Oliwia Berdak
VP, Research Director

Author Insights
Blog
Environmental Initiatives Dominate Sustainability Efforts Of Financial Services Firms
Sustainability — with its focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles — is beginning to dominate political and business agendas worldwide. Even before COVID-19, initiatives such as the Paris Agreement or the European Green Deal aimed to mitigate climate change. The pandemic has exposed additional vulnerabilities in our economies, health systems, and societies. But […]
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European Customer Experience Index, 2020: How Banks And Insurers Can Connect CX With Business Impact
Learn how leaders in the European banking and insurance industries can credibly connect the customer story to the money story.
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Predictions 2021: Banks Will Need To Get To Know Their Customers (Again)
The COVID-19 crisis has upended banks' understanding of their customers. In 2021, banking executives will need to pivot accordingly.
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Europe Predictions 2021: Digital Acceleration In Financial Services
2020 has been a challenging year for financial services. First, COVID-19 hit insurers with business interruption and travel insurance claims. Then, banks’ profits took a hit as banks set aside billions for loan loss provisions. Given this and the protracted period of low interest rates, investors have taken a dim view of the industry’s prospects, […]
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Rethinking Sustainability In The Middle Of A Pandemic
2020 has been a year of reckoning. Sustainability is now a business necessity, not just a differentiator. Finance and technology have important roles to play.
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Predictions 2020: Wealth And Investment Firms Will Copy Fintech Strategies
Wealth and investment management firms will look to protect revenue and thwart disruption by taking cues from fintech companies.
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Predictions 2020: Insurers Will Seek To Engage Customers With Their Impact Agenda
In 2020, insurance companies will battle back against the market changes by focusing on three key areas. Read Forrester's predictions for the insurance industry here.
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Robo-Advice Claims Another Victim: FORR in 3 Video
In this episode of our video blog series FORR in 3, Vijay Raghavan and I discuss the challenges of robo-advice, some of the latest failures in this space, and what this means for a technology market that has seen over $2 billion of investment in the last decade. For more insights, Forrester clients can check […]
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It’s Time To Transform Insurance Claims
With the right approach, it’s possible to fulfill the promise given to customers while protecting the insurer’s bottom-line performance.
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Driving Investor Engagement
According to Vanguard, the median retail investor logs in to their account just six times per year. Read our tips for boosting investor engagement in a digital world.
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How To Onboard Startups
Large corporates and startups seems like a match made in heaven. The former have the customer base, budget, and scale that the latter crave. And startups bring speed and agility and can help enterprises experiment with emerging technologies and business models. There’s even a whole industry of matchmakers — platforms and accelerators that aim to […]
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Blog
FinovateEurope 2019: Top Three Themes
The two days of demo sessions are now over, so I wanted to share with you my thoughts on the three themes that dominated FinovateEurope 2019. (Apologies for the plane landing at the end. I’m reporting directly from the venue at Tobacco Dock in East London, close to the City Airport, which has its hazards . […]
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Pragmatism Rules FinovateEurope 2019
FinovateEurope is back in full swing, so we wanted to share our impressions of Day 1. Here are Benjamin’s thoughts: And some further reflections by Aurélie and myself.
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Competition Heats Up In Banking Transformation Services
After a few quiet years, Thought Machine, the fintech behind a new core banking platform called Vault, is stealing the limelight, first with its announcement of a strategic partnership with Lloyds Banking Group, then with a similar partnership with the digital bank Atom. And today we’ve learned about another partnership, this time with IBM. We […]
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Fighting GAFA Boo-Hoos
In the spirit of Halloween, I’m going to write about the bogeyman of almost every industry out there: GAFA. In the last few years, I have answered many versions of the same question: what will Google (insert Apple/Facebook/Amazon) do to us (insert financial services/healthcare/retail/media)? This fear is grounded in some reality. All four firms are […]
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Profiling Insurtech: Q&A With David Vanek, CEO Of Anorak
“Insurance is sold, not bought.” This industrywide perception has gone unchallenged for decades, reaffirming agent- and advisor-based distribution models. But now a plethora of insurtech startups such as Brolly in the UK, Gabi in the US, and PolicyPal in Singapore aim to help customers find suitable cover. A newcomer among the firms digitalizing insurance distribution […]
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Wanted: Fintech Expert
Financial services firms are on the hunt. They’re hunting unicorns. As firms like Revolut and TransferWise attain valuations of $1 billion or more, the pressure to find the Stripes of this world before their value skyrockets has never been stronger. But it’s not just the unicorns that firms are hunting. They’re also chasing the wolpertinger. […]
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How To Ride The Technology Wave (And Not Get Swept Away)
AI, blockchain, chatbot, digital identity, etc. — there’s enough emerging technology in financial services to fill a whole alphabet book. And it’s difficult not to get swept off your feet by visions of bionic men, self-executing smart contracts, and virtual assistants that anticipate our every need. Investing in emerging technology is one of the main […]
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The Fintech Industry Has Grown Up
Having trekked between the ExCel convention center and central London for most of last week – Finovate Europe moved to this larger and more remote location from the historical Old Billingsgate Hall this year – I can’t help but think that the changed location and format of the event reflect the wider changes happening in […]
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