On the latest episode of the Revenue Growth University podcast, Dr. Amy Osmond Cook, CMO at Simplus, sat down with Tim Smith, senior account executive at Simplus and prior owner of Basati, to discuss the financial services industry and the challenges that besiege it today.

Cook: What do you believe are the key challenges, and how might Simplus best address those challenges?

Smith: There are a lot of challenges. Here are just a handful:

1. Promoting growth and sustaining profitability in an environment with low interest rates is probably the top concern for financial institutions today. Customers want more than just the best rate/price/return. Today, they want a connection, a relationship that goes beyond transactional.
2. Developing new and reliable sources of revenue is a struggle. Just because somebody else—perhaps a new, aggressive, nontraditional company—is doing it, that doesn’t make it right for your financial institution or your customers.
3. Restoring public confidence in the industry is also a struggle, especially since the whole debacle with Wells Fargo. This is really the core challenge today. We at Simplus believe that technology can be used to help restore that confidence.
4. And finally, technology. I’m not talking about developing cool new features: I’m talking about security. The head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management just stated at Davos that her bank has over 50,000 people working diligently JUST in the technology group. And they spend 10 billion—that’s a “b”—a year on technology. It’s another pillar of trust building.

To hear more, listen to the podcast here.