Financial Services

The Three Big Changes That Are Coming to Banking (And How to Handle Them)

Where will disruption in the banking industry come from next? Just when banks have caught up to digital banking platforms innovated by Fintechs and are embarking on building meaningful, trusting relationships with customers, something else will come along and throw a wrench in the works. Knowing what’s coming is half the battle. Read this white […]

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Why the Bank Branch is Still Relevant

Business development, Financial Services / Sebastian Maynard

Retail banks have spent years catching up with the wave of technological advances that shook the industry with the impact of startup fintech companies. Now that the dust is settling and most large banks are well on their way to providing seamless digital banking solutions, what will differentiate one bank from another? How will retail

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Highlights from CIBC’s Capital Markets Workshop

Financial Services / Sebastian Maynard

Part of SLD’s team recently had the opportunity to attend a Capital Markets workshop hosted by CIBC. The event focused on the current global economic cycle and discussed whether a new financial crisis could be on the horizon. CIBC’s top analysts also provided great insights and trends on the Merge & Acquisitions market. Here are our

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Three Keys to a Strategic Foresight Initiative

Brand Strategy, Business development / Sebastian Maynard

By now, most organizations have completed their annual planning process, and the board is giving its final blessing. As companies prepare their plans, there is much concern about what next year will bring, from a possible recession and increased trade wars to the rise of environmental and socially driven issues. To add to the planning

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Does Your Brand Have A Lasting Legacy?

Brand Strategy / Sebastian Maynard

The companies that truly succeed are those that get off the “follow the leader tread mill” and focus on what truly is relevant to their customers. It’s not about omni-channel or what you think you know. It’s about the insights your customers are not telling you. Those deep emotional needs that current companies are not

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SLD and U.S. Bank Win Best Branch Experience

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

Shikatani Lacroix Design and U.S. Bank are proud to have been awarded First Place in the Best Branch Experience category at the 2019 Bank Customer Experience Summit. The award is in recognition of a new branch design created with U.S. Bank. “Winning Best Branch Experience is a tremendous honor,” says Jean-Pierre Lacroix, President of SLD.

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Think Global Conference

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

Shikatani Lacroix Design’s founder and president, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, will be speaking at the 2019 Think Global Conference, hosted by The International Trade Council. Jean-Pierre’s talk will be centred around how brands can future-proof their organization, and will leverage 30 years of industry experience and research. Steps to Future-Proofing Your Organization Taking a short-term view of

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Useful Customer Segmentation Methods for Banks

Brand Engagement, Customer Experience / Sebastian Maynard

Customer Segmentation is the division of a specific market into buckets of customers who share similar characteristics. However, gone are the days that big financial institutions can afford to segment their customers by merely using demographic criteria, including age and income, or firmographic attributes such as industry or company size. With fierce competition from fintechs and

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Think: The Future of Retail Banking Book Launch Presentation

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

In celebration of Jean-Pierre Lacroix’s latest book, Think: The Future of Retail Banking, SLD recently held a book launch in Toronto. Along with an enlightening panel discussion, Jean-Pierre delivered a keynote presentation that focused on what the bank of the future will look like, and what emerging customer needs and disruptors banks should be aware of.

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Worksheet: How Brands Can Learn From Their Competitors

Leave a Comment / Brand Strategy / Sebastian Maynard

How well do you know your competition? You know your own business inside out, but when it comes to your competitors, chances are your knowledge is limited to a reactionary perspective. That is, you know your competition about your brand. What if we told you that studying your competition as well as, brands that are

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Five Strategies for Implementing a Smart Bank

Digital Experiences / Sebastian Maynard

Smart Banking promised to herald in the convenience of digital technology and more personalized customer service. Today most would agree what was imagined as utopia has yet to materialize for banks pioneering this new branch format. Early attempts have demonstrated that consumers remain attached to in-branch human interaction and are skeptical of the merits of

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An Interview with Jean-Pierre Lacroix

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

From focus groups and brainstorming sessions to virtual reality and neuroscience, Jean-Pierre Lacroix’s newest book, Think: The Future of Retail Banking, leverages extensive research and design concepts to present a hypothesis on what the bank of the future could look like. In celebration of the new book, which is available for free download, we sat down with

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Think: The Future of Retail Banking Available for Download

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

Shikatani Lacroix Design (SLD) is excited to announce the release of their newest book, Think: The Future of Retail Banking. Written by Jean-Pierre Lacroix, founder and president of Shikatani Lacroix Design and SLDNXT, the new book is now available for free download. Think: The Future of Retail Banking is based on extensive research conducted by SLD. Through the use

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Think: The Future of Retail Banking

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

The relevance of retail banking is under siege. Banks are responding with new formats, smaller footprints, and a nimbler approach to change. While banks have focused intensely on driving cost down through automated digital technologies, this has put retail banks at risk of losing their human connection with customers and losing marketshare to non-traditional banks.

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Service Design and the Banking Experience

Customer Experience, Design Innovation, Environmental Design / Sebastian Maynard

Seamlessness is now an expectation in our service-oriented society. Customers have little patience for services that are inconvenient, frustrating, and inefficient. We don’t want to wait in line, have to repeat ourselves, or deal with mistakes. Many major companies are selling services instead of physical products and are differentiating themselves based on customer experience. Brands

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The Three Phases of Smart Banking

Brand Strategy, Business development, Financial Services / Sebastian Maynard

The majority of financial institutions are focused on ensuring their strongest asset for driving growth, namely their retail banking network, remains relevant with the rise of Fintech start-ups and new types of banking competitors. This need is most prevalent in Asia, and more specifically China, where there is an enormous and underserved appetite for smart

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SLD Expands Strategy Team

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

Shikatani Lacroix Design has added to its strategy team with the addition of two experienced professionals, Kunal Chopra and Glenn Dixon. Kunal is a collaborative and results-oriented business transformation leader and management consultant. With over 20 years of experience within the financial services industry, Kunal focuses on business effectiveness and will bring a new skill

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New Technologies that Will Change the Banking Industry

Financial Services / Sebastian Maynard

In our previous blog we discussed the four tiers of immersive experience with the pinnacle representing the “Bionic Human,” a fully symbiotic technology enabled human delivering superior customer engagement. We often wonder how far into the future it will be that we witness the convergence of technology and human beings, such as The Six Million Dollar

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The Four Levels of Immersive Experiences

Financial Services / Sebastian Maynard

Over five years ago, SLD introduced the word “immersive” into our company vision, and identified the term as the new definition of customer engagement. At the time, the idea of creating immersive experiences focused on how technology such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) would shift the way consumers engage with brands and

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SLD Launches New Podcast: Think Retail

Leave a Comment / Sebastian Maynard

Shikatani Lacroix Design is happy to announce the launch of Think Retail, a new podcast that features top designers, strategists, thought leaders and business people discussing what’s next in the world of retail and design. The podcast will include members of the SLD team as well as guests from around the globe, and focus on

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The Three Big Changes That Are Coming to Banking (And How to Handle Them)

Why the Bank Branch is Still Relevant

Highlights from CIBC’s Capital Markets Workshop

Three Keys to a Strategic Foresight Initiative

Does Your Brand Have A Lasting Legacy?

SLD and U.S. Bank Win Best Branch Experience

Think Global Conference

Useful Customer Segmentation Methods for Banks

Think: The Future of Retail Banking Book Launch Presentation

Worksheet: How Brands Can Learn From Their Competitors

Five Strategies for Implementing a Smart Bank

An Interview with Jean-Pierre Lacroix

Think: The Future of Retail Banking Available for Download

Think: The Future of Retail Banking

Service Design and the Banking Experience

The Three Phases of Smart Banking

SLD Expands Strategy Team

New Technologies that Will Change the Banking Industry

The Four Levels of Immersive Experiences

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