You are on the train with 15 minutes to kill. Time to bank. After logging in on your smartphone, you check that your pay has come in, settle your credit cards, pay your rent by bank cheque and move money into your savings account.
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Before you reach your station, there is just enough time to locate the nearest ATM and check for discount offers at your favourite lunch spot.
It is a far cry from banking of old, and this is only the beginning of what internet and mobile technology can offer. As device sophistication and network speed increase, so will expectations of utility and service. Next-generation customers want banking to fit into their lives, not the other way around.
For banks, this means we must adopt a whole new way of thinking, starting with how we develop our products and services. More than what we offer, it is how we deliver that will drive our relationship with the customer in coming years. In next-generation banking, there is no place for top-down, blinkered innovation. We must ask not "what do we want to sell?" but "what does the customer want to do, and how can we help them do it?"
Customer research has revealed above all else a wish for simpler, faster banking, be it at the branch, on the phone or via mobiles. In general, customers have grown to demand more from service providers, and banks are considered to be lagging behind.
In the past, banks expected customers to follow their rules. Today, however, customers demand relevant banking that is instant, intuitive and integrated. United by mindset, not demographics, these people want more control over their finances.
Standard Chartered's Breeze mobile banking app evolved out of a desire on the part of some of our younger employees to make banking simpler by creating a plain-speaking smartphone interface. Development was undertaken by small technology start-ups in Singapore.
We used much the same model to develop Breeze Living, China's first "augmented reality" app, which lets users find and share discount offers.
Originally intended as a reward scheme for our customers, Breeze Living evolved to become a free app available to all. Statistics would appear to confirm huge demand for such mobile services: last year, the number of China's web users accessing the internet via mobile phones rose to 303 million, a significant proportion of China's estimated 437 million internet users.
With a similar trend evident in many markets, demand for easy banking on the go is increasing rapidly.Mobile banking platforms will not be limited to banking alone.
Ultimately, such platforms will transform into integrated one-stop shops, where customers can do anything they want to on the go, whether it's checking bank balances, buying cinema tickets or booking flights. We want to be part of this exciting future.
However, this does not mean that we will invest in the mobile banking channel above all others. Increasingly, customers want to interact with banks across a number of different channels to fulfil their financial needs. A homebuyer wanting to take out a mortgage may research options online, get details over the phone or through web chat, then walk into the branch to buy the product. This means that banks need to ensure all channels - including the traditional branch - are as user-friendly as smartphone banking.
To do this, banks may need to look for inspiration in new places. At Standard Chartered, we want to sustain a culture of innovation and learn from other industries and leading players such as Apple and Samsung.
Particularly, we want to embrace co-creation and actively solicit advice from our customers to get our solutions right before they hit the market.
We continue to invest in our branches, but we are making some big changes to provide a customer experience similar to what you might expect from an upmarket coffee shop or fashion retailer. To test this, we set up a mock branch in a lab environment in Singapore and asked customers to try it.
The result was that in the next-generation branches we are rolling out across our markets, the shop front is open, the interior sleek and brightly lit.
With Wi-Fi throughout, staff use laptops to serve customers at any desk, and automated check-in systems and comfortable waiting areas mean customers avoid the hassle of queuing.
We are even testing signature scents and music, a feature successfully used by big retail names such as Nike and Walmart.
We know that people bank because they have to. What we must focus on is making the experience as simple and convenient as possible.
While the marriage of new technology and changing consumer lifestyles will require banks to turn the traditional concept of customer service on its head, some things will not change: people will always have to pay for goods and services, to save and invest, to buy homes and expand their wealth.
And trust between the bank and the customer will remain pivotal.
Raheel Ahmed is the group head of distribution channels at Standard Chartered
