Disruption Is The Only Constant

Digital transformation has played a crucial role in modernising trends in financial institutions across the country. The second BW Businessworld BFSI CXO Summit 2018 discussed various issues facing industry and unravelled solutions with respect to concerns about cyber security and risk management in digital banking. 

“Change is said to be the only constant, but now we believe that disruption is the only constant,” said Mritunjay Mahapatra, DMD, Digital Business and New Business, SBI. “Change with great velocity is termed disruption. In the digital age, old and comfortable business models are disrupted and this spurs innovation and new products. Today, governance has been impacted. The advent of a digital culture has resulted in market disruption and open banking is the way to move forward,” said Mahapatra as he made a special presentation at the summit.

“As a practitioner, we as consumers have evolved in the last two decades, and now everyone is inspired to traverse the technology journey. Ever since traditional business practices have shifted over to ‘digital’, social media has brought in many self-service tools,” said Gururaj Rao during his presentation on the topic ‘Fintech, Mobile and New Platforms are driving a Digital Transformation of Banking’.

While concluding his special presentation, Rao laid down a roadmap of digital transformation. He said that the first step in the journey was to re-draw and re-imagine the architecture of the business. As businesses switch to a digitised system, it is essential for them to review their customer segments and provide them with channels most comfortable in driving user ability and understanding digital footprints of customers.

Phil Scalon, Head of Technology, Asia Pacific & Japan Solace Corp.; N. Kamakodi, MD & CEO, City Union Bank; Anand Ramamoorthy, MD, South Asia, McAfee; and Rajesh Shetty, MD, Enterprise Business, Cisco India shared the stage as they, too, gave of their knowledge to the audience.

The event also saw panel discussions on cyber security and risk in financial services.  “Cyber hygiene is key to better cyber security,” noted the first panel. In cyber security, personal data need to have a high level of security and a forthcoming data protection framework would be a step in that direction. Data protection laws are being formulated and we have to see how the technology landscape will evolve to handle personal information.

In digitisation, BFSI is constantly progressing toward re-shaping the future of banking in India. Technologies are playing important roles in creating infrastructure to provide digital products and services as customer experience has turned out to be the prime focus for banks. At present, $50 billion have been invested in technologies for financial services used in addressing customers’ needs. The second panel agreed that banks demand technologies to deliver a unique customer experience.

Security has been one of the biggest concerns for businesses planning to switch to hybrid “cloud”. The path to public cloud computing can be quite scary for enterprises worried about potential threats on a public network spilling over to their network.

The third panel at the summit discussed the importance of leveraging cloud and data centres to financial institutions for business benefits, and hybrid cloud according to the panel could prove to be more efficient for banks and financial institutions.

Wallets and e-commerce provide cashbacks and now digital payments have become the trend. Now you can choose to pay and receive digital payments from anywhere, anytime. According to the fourth panel discussion on ‘The Power of Technology: Payments, Biometrics and Mobile Wallets’, 50 per cent of payments are done digitally, 25 per cent through credit/debit cards and 25 per cent is open to e-wallets to exploit.

Fintech services in the last few years have been a tremendous boon to banking and financial services. Fintech companies are fast filling services and business gaps in banking; and banks and financial services companies are increasingly seeking out fintech partnerships to penetrate newer business areas. The last panel discussion of the conference on ‘The New World of Finance: Fintech, Blockchain and More’ elaborated the effects of fintechs on financial services.

Blockchain is also increasingly being adopted by financial companies, particularly banks. Trade finance and bill discounting are some of the areas where banks are working on blockchain technologies. Blockchain technologies are also useful when there is duplication of data such as KYC data, etc.

The future of banking depends on evolution in thinking and acceptability of new technologies and trends. Ninety five per cent of banks, insurance and financial institutions look forward to working with fintech startups to disrupt and explore opportunities within the Internet of Things.

Technology presentations throughout the Second BW BFSI CXO Summit 2018 from companies working to provide endpoint solutions in cyber security and influencing the digital workforce were among the highlights of the day-long event.

UiPath, CommScope, Comvault India, Trend Micro India, MapMyIndia, Finisar, Akamai Technologies, Energos Technologies, Delta Power Solutions, Gemalto, Resurgent India, Tufin, Dell EMC and Xerox India were some of the brands which extended support to create awareness among the BFSI community regarding the products that can make a difference in digital evolution.

The summit was held on 31 May at Grand Hyatt, Mumbai, and came to a successful end with a valedictory session conducted by Sanjay Gurjar, MD & Head, Transaction Banking, India and Nepal, Standard Chartered Bank.