Are you familiar with the bank of yesterday? One where trying to meet with an expert can translate into being required to travel across town or deal with lengthy wait times and lines? Where it can take days and even weeks to receive and sign documents to close a mortgage or open a new account? And yet many other aspects of your life can be addressed from the privacy and security of your home, at a time that is convenient to you.

I suspect many have encountered these or similar frustrations while attempting to gain valuable advice and support from a financial expert at a bank. However, these are becoming issues of the past thanks to the emergence of the omnichannel banking model.

The bank of now is here. Customers may make their own choice of when, where, and how they want financial service interaction. The omnichannel model orients the bank to focus on the customer, independent of product or geography, enabling customers to connect with the right expert at the right time at their preferred channel. One key to executing this strategy is recognition that a bank has to go beyond yesterday's multi-channel integration by leveraging technology to virtually connect customers with the people who are best suited to address their needs. To get started down the omnichannel path,banks are integrating collaboration technologies such as video, content sharing, and digital signatures, with advanced intelligence that finds and connects expert to customers, based on customer segment and independent of delivery channel.

Advanced technologies now allow for financial customers to access virtual video banking experts at any branch or sales office, independent of either party's location. The latest advances expand this access to the home and mobile devices to allow for untethered access to experts, resulting in a true customer-centric experience based on this omnichannel model.

The results, customers gain differentiating financial services based on their lifestyle, while banks optimize expert productivity and maximize wallet-share capture.

To learn more, watch an overview and demonstration of Mobile Advisor, one of Cisco's offerings that are helping financial institutions meet their omnichannel delivery goals:

Steve Ridder, Vertical Solutions Architect, Cisco, highlights some of the benefits collaborative mobile technologies can bring to the wealth management industry in his recent blog, Next Generation Wealth Management: Mobile Technology Enhances the Customer Experience. In his example, video is directly embedded into the bank's existing online banking and mobile applications, allowing banks to maintain relationships with their evolving customer segments, while enhancing the customer experience.