After the Facebook – Cambridge Analytics scandal, all the public and private organizations dealing, manipulating or stocking personal data on their customers were under scrutiny. Retail banking included. Indeed, retail banking is one of the most monitored markets. This can be explained by the nature of their business and the big potential bank failures. As autoregulation has shown its limits, public intervention is needed. Pricing, security and data were the main areas addressed by European financial regulators in 2018.
• How to restore confidence in an industry which has shown its weaknesses to all its stakeholders across the world? Implemented in 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) aims to protect the data and privacy of individuals in the European area.
• The European Union also came up with a legislative framework: Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). It aims to bring more transparency on prices before trading operations in order to regulate the European financial market and to improve the protection of investors. The 70 000 pages of rules are expected to cost more than 2 billion euros to the European financial market for compliance.
• Other regulations have also triggered an arm wrestling between regulators, banks and fintechs. The Payment Services Directive (DSP2) aims at reinforcing the security of the remote payment and grants access to service providers. The DSP2 struggle showed the core difference between the retail banks’ traditional system and the collaborative set of mind of Fintechs. It seems that those regulations are bringing back the trust of customers as 64% of French customers trust their banks. However, according to recent surveys of customers only see their bank advisor twice a year. French customers needs have changed. So, what are the new banking services expected by French customers?