Top 10 banking trends for 2023
JANUARY 10, 20235-MINUTE READ
In brief
Until the financial crisis of 2008/9, interest rates were the gravitational force that kept banking’s integrated deposit-lending model working.
When that gravity disappeared, powerful waves of disruption and innovation reshaped the industry.
The return of interest rates has pulled banking into a more predictable and familiar orbit. Deposits and balance sheets suddenly matter again.
A combination of well-established forces and recent developments is reshaping banking. Over the past 17 years low interest rates have acted as a Big Bang in banking. They shattered the industry’s fundamental equation—that deposits drive lending power. For all this time, money has been effectively free and worth very little to banks.
In the absence of that revenue stream, banks shifted their focus from the totality of customers’ financial needs to isolated products that continued to generate fees. At the same time, fintech innovators burst onto the scene, awash with cheap capital and valuing scale over financial returns.
Now that positive rates have returned, the constellation of banking products is drifting into a more familiar and predictable orbit.
Leading banks recognize they need to accelerate change—not only to compete but to find new paths to growth. The five key forces of change that Accenture has identified have helped shape and added impetus to the trends which are likely to have the greatest impact on banking in the year ahead.