The Power of partnerships – improving customer experience

Christina Hamilton, Head of Partnerships and International Expansion, was recently invited to deliver a speech on the Power of Partnerships at the European Banking Forum in London. The event was a two-day conference offering a platform for leading European retail banks and financial institutions to come together to discuss their strategy for digital transformation. The focus was on use-cases and experience-based insights, which included examples of structural changes which have increased agility and customer-facing solutions which have dramatically improved the customer journey (and many more!). The scope of the forum included insights into how banks can collect and leverage data to create customer-centric products and a seamless customer journey, how best to commercialize PSD2, increase agility, optimize existing channels and achieve omnichannel.

Below is a brief Q&A with Christina that covers the highlights of her presentation:

My main message was that collaboration between two organizations is a great way to drive innovation and meet changing customer demands. This is primarily because businesses can utilize assets and capabilities in new and exciting ways to best serve their customers.  We know that evolving customer behaviors and expectations have mandated the adoption of technology in everyday life, and WU has assets and capabilities that may help banks leverage omni-channel money movement and payment services.

What is the value-add that Western Union has for the banking ecosystem?

If you look across each of Western Union’s strategic pillars, which include distribution, compliance, FX/settlement and licensing, there are different components that could add value to banks in different ways. From our global reach and network of more than 525,000 Agent locations to our ability to embed our digital assets in a bank partner’s platform, Western Union can complement bank partners’ own ecosystems to offer more services to customers.

How is Western Union positioned to adapt to customer needs?

What we hear time and time again from both consumers and business customers is that they want speed, transparency and choice. Western Union is able to address and deliver on all three of these customer needs. Western Union’s omnichannel platform ecosystem enables people and businesses to send and receive money across a full spectrum of uses and needs. We connect the digital and physical worlds of money across more than 200 countries and territories, 16,000 corridors, billions of consumer bank accounts, 130 currencies, and more than half a million Agent locations.