SunTec

  The top three global banks, which are the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China have a combined income of £7.12 trillion, a vast revenue for only three companies. Traditional banks have almost had a monopoly on the market for the longest time now across the globe. Following the successful disruption of other industries using technological advances, e.g Netflix to video content, Uber to public transport; non-traditional financial services (FS) companies are smelling blood in these very profitable waters, and are looking for ways to infiltrate this market. After a long period of undisturbed calm and tranquility, the old, unchanging banking industry, like many such industries in the last five years, is finally showing signs of disruption. The banking space is growing with the influx of third parties like Virgin Money, and challenger banks such as Monzo, Atom and Tide using technology to infiltrate the lucrative banking m...

  New regulations such as GDPR, PSD2, and MiFID2 are challenging financial organisations to adapt faster to the digital world. However, they are increasingly seen as burdens as businesses race toward compliance. As banks and financial organisations speed up to adapt to the demands of these new regulations, they are at risk of satisfying themselves with surface, superficial changes without truly seeing the necessary, radical shift they need: a true digitalisation. In this digital world, customer experience and business models are changing and evolving at a head-spinning pace. Faced with demanding regulations urging them to adapt to this changing landscape, banks are faced with a choice. They can become a simple utility provider, working silently in the background to provide a smooth, painless customer experience. Or they can become a customer owner, fully in control of the customer experience. It is the difference between selling coffee beans (utility provider, in the background but...

  The advent of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the internet of things (IoT) have transformed the way in which the world operates. Customers now demand personalised experiences and firms that haven’t digitised their businesses must transform in order to compete in this new world. One industry which has found it more difficult to adapt is banking , as many banks are saddled with rigid and core legacy application systems.  Large banks and financial institutions continue to remain slow to adopt these emerging technologies which is preventing them from delivering an optimal customer experience, driving growth and keeping themselves relevant in a dynamic market. Banks must modernise their legacy banking systems in order to compete in this evolving marketplace.  A strategy that can help banks modernise their operation is adopting a modular approach to enable an easier digital transformation. While there are many options to modernise core ...

  A normal human being thinks rationally. The human being’s mind processes more than 50,000 thoughts per day along with a multitude of actions and decisions. Many of these are conscious and some are subconscious. But, all these actions, thoughts, and decisions have something in common – they all lead to a goal. This fundamental truth – goals drive actions – will be the key to any organization’s success in the future. This will be true for transaction-intensive industries such as banking. Through a series of three blogs, I would like to point out why I think that Goal-Based Banking is the future. Let us step back and start with the example of Sara. Sara goes for a jog daily and meditates every alternate day because she wants to be healthy. Or let us take Mark. He enrolls in an online full-stack developer course because he wants to get a better job. Being healthy and getting a better job are the goals that drive Sara and Mark to decide and take action. Or in other words, these action...

  From time immemorial, people have  trusted  banks for the following – 1) Storing their money safely; 2) Facilitating monetary transactions for their daily life; 3) Helping grow their wealth, and 4) Providing access to an easy credit system when needed. Over the last few years, like a trusted friend, banks have also added one more dimension to the relationship it shares with its customers – becoming an advisor who will help them meet their financial needs. The role of the banks in these five dimensions means that the banks are present across an exceptionally large part of their customers’ lives. This also puts the banks in an enviable position – they are aware of what transactions their customers make, more than any technological giant, telecom operator, or retail institution. Plotting these transactions over a customer’s lifetime can help the banks create a wonderful insight-propelled view of why a customer makes any transaction. In addition, the banks also have two mor...

  Like I pointed out in my last blog, for many banks, the journey has already begun, yet it is still in its nascent stages. In the last of my series of blogs on Goal Based Banking, I outline the key steps banks should take to succeed in this journey. A bank, like any organization , is built up of four components – people, process, technology, and customer. Each of these components will have to undergo a radical change to make sure that banks are truly aligned to the goals of a customer, and do not focus on the transactions alone. To achieve this, banks will have to focus on the following four aspects. Put the customer at the center Today’s banks are product-centric. To cater to the unique needs of each customer, banks have a huge number of products and services in their product catalog.  It is not uncommon for banks to have more than a thousand varieties of their products and services listed on their website. These banks are mostly product-driven, and they focus mostly on the ...

  Enterprises today are looking to minimize their costs wherever possible to maintain their competitive advantage. One of the most important steps in this direction is to move the IT operations from physical infrastructure to virtual infrastructure. This allows them to further improve the efficiency of their operations and, at the same time, reduce the costs significantly. SaaS is today empowering businesses globally. In the last few years, the popularity of  SaaS platforms  has increased manifolds, and it is quickly becoming the preferred option for businesses looking to virtualize their operations. Earlier, it was believed that the SaaS model is meant only for small and medium businesses as big corporations prefer in-house IT infrastructure. But as the benefits of SaaS have become known, even the big corporates are adopting SaaS as their preferred deployment model. What is SaaS? SaaS or Software-as-a-Service is a cloud-based technology that enables software developers t...