Financial Services Tech Leaders Summit Takeaways: IT and Data Crucial to Business Success

By Dominie Roberts, Portfolio Development Director at DTX

 

The Financial Services Tech Leaders Summit is the leading digital transformation event within the finance sector and addresses the role data and technology plays as the industry evolves to meet consumer demand. Aimed at digital and IT executives from banks, financial services, and insurance companies who are involved in the execution of the digital transformation of their business, the event explored the different ways businesses are able to fully optimise digital transformation strategies.

With a range of panel guests and speakers demonstrating their knowledge on key digital transformation trends shaping the finance industry, there is much to unpack…

Adopting an employee and customer first approach

In the past, organisations have had to make a choice… do you put your customers first? Or your employees (relying on the hope that happy employees mean happy customers)? Today, the choice is not quite as clearly defined and organisations must actively invest in both their employees and their customers equally. Of course, with this comes added costs, but these investments are critical to ensure your business succeeds in an increasingly competitive and people-first sector.

If you want to keep your best people, avoid the word “deadline”

The way we work has changed dramatically in recent years but many financial services organisations are still finding their feet when it comes to defining their working culture and expectations. Given the challenges many businesses are facing when it comes to a skills and talent shortage, your company culture has never played a more crucial role in defining the talent you attract and retain. Some of the newer players in financial services are finding that the key to keeping their best people has been to allow for flexible and agile ways of working, but the question remains, does this work for every organisation?

There are two sides of the customer personalisation coin: Protection & Experience                                                                   

When we talk about the sharing of customer data and the advantages of personalisation, we so often focus on the business benefits, i.e. the ability to offer new products or services which meet customer habits, thus unlocking new revenues. But do we need to change the narrative and shift focus to the consumer benefits? For instance, how are we using data to protect customers? Perhaps by putting the knowledge and power into the consumer’s hands, financial services organisations can derive even greater insights, benefiting both the customer and business.

IT must be considered an integral part of any business transformation

Five years ago, IT was seen as something organisations spent money on in order to operate, but today, technology plays a mission-critical role when it comes to saving costs and generating new revenues. IT and data teams are a key asset, and in most successful organisations, technology and business strategy goes hand in hand. Good governance around IT and an outcome-first approach to transformation is sure to bring success far quicker.

You need the right people on board who can deal with regulatory demands

It starts with building personal relationships with regulators and being proactive, e.g. making sure your infrastructure is mapping into all regulatory channels, across jurisdictions if necessary. When there are many legislative masters this is the only way to respond quickly to any changes and it is good practice to take the most stringent regulatory standard and work from there when implementing an optimum control. You would have probably done it anyway – regulators should not be telling you something you don’t know already.

2023: Use of traditional building blocks, impact of AI learning, drive for automation and staying compliant

The traditional building blocks – people, technology and data – are still the right things to be focusing on in 2023, built by smart people and involving all audiences in how it is brought to life. There will continue to be a move away from legacy, but getting rid of it entirely any time soon for an incumbent bank is not realistic. As banks start to organise systems and data they will be increasingly looking at how they use AI learning to improve the customer experience and automation to improve processes. Staying compliant when you are transforming infrastructure will be essential as digital legislative demands on the industry grow. Look to make regular small changes, be transparent and adapt.

Setting resilience goals is critical

As financial services organisations prepare to mitigate impact from uncertain times ahead, operational resilience becomes a key objective. But, what does this mean for your business? Be sure to define exactly what ‘operational resilience’ means for you in order to put in place an action plan if your (workplace) fear becomes a reality. Once you’ve done this, resilience must be embedded throughout your underlying infrastructure (as opposed to being an add-on or an afterthought) to ensure you remain “digitally immune” for what may lie ahead.

Significance of the Multi-cloud

We can all agree that the benefits of moving from on-prem to the cloud are vast, however it’s impossible to ignore the risks associated. Regulators are more switched on than ever to the financial services sector’s increasing reliance on the cloud and you are therefore strongly encouraged to choose a multi-cloud strategy that becomes the backbone of your transformation.

Cloud migration journeys have been slower than anticipated

It may be no surprise but when it comes to expected timelines, there is often a disconnect between a cloud migration strategy and the execution. This means that the promise of true digital transformation has been much slower than originally anticipated. In order to close the gap between the strategy-setters and the practitioners, businesses must identify a process where cloud migration is continuously monitored and adapted to hurdles and feedback along the way.

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