What are the most urgent challenges banks are facing today?

Loaded question, and would most likely have many answers. A couple of needs that prop up immediately in my mind are:

• Advance KYC (many banks are still struggling with KYC issues). KYC on a global level is still undefined and hence is something that needs advance work. I wrote a blog post on this: Federated Identity Management
• The lead times between discussing an idea, and the time it takes to implement it and launch it. Because of the regulatory, IT and internal complexities involved, this is a huge hurdle for banks.
• Truly implementing social media signals and metadata into banking today for more 21st century decision on how users interact, communicate and transact.
• Global payments (system is still fragmented)
• Reinventing themselves in the midst of all the fintech startups that are propping up all over the world, slowly taking a bite of their products/services, one at a time. This is why challenger banks are called challenger. (See: List of UK Challenger Banks)