Raiffeisen Bank – Brochure 2018

INSIDE RBI‘S DIGITAL JOURNEY

Project Partners

EMBRACING THE FINANCIAL WORLD’S DIGITAL REVOLUTION Written by Dale Benton Produced by Kiron Chavda

3

Through a digital transformation, Raiffeisen Bank International continues to navigate the changing technological landscape of the financial industry

T

echnology continues to define, and redefine, the global financial industry. Over the last decade, more and more financial organisations, banks and insurers have had to undergo significant transformations, embracing the ever-changing effect of technological innovation.

As companies turn towards technology to define their strategy and future, the role of the CIO has never been more important than it is today.

“Technology has become the very engine that drives the financial industry,” says Robert Fritz, Group CIO and Managing Director, Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI). “As a CIO, you have to be an enabler, so that the company can take advantage of the opportunities and potential that IT can bring. Not only that, but there is much more responsibility

4

in enabling the company to keep up with and respond to the everchanging customer expectation.”

Servicing about 16.5mn customers across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and being the second largest bank in Austria, RBI has a fairly large footprint, and it is this footprint that Fritz is tasked with significantly enriching through technology.

The journey, Fritz describes, will see RBI move from its traditional centralised approach to a much more synergetic one.

“This journey is centred around adopting synergetic approaches to the business itself,” says Fritz.

“That means looking at our front-end channels and our mobile channels and investigating what the real difference is in customer expectation when it comes to the mobile experience.”

Robert Fritz, Group CIO and Managing Director of Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI)

5

EXPERTS IN MUTUAL SUCCESS Success doesn’t just happen. It’s something we achieve – together.

Such as with our customers: working together with the right experts – supplied by us.

hays.at/it hays.at

HAYS DEVELOPMENT AN ONGOING SUCCESS STORY As a worldwide leading recruitment agency specialising in placing highly-qualified professionals in the banking industry, Hays has built a trusted relationship with Raiffeisen Bank International.

Set apart by our core of over 200 specialist consultants in the financial sector, we recruit across a number of key functions including IT, compliance, finance, risk, finance technology, tax and treasury.

“Hays is a leading recruiter for professionals across global financial services, investment management and investment banking sectors.”

Thousands of candidates are placed by us every year, with approximately 6,000 of our professionals currently working on banking projects in German-speaking countries.

Our work doesn’t stop there. A vital part of our service is post-placement, when we strive to maintain an efficient means of communication with the candidate to ensure a smooth transition into their role.

It’s essential that we remain ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of finance and technology. Colleagues at Hays are given regular training to stay up-todate with all developments in the areas of banking and financial service provision, while trending topics such as digitisation are at the forefront of our strategy.

As part of our overall business in Austria, Hays places specialists in the areas of IT, engineering, life sciences, sales and marketing and retail, as well as finance.

In the fiscal year 2016/17, the group as a whole achieved revenue of over €6bn.

Around the globe, our company employs over 10,000 workers in 33 countries.

Contact Hays Austria on +43153534430 or service@hays.at to find out how we can meet your recruitment needs.

The financial industry is but one of many, if not all global industries that is embracing technology more and more. As RBI develops its end channels and the way it works with customers, Fritz must look at exactly what the customer expects and how they want to engage with the company.

RBI is currently exploring a

8

number of technology solutions designed to embrace the digital experience and leverage synergies with the physical world.

“Not only are we looking at implementing mobile channels through which our customers can interact and engage with us, we are already enabling digital account opening services,” says Fritz. “This

incorporates a number of ways in which customers can verify their identities through these digital channels for e.g. video identification.

“There are many products we are exploring so that we can deliver our services without touching the branch. It’s about taking the customer experience to a new level and offering a digital experience.”

The challenge, then, in seeking ways to implement and offer a digital experience for the customer is ensuring that the solutions and the technologies that RBI implements remain relevant and in line with customer expectation.

With technology there is always a risk – the cost of failure in an industry that is continuously evolving is extremely high. This can breed a culture of implementing technology for the sake of implementing technology, as opposed to implementing what works. Fritz recognises this, noting that there are certain “buzzwords” that currently populate the technology conversation throughout the financial industry.

“We’ve invested a lot into developing the capabilities that a modern financial institution needs and harmonising data across the RBI Group.

That’s a transformation that has been ongoing and will most likely continue in the future” Robert Fritz, Group CIO and Managing Director of Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI)

9

Empower your teams to achieve more with Intelligent Communications Download Microsoft Teams today, and discover how the universal hub for teamwork in Office 365 empowers you to collaborate more efficiently and achieve more.

A new culture of work Over the past 5 years, the workplace has changed dramatically. For the first time in history, we have 5 generations working in the workforce. Not only have organizations, and as a result the workforce, become more global and more networked. The new digital habits that come with both digital transformation as well as the new generations are now considered a natural part of teamwork. This makes that today’s teams within the organizations are driven by passion and purpose, with people preferring to work in a more open and transparent environment, both in person and online. And finally, anytime, anywhere has become the new normal. Today, you can’t imagine not being able to work from home or take a quick conference call in a coffee shop before stepping into a customer meeting next door.

With Microsoft Teams, launched worldwide in March 2017, we provided a digital version of an open working environment to support this new way of working. Just one year later, Teams has evolved to become the ultimate hub for teamwork and has grown significantly both in new capabilities and customer usage. Today, more than 200,000 organizations in 181 markets are using Teams.

Teams delivers chat-based collaboration, meetings, calling, and by July 2018, full enterprise voice features.

All this is underpinned by the Microsoft Graph, allowing for rich AI capabilities, providing us with an enormous amount of intelligence that brings efficiency towards the way we collaborate. As part of Office 365, Teams uniquely delivers these capabilities at scale, with enterprise-grade security and compliance standards to meet the needs of every business.

But what does that mean in practice?

Imagine you have planned a call to discuss a project with a group of people. What if before the call, you can have all the information you need about those people at your fingertips. Have you worked with them before, on what projects, what are their strengths, and do they work with people that you should really invite to the call as well?

The whole team also has immediate access to all the information of the project in one spot so that everybody can prepare for the call more efficiently.

During the call, technology can then take down all the barriers across for example different languages, transcripts the call, records actions and assigns them to the right people. You create and collaborate on the Office files, check out the sales status in the latest PowerBI dashboard or review the product launch plan without having to leave Teams …. And after the call, technology posts the recording and enables you to read through the transcript or skip towards the section that is of interest to you, sends out action points and notes….

That’s the tip of the iceberg of what we call Intelligent communications. It will change the way teams work together, and empower them to achieve more… And the best thing is; it’s not a future vision or technology. It’s here and ready to use.

General Motors is one of the 200,000 organisations that have chosen Office 365 to empower employees with creative communication and collaboration services that spark innovation. Fred Killeen, CTO at GM says the following about Microsoft Teams, the hub for teamwork in Office 365:

“Our mission to transform transportation relies on strong teamwork across every aspect of our business. Microsoft Teams enables our employees to connect across geographical and organizational boundaries through a single place to access all the conversations, files, and content. Teams’ integration with the rest of Office 365 and third-party applications and services makes it easier for our employees to find relevant information and do their best work on their own and as a part of a team.”

Read more about Productivity Register for an on-demand webinar

“Look over the last 30 or 40 years and the first digitisation of payments.

To me, that was the beginning of IT continuously disrupting and evolving the financial industry.

As an organisation, the trick is to be as agile as you can to follow these developments” Robert Fritz, Group CIO and Managing Director of Raiffeisen Bank International AG (RBI)

12

Fritz’s approach is to identify opportunities in which technology can actually enrich customer experience.

“There is a spectrum of buzzwords out there such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, to name just a few,” he says.

“Basically, it’s about identifying and applying technologies that fit into the structure of your footprint.”

As a key player in the CEE financial markets, RBI has always positioned itself closely to its customers. The customer and customer expectation have been the key drivers of change across the industry most of the

times, but for Fritz it is important to remember that the regulators have become and will continue to be an equally significant factor.

“Our transformational journey actually started some years ago when the regulators began implementing strict requirements on the financial industry, particularly from the perspective of transparency and data requirements,” he says. “We’ve invested a lot into developing the capabilities that a modern financial institution needs and harmonising data across the RBI Group. That transformation is ongoing and will

most likely continue in the future.”

Data, of course, is one of the biggest buzzwords in the financial industry, but with the regulatory pressures that come with it, it becomes much more than just that. It becomes an opportunity to learn more about the customer. But as the industry continues to move away from physical branches, Fritz believes it should hold on just a little.

“It’s not an ideal future where we lose physical contact with our customers,” he says. “We need to be in touch with them to understand what their thoughts and needs are, but also

13

to understand what is happening in the industry from their perspective.�

Fritz notes that this approach allows RBI to gain a much more comprehensive picture of what the financial customer wants from an organisation and he admits that in some cases it actually opens the company’s eyes to solutions or opportunities that it hadn’t considered.

The challenge then becomes one of turning data into value, both for RBI and the customer.

Fritz approaches this by creating a dialogue between various areas of the organisation. This sees business leaders, IT teams, marketing and operations sitting together and breaking down the information they receive from customers and understanding exactly how to implement it into future decision making.

Technology has always been and will continue to be an everevolving beast, and so is this journey of discovery that RBI is currently undergoing.

14

RBI is a key player in the CEE financial markets

“The question really is, will this journey ever end?” says Fritz. “Look over the last 30 or 40 years and the first digitisation of payments. To me, that was the beginning of IT continuously disrupting and evolving the financial industry. For both an organisation and a manager, the trick is to be as agile as you can to follow these developments.”

As the financial industry continues to be redefined by technology, Fritz believes that as its influence continues to grow, some could argue

that it could become a technology industry itself. This in turn would lead to the development of new industrial ecosystems, and for Fritz it is crucial that companies find their roles in them.

“Defining your role will help you become a much more relevant player in the market,” he says. “I am sure that, by actively embracing the future, the RBI Group can root itself into a key role within these ecosystems across our footprint so that we can truly safeguard its leading position in our region.”

15

Raiffeisen Bank, International AG Am Stadtpark 9, Vienna, Austria, 1030 +43-1-71707-0 communications@rbinternational.com www.rbinternational.com