futurebranches.wbresearch.com/

First the good bits. Austin is a good location for the conference, especially when the weather is cold everywhere else. The hotel chosen was pretty decent and the meal choices were decent too. The could be better parts. General sessions largely ended up being people talking about their own organizations. You need to find industry or non industry speakers that can energize the audience talking about how they innovated, got over hurdles, etc. Each day having at lease one interesting keynote speaker would get the day started right. The tracks were confusing like hell, as most tracks were singular sessions or were off limits for not FI participants, etc. If you are going to having multiple tracks, then the tracks need to have a whole day of topics and presentations and preferably open to all attendees. Last but not least, the conference was most focused on the what - branch location, layout, what hardware to employ, etc. There was very little spoken or said about how to achieve omnichannel experiences. Very little was spoken about the technologies that would be necessary to ensure future branches provide a cohesive experience to the customers. I suggest a stronger push for participation from technology companies and innovators from the transaction/payments/online banking space, as their contribution is important for the success of these future branches.

A good agenda & brought back a few new ideas. Wish we could have featured bigger banks & dove a bit deeper into learnings shared.

I was hoping to hear more about site selection, ROI Of new branches. And success with new branches. I was glad to learn about the adoption of digital strategies and did learn a lot

Pluses: Great venue, great city, a lot of networking opportunities were presented for everyone, the site visits were a plus for those that were able to get signed up and attend. Opportunities: Allow longer time for questions to be answered of panels and speakers. For some of us that are much further down the road on transformation if would be beneficial to hear from others that are completed and on to the next thing. Look out more in the future, not just 3-5 years out. Maybe add more presentations on what has worked and more use cases to provide specific examples and action items and reduce the panel question/answer.

It would be nice to have keynote speakers from outside the industry speak at the conference so you can get a fresh perspective. I did enjoy the speakers from Chase and PNC, it is nice to see what the larger FI's are prioritizing.