We are living in the age of the customer, and technology is transforming the way lenders serve those customers. This year’s CEMC New York Forum focused on this fact and featured visionaries who shared cases of digital disruption.

Held at “The Home of Fintech,” Rise New York, a Barclays project designed to create ideal conditions for innovation and growth in financial services, the forum also highlighted several fintech and thought leaders who put innovation into practice.

Currency CEO and CEMC Founder Charles Anderson kicked the Forum off with a recap of important takeaways from the council’s June event, including: “Humility is the most valuable trait in a successful life” and “The most successful people allow themselves to play in the most pie slices.” As the world moves toward tech, Anderson stressed the importance of interconnectivity to move e-commerce forward.

In a fireside chat, John Stein, CEO of Betterment explained how his desire to help people make better decisions led him to launch the smart money manager.

While working in the financial industry, Stein learned that the solutions to today’s industry problems, such as a lack of customer-centric products, were never going to come from within the industry. So, he decided to launch a new solution.

Stein said customers want three things: performance, convenience and peace of mind. While many companies claim to take a customer-centric approach, their goals of attracting the most customers to make purchases don’t cut it.

To truly focus on customer experience, Stein said financial institutions must focus on customer happiness. Financial institutions must ask, how will the customer be better off because of our products?

A complete report on the CEMC Forum — including presentations from Paul Zikopoulos, VP of Big Data Cognitive Systems at IBM and Deborah Reuben of Reuben Creative — will appear in Monitor’s Jan/Feb issue. Sign up for a free digital subscription now to have it delivered to your inbox.