FinVision: Banks must open their thinking to transform, Microsoft says

By Sunniva Kolostyak

Banks and financial institutions looking to become more intelligence-driven through digital transformation must open up the way of thinking and do things differently, according to a panel at FinVision.

Speaking at FinTechOS’s digital conference FinVision, Ed Herman, Global FSI Lead at Microsoft, said every element of how a bank is traditionally run is up for debate, as past successes are not necessarily indicators of successful models in the future.

“If you’re really going to become and intellicence-driven organisation, what’s so critical is to open up the way of thinking that you’re actually going to do,” Herman said during a panel on how banks can become more data-driven. “If banks are going to be in a position to be different, to act different, to provide different experiences to their customers, they’ve got to think bigger and bolder, and with a different form of thinking than they have in the past – really, everything is fair game.”

The Microsoft lead noted that financial institutions looking to become more intelligence are turning to a modern data state to answer questions around accessing, viewing and interrogating data.

The modern data state is founded on three principles to create a data strategy: preparation, which reduces costs; resilience, adapting better to sudden changes; and agility, for faster insights.

More specifically, this will allow banks to implement the concept of digital feedback loops, which will enable a better all-round understanding of their business, capturing the feedback from operations, customers, employees and products to monitor, measure and feed it back into the process to continuously improve processes.

In order to then derive value from the data, banks will need to leverage some of the new technologies and capabilities in the market, using applications and applying agile development methodology.

In turn, those tools will drive the specific benefits a bank could be looking for, whether it is growth, becoming more cost-effective, achieving better customer experiences, or enhancing decision-making.

However, becoming intelligence-driven starts by changing culture and mindsets, Herman said.

“The culture, the belief has to be instilled throughout the organisation itself. There’s everything in between, break down your data silos, share information, look at your data governance, but then at the end, it’s providing intelligence, right, using that data, surfacing that intelligence, and using it for decision-making. In our view, that’s what actually makes it an intelligence-driven organisation, that’s how we help our customers reach that point.”