platform is crucial to unlock the power of the cloud while safeguarding sensitive financial data.
*Okta internal estimate
