The very fabric of banking and financial services is changing: What was once a digital supplement to in-person services is becoming the standard of business.

That was one of the key observations from Jane Fraser, chief executive officer of $2.3 trillion Citigroup and David McKay, president and chief executive officer of $1.3 trillion Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in “view from the top” discussions at the recent SIBOS virtual conference.

Following are five points from those discussions.

1. Digital is the new norm

Fraser spoke of a “digital architecture” that’s permeating all areas of financial services.

“It does feel like we’re in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime shift the architecture of finance, and by that I mean global currencies all the way down to payments, lending and deposits,” she said. “It’s unbundling bit by bit, and it’s really bundling around a new, largely digital architecture.

“The way our industry has operated for decades [is] going to be replaced with new ways, and the scale and the speed required to serve our clients [are] of a completely different magnitude.”

2. Customer-facing time is reduced

With faster transactions being facilitated by digital banking, financial institutions must contend with less client-facing time, and in-person time with customers to offer new bank products.

“We found in the digital world the cross-sell ratios have gone way down, because it’s very difficult to have that digital ‘moment of truth’ [with clients] versus the physical world,” said RBC’s McKay.

“In this digital world, when you are in front of a customer physically, you have to bundle more services; you have to take that moment of truth farther than you did before … you have to be really efficient,” McKay noted. RBC’s account-opening process now includes discussions about online and mobile banking, credit cards, reward programs and “getting the customer set up for the payments journey that they’re on,” he said

“None of that happened before,” he added.

3. Meeting clients where they live

Both McKay and Fraser discussed how connecting with consumers has changed in the 2020s.

“For the most of our history as financial service institutions, the customers told their friends, their family they’re buying a house, they’re starting a company, they’re having a family, whatever,” McKay said. “When that need moved to a financial service, they were programmed to go to their branch or to call their branch or to go online to the branch system and signal that financial need associated with that life moment.”

That process has changed significantly, he said: “Those signals are now being broadcast daily, hourly in social media platforms and in search engines, internet companies and e-commerce platforms like Amazon or Instagram.”

Citigroup’s Fraser described living “in a world of digital platforms,” and banks needing to engage there. “If we want to expand our impact, we need to meet our clients and our customers where they conduct business and where they live their financial lives,” she said.

4. Payments are faster, more global

Fraser noted that Citigroup issues payments in 144 different currencies and does business in more than 160 countries, with branches in almost 100 of those. “We’re seeing how the world is becoming more global and more local at the same time, and how it’s becoming faster and more complex,” she said.

If banks don’t adapt, others will, Fraser said. “If traditional payments remain slow and comparatively clunky as they are today, then it’s a huge incentive for others to develop alternative, large-scale global payment systems that could be cheaper and much faster,” she added.

5. Cryptocurrencies are on the rise

Fraser discussed the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, including their possible use along with asset-backed stablecoins as payment systems.

“So-called ‘stablecoins’ may be on the horizon as mass-market methods of payment,” she said. “Some believe that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin will cross the Rubicon and will become very useful for payments.”

Citigroup even considered creating its own cryptocurrency and is exploring what’s possible, Fraser said.

“We think there’s a way for the regulated sector to move forward with tokenized money in a joined-up way, as it’s a pretty simple idea ― the notion of a [distributed ledger technology] that contains the liabilities of central banks, commercial banks and e-money institutions, i.e., the regulated entities that make up the formal financial system,” Fraser said.

While the concept may be simple enough, the execution may be less so. “Moving with speed and acting in partnership are going to be critical in confronting the complexities of the new world of digital money,” Fraser said.