In a VUCA world, innovation is pushing the standards of customer satisfaction and delight higher and higher. Across the world, a wide array of cutting-edge, digitally enabled services and features are being developed on the double and with good effect. So, whether it is consumer-tech, food-tech, ed-tech or fin-tech, there are enough and more digital developments for all to see. Consumers have more choice, more convenience, more experience and in a nutshell, ready for more!

There is a particular interest in the space of fin-tech, given that it involves the fuel for all other domains i.e. money. The demand for innovation and digital push in this space is immense, forcing the current players to respond at speed and inviting many more players into play. The need for banks to enhance their digital capabilities is even more urgent with the emergence of new entrants and services from the “fintech” and technology players, who are disrupting and unbundling the core business of accepting deposits and providing loans in many ways and thus reshaping the current business model.

To embark on the opportunity, banks are undertaking a digitization journey, one that is different from the path of one-off, isolated digitization or automation projects such as big data projects, individual apps, online and mobile channel upgradation. Today, banks are going the path of ‘omni-channel seamless experience’ changing the ways in which they interact with customers, offering a wider range of banking channels and exercising greater control over the interaction itself. Banks are also providing customers with value-added, digitally enabled services like instant credit decisioning of loans and the ability to open accounts online, quickly, in the comfort of the home. Many institutions have made significant strides in upgrading and integrating their back-end systems, often a more complex challenge.

Empowering Transformation

A few banks, for instance, have started to set up multidimensional data management capabilities, reinforcing their capacity to leverage big data, not only to meet regulatory prerequisites, but also to ensure timely and accurate internal reporting for decision making. Institutions are also adopting agile ways of working, deploying constant programming software and DevOps to improve performance.

Some banks with digital-first approach are additionally exploring new and evolving technologies, such as robotics process automation and self-learning machines, which together have the potential to deliver step changes in speed, accuracy, and efficiency. Overhauling the digital capabilities promises to have a transformative effect on the business model of these banks and financial institutions.

A Shift from legacy to new technologies!

Financial institutions are additionally supplanting their legacy applications with new technology in order to empower straight-through processing. Banks can gain tremendous benefits by decommissioning a few applications —for instance, replacing mainframe hardware and software with a fully automated cloud server.

Data Management

A reliable perspective on the organization’s data—implying that all information identified with a particular service, customer or other business-related product or process, pertinent data from third-party providers, is stored together in a steady way—is a foundation for most digital applications.

Most Banks are attempting to revamp their data management practices and provide a digital-ready data framework. Several banks are also considering the utilization of data lakes to facilitate data storage and the examination of unstructured data.

Making the Right Moves

Digital transformation can be an exciting journey as well as an extremely rewarding one commercially. It is essential to design rapidly, a rough target architecture from the top down, spanning applications, infrastructure, and data.

What does it take? Being agile in planning, applying rigorous program management in order to achieve progress, making automation of delivery process a top priority, building a DevOps teams, besides training the existing team and infusing more digital talent are the asks. Simple! Will be back with perspective on other topics soon.

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