[With apologies to all those of you who had already read this, I'm re-publishing this as the Forrester gremlins ate my previous post.]

For the past few years, many eBusiness and channel strategy executives in financial services have had a nagging sense that today's websites would be rendered obsolete as new technologies emerged or younger consumers developed radically different behaviour patterns. We think that time if fast coming upon us. 

For the past six months we've been working on our vision of the Next Generation of Digital Financial Services, led by my colleague Alexander Hesse and inspired by the work of leading eBusiness teams worldwide. Although our vision is not an exact description of how all digital financial services will evolve, given the wide variety of markets that eBusiness executives operate in and the different strategies of their firms, we think the next generation of digital financial services will be characterized by five things:

• Simplicity. Making it easy for customers to achieve their goals.
• Ubiquity. Interacting with customers wherever they want.
• Personalization. Making the entire experience relevant to individual needs.
• Empowerment. Enabling customers to take action by themselves.
• Reassurance. Providing human help whenever it adds value.

The full report is available for Forrester clients here.

Do you agree with our five characteristics? Which firms do you think have the leading digital financial services today? What do you think eBusiness executives need to do to ensure that their firms stay relevant to customers' rising expectations of what can be delivered through digital channels?

I look forward to your perpective.

Benjamin