“Drones Overall Will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society” ~ Bill Gates
Drones are positioned to save lives, hurricane hunting, Infrastructure maintenance, aerial photography, supporting law enforcement, protecting wildlife, 3D mapping, guided tours, advertising, inventory management, and package delivery.
It’s no wonder then that Noah Poponak analyst from Goldman Sachs predicts that the accumulative market value of drones could very well be £100 billion in the next 5 years.
Amazon is already considering “flying warehouses” equipped with drones to deliver goods in an instant by hovering at 45,000 feet above the ground with a promise to deliver goods within minutes of placing an order.
That’s just how far drone technology has come and it’s not even the beginning. We might not get anywhere near the futuristic dream of “flying cars”. However, we are certainly close to the reality of drones picking up and dropping stuff (from grocery to even people).
We live in a time of deep-sea drones, live-streaming virtual reality, astounding video footage that’s only possible by flying drones, and more.
Financial institutions, insurance companies, and several other fintech startups aren’t going to just sit back and watch. Since drones can be used for package delivery, they can be used to transport packages (could be anything), food, and other goods to consumers across long distances with speed, efficiency, accuracy, and at much lower costs.
In the drive to lower costs, improve efficiency, and to drive banking services straight into the future, banks already started testing ideas to use drones and to leverage drone technology.
Here are a few examples of how banks are leveraging drone technology:
Deliver cash with Drones
Sberbank is experimenting with drones to deliver cash to clients with a pilot program. While there are a lot of kinks to be ironed out and several questions to be answered, the banking behemoth already succeeded with a few drone-assisted cash deliveries
Cards, delivered by drones in an instant
Starling Bank in a bid to deliver debit cards in an environmentally friendly way while still being quick and efficient — is testing out ways to deliver one-pound heavy debit cards with relevant packaging. Current tests have only been limited to short flights (not more than 400 feet) by individuals operating the drones indoors or in private garden spaces.
Drones, For Industrial Finance
Geo-tagging is crucial for banks to figure out the creditworthiness of factories, stockyards, large industrial units, and warehouses. Manual inspection of such entities could take days to weeks or even months. Carrying out period surveys is better achieved with drones installed with 3D cameras.
Note: Several more use cases for banks using Drone technology can be applied by using Drone technology in combination with other modern technologies such as Geospatial technologies. Geospatial technologies In combination with drone technology now only find token and peripheral applications for banks. The future, however, is promising with global revenues for Geospatial technologies reaching $300 billion.
Below are a few additional potential use cases using drones for banking.
Performance Budgeting
Within banks, performance budgeting normally uses trends, historic revenue figures, and past growth patterns. Instead of that geospatial technology using drones can facilitate a precise understanding of areas served by banks (or bank branches). As such, banks can set business goals more realistic in relation to actual potential business on the ground.
Agricultural banking
By generating high-resolution maps of farms and agricultural land, drones can help provide aerial visuals of the present condition of standing crops in 3D. Each of these farms can be geo-tagged while connecting to the bank’s existing data on the property in question.
Infrastructure finance
The majority of revenue for banks lies in the portfolio of large infrastructure projects including telecom, roads, ports, mines, and housing development. With drones (combined with Geospatial technologies) can help provide 3D images, live feeds of project sites to help measure and evaluate the progress of projects in real-time.
Using drones for banking along with another emerging tech such as bots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning is only beginning to surface. As to how banks will finally use drone technology, only time will tell.
REFERENCES
Leveraging geospatial tech in banking https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/leveraging-geospatial-tech-in-banking/article26260681.ece
Flight of fancy: Starling Bank ponders debit card drone delivery https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29902/flight-of-fancy-starling-bank-ponders-debit-card-drone-delivery
AMAZON FILES PATENT FOR FLYING WAREHOUSE EQUIPPED WITH DRONES https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/amazon-flying-warehouse-drones-online-shopping-file-patent-delivery-prime-a7500936.html
Bring on the money drones https://www.bankingtech.com/2017/09/bring-on-the-money-drones/
