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I would like to approach it from a more positive side.

True 20 years ago, partially true today, but the longer the less.

For me, customer-centricity is a logical consequence of:

1. Greater competition from non-bank players;
2. Digitization, which means that banks have less of a personal relationship with their customers (as opposed to the bank director as your confidential advisor 30 years ago)

as a result banks really have to offer more value, to avoid being reduced to low-margin commodity services, otherwise they can no longer differentiate (in the past, the physical branch network and the fact that banking was closed, not open, were the most important differentiators).

Moreover, these are not evolutions specific to the banking sector, but to each sector.

Every sector works towards more customer-centricity, digitizes more, offers more personalized services and also works more ethically (which in the banking world corresponds to financial inclusion and helping the customer, not poorly informing them).

This is also pushed more and more by governments through regulations, just think of MiFID2 in investments, PSD2 in payments, Consumer Credit Directive in credits.

These evolutions are clearly underway:

-        Personal finance management tools are being invested in (in the blog above however we propose fundamental changes to the financial products themselves rather than the classical PFM features mostly considered today);

-        Banks offering additional third party services (cf. KBC and Belfius in Belgium);

-        Banks making investments to calculate and neutralize ecological footprint;

-        Banks selling their products through 3rd parties (such as comparators, other banks, tech players...);

-        AI investments from banks, such as Kate at KBC Belgium

All these investments are to better understand and guide the customer. Evidently with the intention of making more profit (banks are no charities), but with a longer-term objective.