FinTech Magazine - May 2021

May 2021 | fintechmagazine.com

Innovation labs FIND OUT

Technology: The future of data sharing READ NOW

Payment Solutions: The rise of biometrics LEARN MORE

Smita Gupta discusses why Finastra’s vision of improving the world through fintech remains undiminished FIND OUT MORE

“THE FUTURE OF FINANCE IS OPEN” FEATURING:

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The FinTech Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

WILL GIRLING DEPUTY EDITOR

JOANNA ENGLAND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

PRODUCTION EDITOR

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

CREATIVE TEAM

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JANET BRICE

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON

KIERAN WAITE

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG TYLER LIVINGSTONE

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

EVELYN HOWAT

PROJECT DIRECTORS

JAKE MEGEARY MICHAEL BANYARD JOE PALLISTER

RICHARD TURNER

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITOR'S LETTER

Are you ready for the digital currency revolution?

Until recently, I’m willing to bet that the idea of digital currencies generally evoked decentralised examples like Bitcoin in the popular imagination. The Bank of England’s task force to explore the viability of its own Central Bank Digital Currency could change all that

“It’s unlikely that cash will ever disappear while there remains even a small demand for it”

FINTECH MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Designed to co-exist with all extant forms of fiat currency currently in circulation, CBDCs have the potential to be a powerful force for financial inclusion. Not requiring a bank account to access in the same way that physical cash does not, digital currencies could eventually embody the promise of a modern, tech-based economy.

At the same time, however, their adoption around the world would bring an unprecedented era of government oversight to everyday expenditure: every purchase or service rendered would be logged and recorded. In such a scenario, would data security be sufficiently embedded and implemented to placate consumers anxious about this loss of anonymity?

If not, what are the alternatives? It’s unlikely that cash will ever disappear while there remains even a small demand for it. Elsewhere, decentralised cryptocurrencies may start to gain greater utility outside of being an ‘en vogue’ investment asset. Furthermore, with naturally scarce examples like Bitcoin already being touted by some as gold’s successor as a store of value, we may be on the cusp of an unprecedented digitalisation movement within the global economy.

Clearly, digital currencies in some form or another are the future of finance. The only questions remaining for businesses and individuals are ‘What will it be like?’ and ‘How far will it go?’

WILL GIRLING

william.girling@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Global News 16 People Moves 18 Timeline: The collapse

of Greensill Bank 20 Legend:

John Templeton 22 Five Mins With:

Gordon McHarg

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Redefining finance for good with technology

Finserv change management from a CEO perspective

Finastra

Fintech

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Banking

Business Intelligence should be central to banking strategy

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Santander UK

Creating a digital verison of corporate and commerical banking

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Banque Saudi Fransi

Local banking done differently

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COVID, cashless, and convenience: The rise of biometrics

Leveraging today's tech for tomorrow's well-being

Payment Solutions

BCU

READ NOW

FinTech Magazine is proud to launch a celebration of women in Global FinTech.

Brought to you in association with:

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities in FinTech

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Technology

Open Finance: The future of data sharing

128

BKN301

San Marino’s first neo bank leveraged by blockchain

140 Top 10

Fintech innovation labs

152

BetKing

Bringing a data-centric perspective to gaming

BIG PICTURE

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April 2021

UK and EU strike a deal on financial regulation Brussels, Belgium

Following months of stagnant negotiations, the EU and a newly independent UK have finally brokered an agreement on the regulation of financial services.

This is a positive step as both factions seek to clarify the new market-access status quo. © THE FINANCIAL TIMES

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THE BRIEF “What changed in 2020, and continues to evolve today, is the needs of businesses serving these consumers”

BY THE NUMBERS FinTech community poll from Linkedin with 502 participants

With some bank branches closing down for good, what is your response?

92%

I prefer online banking

Anders la Cour

CEO and Co-Founder, Banking Circle  READ MORE

8%

Branches are still superior

“Physical money – notes, coins and checks – has outlived its usability” Vikrant Singh Tomar Founder and CTO, Fluent.ai 

READ MORE

“Open Finance is all about empowering customers”

78% of all transactions in Romania are cash

$1bn+ $2.34trn Brex and Figure Revenue of Technologies the global are the fastest banking industry fintechs to reach in 2020 unicorn ($1bn+ value) status – approximately one year each

Jack Wilson

Head of Policy and Regulatory Affairs, TrueLayer  READ MORE

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May 2021

Did you know 58% of Americans have less than $1k in personal savings.

VIRTUAL CARDS What are you?

I’m a mobile payment solution that’s activated solely through your smartphone.

But I just bought a new wallet…

Get with the times! The only wallets you need today are digital.

I’m not sure about that; it’s a replica of that one Samuel L. Jackson had in Pulp Fiction.

Does it help your physical cards manage subscriptions, control spending, or fight fraud?

No. How do virtual cards do that?

Using two-factor ID, the card can be frozen after each transaction, rendering it useless for criminals.

Sounds handy, but my wallet’s still pretty funny.

It might work for Samuel. Anyone less cool than him would be better off checking out what virtual cards can do for them.

I guess everything is going online these days. You can even order McDonalds and get it delivered from an app.

Exactly!

Do you know what they call a quarter pounder with cheese in France? ...

 ATOM BANK One of the UK’s original digital bank raised £40m with the intention of prepares for an IPO in 2022/23.

 LLOYDS BANK Committing $4bn to partnerships with fintech firms, the bank appears to have its sights set on finance’s future.

 GREENSILL BANK The bank’s collapse has become a crisis throughout affected German communities, with reports of over $600m in municipality money lost.

 TENCENT Following a rapid 8.4% drop in Tencent’s stock price, the company reportedly lost $62bn of its value. According to some estimates this has made its financial services worth “practically zero”

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES

 STRIPE Reached an all-timehigh value of $95bn.

It is currently the most valuable startup in the US.

MAY21

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GLOBAL NEWS 1

USA

Jack Dorsey launches in-house bank through Square Inc Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has stated that his fintech venture Square will be launching a new, in-house bank. The move is apparently rooted in Dorsey’s operational philosophy: remaining nimble in a highly competitive environment is important, and he is confident Square Financial Bank will allow that.

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THE PHILIPPINES

Cryptocurrency to become mainstream in the Philippines The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred on an accelerated interest in crypto-related tech, as digital payments infrastructure becomes evermore ingrained. The Philippines is reportedly now at the global forefront for high-speed cryptocurrency adoption.

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May 2021

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UNITED KINGDOM

NatWest buys back £1.1bn shares from UK Treasury Emphasising the degree to which the effects of the 2008 financial crisis are still with us, NatWest has bought back a percentage of the £15bn worth of shares owned by the UK Treasury. However, the buy-back to privatisation may come later rather than sooner.

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AUSTRALIA

Cross-border payments fintech Airwallex valued at $2.6bn Continuing a period of “hypergrowth” that started in 2020, Australian cross-border payments pioneer Airwallex has reached a value of US$2.6bn.

It’s a significant achievement for the company – it reached unicorn status in 2019 and has managed to almost tripled its value in two years.

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SAUDI ARABIA

Islamic fintech market projected to reach US$128bn by 2025 The 2021 Global Islamic Fintech Report has concluded that the sector is on the rise globally, with Saudi Arabia taking a prominent position. The country’s sector is projected to be worth $47.5bn by 2025, which, if correct, would represent a 167% increase on today.

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PEOPLE MOVES AMANDA BLANC FROM: AVIVA TO: AVIVA WAS: GROUP CEO NOW: GROUP CEO & WOMEN IN FINANCE CHARTER CHAMPION

Amanda Blanc became the Group CEO of Aviva in July 2020, and her ongoing success is an inspiration as women struggle to attain parity with their male counterparts in business.

As such, her appointment as Aviva’s ‘Women in Finance Charter Champion’ will be focused on breaking down the barriers that impede women from entering talent pipelines. This is something the company itself strongly believes in; it aims to have 40% of its senior leadership consisting of women by 2024.

Blanc herself has enjoyed a prestigious and varied career at some of the world’s leading organisations, including EY, AXA, and Zurich, as well as insurtech Trōv.

In addition to a BA in Modern History from the University of Liverpool (1986 to 1989) and an MBA from Leeds University Business School (1996 to 1999), Blanc has also been an active Board Member for the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) since January 2020.

" There are still far too many barriers blocking women’s progress in financial services.

We’ve got to work quicker and harder" 16

May 2021

WILLIAM NAPIER FROM: CHECKOUT TO: ENVESTNET | YODLEE WAS: PRODUCT LEAD NOW: P RODUCT DIRECTOR, OPEN BANKING EMEA

FRERK-MALTE FELLER FROM: PROSPA TO: LINKLY WAS: ADVISOR NOW: CEO

Napier’s move to Envestnet | Yodlee represents the latest step in an exciting career that’s involved positions at leading fintechs (Checkout.com) and FSIs (Experian).

His particular focus on Open Banking – currently one of finance’s most promising trends – should play to his strengths, which include computer science, future commerce, and product/software development. Napier will take charge of Envestnet | Yodlee’s EMEAbased expansion.

Jason O'Shaughnessy, Head of International Business at Envestnet | Yodlee, called Napier “an excellent hire” who will provide “invaluable to driving [the company’s] expansion in EMEA markets.”

Feller’s latest appointment with Australian fintech Linkly has apparently come at an opportune time. The company is reportedly planning a growth campaign that will require his skills at the helm.

Previously an executive for PayPal, eBay, HP, and Afterpay, Feller recognises Linkly as an “innovative” and “trailblazing” startup.

“Merchants of all sizes have had a difficult year and it’s not over yet,” he said. “But we’re committed to supporting them by improving their payment journey; providing the best solutions that allow them to grow revenue and increase efficiency.” fintechmagazine.com

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TIMELINE THE COLLAPSE OF

GREENSILL BANK When Greensill Bank went into administration on 8 March, it sent shockwaves through communities as the scale of its demise became apparent.

With the efficacy of the UK’s FCA now even being called into question for failing to protect investors and businesses, we review the chain of events that have shaken European finance

1 March

2 March

Credit Suisse pulls the plug

Market developments force GAM’s hand

Greensill’s distinctive supply chain finance loans, packaged into securities managed by Credit Suisse, hit a snag when GFG Alliance defaults on a US$140m loan citing COVID-19related economic downturn.

With Greensill now treading water, Swiss asset management firm GAM opts to freeze the company’s receivables funds. GAM cites ‘market developments’ and media coverage relating to supply chain finance as its reasons.

In response, Credit Suisse closes funds worth $10bn. Concerned about Greensill’s close link to steel tycoon Sanjeev Gupta, the bank is forced to sell the assets.

Community anxiety regarding job losses begins to mount. Gupta gives assurances that GFG Alliance’s funding is adequate.

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May 2021

3 March

4 March

8-12 March

BaFin suspends Greensill

GFG Alliance halts repayments

Greensill goes into administration

With BaFin going so far as to accuse Greensill Bank of criminal negligence, GFG Alliance’s reliance on Greensill - a relationship long held in suspicion by UK and German regulators - is laid bare.

After the weekend of 6 & 7 March has passed, Greensill reports the following Monday that it has gone into administration.

50,000 jobs, including 5,000 in the UK steel industry, are now at risk. BaFin, the German financial watchdog, orders Greensill Bank to freeze payments. It suspects that Greensill is on the verge of becoming over-indebted.

In Germany, the bank holds approximately $5.5bn in assets.

Subsequently, Gupta orders that repayments to Greensill Capital are to cease immediately.

After 11 years in operation supporting the manufacturing sector, the company’s filing for insolvency is a devastating blow.

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LEGEND

John

TEMPLETON

L

iving through practically every major event of the last century, Sir John Marks Templeton’s financial and investment acumen made him both one of the world’s richest people and one of the most generous philanthropists in history.

Born in Winchester, Tennessee, Templeton attended Yale University – paying his way using poker winnings (he was a skilled player) – and graduated in 1934 near the top of his class. With the world still in the throes of the Great Depression, he travelled to the UK to attend Oxford University where he was a student of Benjamin Graham, later known as the ‘father of value investing’.

Templeton learned quickly; in a masterful display of the ‘buy low, sell high’ ethos, he purchased 100 shares of each company on the NYSE valued at less than $1. Reportedly, he did so at the dawn of World War II, which soon generated him a sizable profit as US industry subsequently began to accelerate.

Now a significantly wealthy man, Templeton reached billionaire status through his pioneering use of globally diversified mutual funds. Establishing his own Templeton Growth Fund in 1954 (now part of Franklin Templeton), he created specific industry funds for new sectors like nuclear power and electronics, as well investing in

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May 2021

$1bn

Amount donated to charity

95yrs 1912 2008

The 20th century’s greatest global stock picker emerging markets like Japan.

In 1999, Templeton was hailed as ‘the 20th century’s greatest global stock picker’, a reputation he earned not only for his results but also his perspective and attitude to investment. Usually only picking stocks that he considered undervalued or otherwise with solid long-term profitability, Templeton favoured fundamental analysis instead of technical, believed strongly in ‘going against the grain’ of public opinion, and even partially attributed his fortune to staying positive, relaxed and disciplined at all times.

Over the course of his life, Templeton donated over $1bn to charitable causes. In 1987, he was made a Knight Bachelor in the UK for services to philanthropy. He also created the John Templeton Foundation, an inter-religious organisation dedicated to spiritual understanding through scientific research. It was for the latter that Time named him as one of the world’s ‘100 Most Influential People’ in 2007.

These achievements hint at Templeton’s contrarian character: despite being one of the world’s richest men, he spurned consumerism, lived frugally, and generally avoided luxury. Truly, Templeton was a skilled and complex individual, and a finance industry legend in every sense.

" Bull markets are born on pessimism, grown on skepticism, mature on optimism and die on euphoria. The time of maximum pessimism is the best time to buy, and the time of maximum optimism is the best time to sell" © TEMPLETON WORLD CHARITY FOUNDATION fintechmagazine.com

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FIVE MINUTES WITH...

GORDON McHARG CEO, AUTOREK We all know the companies, but what about the people behind them?

Here, we learn more about McHarg’s background, what ‘success’ looks like to him, and why resilience is among his top life lessons.

running any business, whether selling cakes or software, requires hard work, long days and 100% commitment.

AutoRek has been in business for 25 years. We have come through the dot.com crash, 9/11 market disruption, the global financial crisis of 2007/2008 and now we are all living through a global pandemic.

You can have ambitious growth plans but must always build resilience, as there will always be unexpected events which are outside of your control.

You can’t do it all on your own; business is a team game.

Q. WHAT DOES 'SUCCESS' LOOK LIKE TO YOU?

» When I was 14 years old I got my first Q. PLEASE STATE YOUR TOP THREE LIFE LESSONS.

» At an early age, I spent time working

in the family bakery business which involved early mornings and long days, often six days a week. I naively thought the tech sector would be much easier.

I soon found out that setting up and

computer, a Sinclair ZX81. Since then, technology has been my passion. I am fortunate to be doing something that I am passionate about and to be working with a great team of people.

Q. WHICH ACTIVITY ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO WHEN THE PANDEMIC ENDS?

» Simply meeting up with friends, having a good meal and a glass or two of wine!

Q. IS THERE ONE ITEM YOU COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT?

» Not really, but I guess those who know me would say my phone.

“ YOU CAN’T DO IT ALL ON YOUR OWN; BUSINESS IS A TEAM GAME” 22

May 2021

Q. WHAT INSPIRES YOU IN FINTECH TODAY?

» Innovation and the pace of change.

Technologies such as AI/ML/RPA/ blockchain, etc, are disrupting the global financial services sector creating huge opportunities for companies of all sizes.

Long-established and outdated systems or ways of working must be replaced, otherwise organisations will be left behind. Data management will be a critical factor in their success and in some cases, survival.

“ DATA MANAGEMENT WILL BE A CRITICAL FACTOR IN [...]

SUCCESS AND IN SOME CASES, SURVIVAL” fintechmagazine.com

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Bringing the Community to LIVE Broadcast from London to the World

October

12th - 14th 2021 A BizClik Media Group Brand

Featuring:

Keynote Speakers LIVE Roundtable Q&As Networking Lunch Inspirational Presentations

Over 5 Stages:

FinTech Stage Banking Stage Digital Payments Stage InsurTech Stage Tech Expo Stage

EARLY BIRD TICKETS

Creating Digital Communities

FINASTRA

Finastra: Redefining

good with WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

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May 2021

FINASTRA

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FINASTRA

Smita Gupta describes the changes that COVID-19 has brought to Finastra and why its vision of improving the world through technology is undiminished

I

f the pandemic has demonstrated anything, it’s that fintech can truly be a force for societal good and an anchor that provides surety during even the most uncertain times. Although this assessment is no surprise to industry leader Finastra, the potential for positive change has, in its view, reached a pivotal moment. Accelerated digital transformation around the world is widening the company’s scope to shape and be a part of the financial services industry’s new reality in every sense, from enabling broader financial inclusion to investing in the environment and developing its renowned FusionFabric.cloud platform.

Smita Gupta, Global Head of Platform Ecosystem, Developer and Marketplaces Marketing, returned to speak with us about how Finastra is helping to redefine the future of finance.

Having joined the company in 2016 - just as Open Banking started to gain momentum - Gupta relates that it was always evident that Finastra offered a very different proposition in the fintech world: “I saw a tremendous opportunity to build an entire APAC marketing organisation from scratch and bring together several innovative digital marketing technologies.” Starting out as the Chief Marketing Officer for Finastra in 28

May 2021

the APAC region (based in Singapore), she relocated to London in 2019 and developed her current role from there. Bringing a wealth of experience from some of the largest tech companies in the world, Gupta knows the enterprise value not only of Finastra’s solutions and software, but also its culture.

“Finastra is a fintech that values diversity,” she states, "Everything we do encourages an open culture and an environment of innovation.”

Finastra’s belief that fintech can work “to redefine finance for good” was fully put to the test in 2020, and it has succeeded in validating this stance. In May, the company

“ Finastra is a global fintech that values diversity, both in terms of its people and the experience we bring to the table” SMITA GUPTA

GLOBAL HEAD OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM, DEVELOPER AND MARKETPLACES MARKETING, FINASTRA

FINASTRA

Smita Gupta, Global Head of Platform Ecosystem, Developer and Marketplaces Marketing fintechmagazine.com

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FINASTRA

Finastra: World Leader in Financial Technology

“ I saw a tremendous opportunity to shape the APAC marketing organisation and invest in digital technologies that enable us, with new insights and innovative services, to address customers’ increasingly-sophisticated desires and needs. We have transformed marketing to become the headlights of the business” SMITA GUPTA

GLOBAL HEAD OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM, DEVELOPER AND MARKETPLACES MARKETING, FINASTRA

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May 2021

launched a solution to support the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act, and created a virtual lending platform to help process loans for small businesses as part of the US Government’s Payment Protection Programme (PPP).

Elsewhere, Gupta adds, Finastra has been keenly exploring new ‘finance for good’ alternatives, many of which, because of pandemic-related digital transformation acceleration, have been brought forward a lot sooner. “What might have taken years has had to be completed in months. Businesses have seen a reduction in cash transactions in favour of contactless payment methods, and cloud technology has enabled businesses to keep running by allowing employees to work from home.” The latter development has applications not just relating to business continuity but also reduced carbon emissions through less staff commuting.

During the peak of the pandemic, Finastra also operated remotely, with over 90% of its

FINASTRA

employees working at home, enabling it to roll out mission-critical tech for banks and financial institutions while also prioritising the wellbeing of its people.

If one attempted to summarise Finastra succinctly, then ‘unlocking new digital ecosystem opportunities, fuelling smart growth, and future-proofing organisations’ would be a good start. A critical pillar of its capability to fulfill these goals is FusionFabric.cloud, an open and synergistic developer platform and app marketplace for the finance industry. “We're encouraging collaboration and enabling banks to access innovation faster, such as via sprint programmes and 100-day jumpstart initiatives,” says Gupta. A champion of Open Banking, Finastra’s solutions can help accelerate innovation by utilising APIs that allow disparate products and modules to combine in refreshing new ways. With capabilities that extend from retail and corporate banking to payments, lending, and capital markets, FusionFabric.cloud can facilitate:

The company isn’t just enabling change for others; things are evolving at Finastra, too. Placing increased emphasis on integrated digital marketing and leveraging data analytics to personalise products to customers’ needs, Finastra is also considering new ways of operating internally.

“We’re reimagining the workplaces of the

TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM, DEVELOPER AND MARKETPLACES MARKETING INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES LOCATION: LONDON

EXECUTIVE BIO

• Collaboration • Accelerated innovation and product time to market • Enhanced customer engagement • Better decision-making through data insights • Optimised workflows • New revenue streams

SMITA GUPTA

Global Marketing Executive, influential thought leader, keynote speaker and pioneering advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. Known for high-impact global marketing transformations in fintech, SaaS and cloud technology sectors as a pacesetting leader who reinvents organisations into future power houses for sustained relevance and growth.

As a visionary change maker, has led global teams to deliver business growth through new models of platform and marketplaces development.

Currently, Smita leads Finastra’s global platform ecosystem, applications and marketplaces marketing function.

She has created a commercially driven, diverse global marketing organization focused on innovation, go-to-market strategies, partnerships, revenue generation and growth.

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FINASTRA

2017

Year founded

$1.9bn Revenue

8,600+ Number of employees

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May 2021

FINASTRA

“ We're encouraging collaboration between banks and fintechs to help them access innovation faster” SMITA GUPTA

GLOBAL HEAD OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM, DEVELOPER AND MARKETPLACES MARKETING, FINASTRA

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FINASTRA

future based on our employees’ feedback,” says Gupta. “80% of our employees favour a ‘two-plus’ model for returning to the office, where they will work two days in the office, two days at home, and then decide with their managers where to spend the fifth day. Furthermore, we’ve invested heavily in collaboration tools, committed to 50% less travel in the future, and have galvanised staff by offering both flexible and uncapped holidays.” Keeping up morale, she reasons, is key, and utilising these modern working

FINASTRA: PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST Women's History Month throughout March 2021 drew a lot of attention both to the success and the struggles of women in modern business. Gupta remarks that, for Finastra, every month is an opportunity to celebrate diversity:

DID YOU KNOW...

“We believe it is key to support people, whatever their background, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, to feel safe, have a voice and an opportunity to reach their full potential at work, at home, and in society.

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“Finastra is careful to ensure that whatever we do is inclusive and empowering. Examples include our recent hackathon to tackle gender bias in artificial intelligence through FusionFabric.cloud. As a company we’re extremely vocal and supportive about equality and inclusion; innovation and creativity often result from the more diversity you bring to the table.”

May 2021

FINASTRA

“ The future of finance is open: open technology, open platforms, open collaboration and open innovation” SMITA GUPTA

GLOBAL HEAD OF PLATFORM ECOSYSTEM, DEVELOPER AND MARKETPLACES MARKETING, FINASTRA

practices are invaluable for “supporting colleagues in the most abnormal of times.”

Alongside its own transformation, Finastra is helping to usher in a new vision for the world of finance. Dedicated to serving and making a difference to the communities within which it operates, the company insists on an equivalent level of commitment from its partners. “The future of finance is open: open technology, open platforms, open collaboration and open innovation,” states Gupta. “The fintechs

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FINASTRA

FusionFabric cloud - Overview Video

DID YOU KNOW...

GREEN BANKING

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Fintech innovators like Finastra are providing finance’s global community with the opportunity to change the world and help solve some of its biggest challenges. Not least of these is climate change. Finastra’s partnership with Climate First Bank(in organization) is a good example of how these values can align.

Climate First Bank (in organization) provides environmentally-focused investment programmes and solar loan options, as well as operating with complete carbon neutrality and working with local communities to provide ‘green infrastructure’.

May 2021

Finastra is contributing cloud-based banking systems through its Fusion Phoenix product, and other tech-based solutions. “Through the digitisation of banking processes or the digitalisation of financial services, our solutions can aid the reduction of employee travel, paper consumption or energy, and we are committed to reducing emissions within our sector, in collaboration with our customers and partners,” said Chris Zingo, SVP and GM of Americas Field Operations, in a press release.

“I encourage everybody to look at this interesting case study to find out how cloudification and digital transformation are going to be the key to the future of finance,” added Gupta.

FINASTRA

and banks we work with embrace both this mantra and our platform. It’s truly open collaboration.” Throughout 2021 and beyond, she foresees renewed focus around issues such as financial inclusion in underserved areas, support for global trade, and the continued development of cloud’s industry applications. “I’m also passionate that marketing, as a function, can be at the forefront of this change. We are at an extremely pivotal moment: the pandemic

has brought the future forward, and with it has come accelerated digitalisation. Finastra has a chance to truly redefine finance for good.” As a final plea to the industry, Gupta concludes by encouraging all organisations to embrace collaboration and inclusion, which fosters innovation and, in turn, creates new opportunities for everyone.”

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FINTECH

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May 2021

FINTECH

FINSERV CHANGE MANAGEMENT FROM A CEOS PERSPECTIVE Unfazed by the impact of the pandemic, the CEOs of TransferGo and Banking Circle explain how they’ve adapted

Here, their CEO’s tell us more about the innovation curve, 2020’s impact on fintech and, of course, remote working.

Q. In your opinion, have the events of

WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

2020 reshaped fintech’s trajectory?

What has changed and what has the potential to change in the near future?

ut of all the changes the pandemic brought to the world, from the shortage of toilet paper to the overcrowded hospitals, the adjustments in fintech have been comparatively unseen.

Yet the operational challenges of the past year, such as working from home, have also brought growth and opportunity to many companies.

TransferGo is a London-based fintech that specialises in digital remittances and is one of the world’s fastest-growing money transfer services. The company feels that the pandemic has merely advanced the inevitable purpose of fintech.

Banking Circle offers simple and modern payment solutions for businesses and argues that there are substantial benefits to the hybrid working model.

Anders la Cour: “2020 will be remembered as the year all industries underwent huge digital transformations. For financial services it was no different. As a result of the pandemic, the drive to online and on-demand financial services has soared and, as communities turned away from physical outlets and cash, they moved quickly to other e-commerce spaces. Fintechs and payments businesses, such as Stripe and Paysafe, have flourished over the past year as their offering and speedy checkout services meet the new and growing demands of their merchants servicing increasingly savvy and online consumers.

“What changed in 2020, and continues to evolve today, are the needs of businesses serving these consumers. For those working

O

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How Citizens Bank Digitally Transformed Credit Card Fraud and Claims Processes In an era where customer experience can make or break your financial institution, banks have to optimize and automate or risk getting left behind.

Tuesday 25th May

REGISTER NOW

Featuring Guest Speakers From:

FINTECH

in finance, banking and payments, keeping up with customer demand is not a new challenge but it continues to shape the industry, especially in today’s digital world.

Expectations for real-time payments, particularly cross border, combined with offering a range of services from lending through to foreign exchange, are all very real but incredibly difficult demands to stay on top of. B2B payments need to be processed quickly, transparently and at low cost.”

Daumantas Dvilinskas: “2020 was a turbulent year. But even before the outbreak, it was clear that fintech would play a pivotal role in the future of the financial services industry. The pandemic has accelerated this trend. Fintech will now be at the heart of all modern financial services, providing personalised, on-demand experiences that reach all customers, no matter their circumstance or location.

Moving forward, there is no doubt that the influence of fintech will reach traditional banks and financial institutions, who will expedite their own digital transformation plans to remain competitive.”

“ What changed in 2020, and continues to evolve today, is the needs of businesses serving these consumers” ANDERS LA COUR

CEO AND CO-FOUNDER BANKING CIRCLE

Q. How will new workplace/ industry trends continue to affect change management in fintech?

Anders la Cour: “There are some ‘pandemic trends’ that will continue to thrive even once all restrictions are lifted. Remote working is, of course, one of them. Banking Circle has always been an international business, so being geographically far apart and having global employees is something we are relatively used to and encourage, but we’re certainly prepared for a hybrid working model to become the new normal. Ultimately, what’s become apparent is that employees can be just as – if not more – productive at home.

“In turn, I expect remote hiring will also become more frequent. At Banking Circle, we’ve made some great hires throughout COVID-19 but it was certainly a bizarre experience at first to be onboarding all these talented individuals without having actually met them. What was immediately clear, though, was how much of an asset to the company they were. As such, employers will fintechmagazine.com

41

FINTECH

“ We work towards a vision to make international money transfers frictionless and pain-free” DAUMANTAS DVILINSKAS CEO TRANSFERGO

have to be more flexible when it comes to hiring processes.

“As for the financial services industry as a whole, digitalisation will continue to dominate, always driven by consumer demand. For business decision makers and the C-suite this means investing in technology will have to be a priority – whether that’s outsourcing to established vendors or building new systems from the ground up.”

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May 2021

Q. What can fintechs do to ensure they stay ahead of the innovation curve?

Anders la Cour: “Competition between fintechs is fierce. If they are to stay ahead of the curve agility will be key. They also need to ensure they remain ‘relevant’, which will be achieved by understanding customer needs as they evolve and widening their offering, for example by introducing new payments methods such as ‘request to pay’ or ‘buy now pay later’. But this is easier said than done, particularly when it comes to back-office processes and regulation which can often hamper new product innovation.

“The truth is, a lot of fintechs and payments businesses simply don’t have the infrastructure to handle cross border payments and other back-office processes.

And banks, who they’d traditionally turn to for cross border payments, are often operating with legacy systems that consistently struggle

FINTECH

to upgrade effectively to meet growing customer demands. The end game here is to solve the problem of managing and handling cross border payments and banking services while reducing the cost, time spent and complexity.

“By leveraging Banking Circle’s cloudbased technology, payments businesses and fintechs get access to the best options for delivering cross border payments, including FX, and all while remaining compliant with the myriad of regulation that goes with financial services. This enables our clients to focus their resources on their own customer relationships and seize opportunities in the new economy.”

Daumantas Dvilinskas: “Fintechs must remain secure and fit for purpose as the world continues to change around us. Part of this is ensuring they have the necessary talent and skills to execute and win. True innovation comes through diversity of thought and background, and fintechs will stay ahead of the curve if they can continue to appeal to a variety of talent. This means offering opportunities to be creative, work on transformative projects and help shape the future of the industry.

“Staying ahead of the curve will be about continuing to foster relationships with other industry players. Up to this point, the fintech industry has grown and matured thanks to its ability to work with traditional financial institutions, partner together to scale products and services, and continue to reach those otherwise excluded by the system. With frameworks such as Open Banking and PSD2 taking hold, these partnerships will be as critical as ever in taking advantage of accommodating regulatory environments and keeping the wheels of innovation turning.”

Anders la Cour TITLE: CEO AND CO-FOUNDER COMPANY: BANKING CIRCLE La Cour is the CEO and co-founder of Banking Circle. The company was launched in 2015 with Laust Bertelsen and with support from Saxo Bank. The co-founders identified that the business of cross border payments was costly, but could see that e-commerce was going to be fundamental to global economic growth. Correspondent banking networks underpinned by legacy tech were holding that growth back. Banking Circle provides access to a modern payment solution.

Daumantas Dvilinskas TITLE: CEO COMPANY: TRANSFERGO TransferGo’s makes international money transfers frictionless and pain-free. CEO Dvilinskas is devoted to delivering an exceptional customer experience, recognising and addressing pain-points through our innovative digital service. Dvilinskas establishes critical business partnerships, generates investment and sets strategy to allow TransferGo to expand their services into new markets and reach new customers.

fintechmagazine.com

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Creating a Digital Version of Corporate and Commercial Banking WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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May 2021

SANTANDER UK

fintechmagazine.com

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COMPANY NAME

Jonathan Holman Head of Digital, Santander Corporate & Commercial Banking

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May 2021

SANTANDER UK

Santander UK

harnesses the power of technology partners to drive their digital transformation – allowing them to focus on banking

B

ank of Choice Santander UK has a simple aim: to simplify and digitise the business for improved efficiency and returns for its people and businesses.

During the past five years the bank has turned to technology partners to achieve this goal in its corporate and commercial business in the UK – leaving them to focus on what they do best – the customer experience of banking.

Driving the digital transformation at Santander UK is Jonathan Holman, Head of Digital – Santander Corporate & Commercial Banking, who is taking relationship management to the next level for their banking customers as they look to the future following the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are creating a new architecture that allows us to move much faster,” said Holman.

“We're buying into the roadmaps of our partners – they're improving the technology that enables us to improve our business.

We haven't sought to be a technology company, we've let tech companies be great tech companies and we are concentrating on being a great bank,” he said.

Santander UK’s corporate and commercial banking teams offer financial services products to corporates and SMEs from £250k to £500 million turnover. fintechmagazine.com

47

Customers don’t want to be treated as a number. They demand more. With Salesforce, you can unify lines of business, connect every channel, and create transparency that builds relationships. That’s trust, well earned.

Learn more at https://sfdc.co/uki-finserv . We bring companies and customers together.

Frictionless banking, the Salesforce way The head of financial services at Salesforce talks Santander partnerships and digital engagement with customers

Watch: Alan Donnelly talks about Customer Engagement at Salesforce

Alan Donnelly has enjoyed a long and successful career in the IT and financial services industry. He has worked with banks, insurers, payments companies, fintechs and more in support of business transformation programmes for some of the biggest names in the business for the past 27 years.

"Technology is definitely much more connectable and effective than it was before" Alan Donnelly, Head of Financial Services, Salesforce UK

Today, he’s head of financial services for Salesforce UK, the leading global, cloudbased CRM platform that integrates customers and companies. Donnelly is also currently leading the Salesforce operation that is digitally transforming the UK arm of the Madrid-based Santander Group.

“I have had the pleasure of working with many financial institutions over many years,” he says. “Typically, it was involved in helping customers build big banking systems and banking platforms that ran what we would call systems of record. But now, as I've

moved into Salesforce and we're building our financial services business, we are really now helping our customers engage with their customers.”

The partnership withSantander is a multi channel operation that sees Salesforce helping the bank to engage better with corporate clients and retail customers via their branches and the internet, says Donnelly.

“We're also helping them with customers, who maybe wish to acquire mortgages and mortgages for the life events. I guess it's a multi connectivity environment. But in every case, Santander needs to understand the customer's requirements and better serve those customers in the right time and the right fashion,” Donnelly explains He adds, “I also think the ability to contact customers whenever they need help and support, as we've seen in the recent pandemic, has proven critical - so I think technology is definitely much more connectable and effective than it was before.”

Learn more today

SANTANDER UK

Digital transformation utilising the Digital Eco-system to enable a digital future

As Santander UK accelerates its digital journey it has invested £332 million for the transformation of services to make life easier for its 14.3 million active customers which includes 6.3 million digital customers and 1,600 new active mobile users per day.

Digitising the bank ‘Digitise the bank for improved efficiency and returns’ is identified as one of Santander’s four strategic priorities for its Corporate and Commercial business which include: • Continue simplifying, digitising and automating the bank • Radically improve technology and operations through innovation and optimisation • Ensure capital discipline and RiskWeighted Asset management • Maintain prudent approach to risk 50

May 2021

Holman outlined the first part of the digital transformation which has included digitising the building blocks for all of their products and services such as, onboarding customers, assessing credit risk and focusing on financial crime. This has enabled teams to become more agile by removing duplication and increasing automation.

One example of how the digital transformation is working for customers is the fact it used to take an average of 12 days to open a new corporate banking account – now it can take just two days. The process is 100 per cent digital, facing the customer, as they have gone from using 39 different pdf forms to one dynamic online form.

“We've been working on this process for four years and it helped to shape the principles in the corporate commercial bank that we’ve used as guidelines with which to execute our digital transformation, and

SANTANDER UK

“ Sometimes, transformation is that radical – people can't even imagine it if they don't know what's possible with technology or how something could be re-imagined”

JONATHAN HOLMAN TITLE: HEAD OF DIGITAL COMPANY: SANTANDER UK LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Jonathan Holman is a technologist and banker who runs Digital for Santander in SME, Commercial and Corporate Banking in the UK. He is a mechanical engineer by undergraduate degree and has a masters' degree in banking management and practice. He has held roles in coverage (relationship banking), credit risk, operations, strategy, change and leadership. He researched and wrote his masters' degree dissertation, using scale social data in credit risk modelling, using ML / AI, which was a global first.

Jonathan's team and he have won 8 global industry awards in recent years for their work in banking technology.

Jonathan is a visiting scholar at the LIBF university college, amongst other academic institutions, advising and teaching on Fintech and Regtech.

JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

Laying the digital foundations Reflecting on the first phase Holman said they had prioritised what technology to invest in and in what order those major horizontal processes of the bank should be digitised as he believes it’s about ‘improving individual use cases whilst laying the right foundations and moving away from a difficult to manipulate stack’.

Santander’s principles of digital strategy includes: • Cloud hosted platforms • SaaS solutions which are configurable • APIs to create continuity of data “Crucially, whenever we bought a piece of SaaS, we've made sure that it's configurable and we've done that to put technology as

EXECUTIVE BIO

that's coincided with the advent of new technological possibilities,” said Holman.

“We have almost completed the first phase of digitising all core processes and we are now looking at how we can leverage data and digital technologies to better anticipate customer needs,” he said.

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SCENARIO

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Santander UK has recently completed an impressive

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multi-year digital transformation program to

risk rating, credit origination and risk monitoring,

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experience at the core, the bank needed a robust

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and centralized platform to manage its internal

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assessment and credit rating – giving control over models to risk methodology teams

CHALLENGE To deliver an effective end-to-end digital user experience, it was critical, that the rating models were closely integrated with the new cloud-based bank operating system. In addition, both the platform and the models it hosted had to be flexible enough so the bank’s risk methodology teams could easily adapt them as required. Crucially, regulatory compliance

→ Modern APIs to seamlessly integrate with onpremise and cloud-based core banking platforms → Centralized and audit proof data storage for portfolio-level reporting and risk model validation → Simulation of updated rating models against historic data sets → Full regulatory compliance using built-in features for documentation generation and audit trail

also had to be ensured at any point in the process.

SOLUTION Ultimately, Santander UK selected ACTICO’s Credit Risk Management Platform as its centralized solution to host and execute the internal credit rating models. The Platform was closely integrated with the bank’s credit origination workflows to deliver a seamless end-user-experience.

→ www.actico.com

We are extremely excited to work with one of UK’s largest banks, and support the implementation of an innovative digital platform for commercial lending. Going live with the new integrated platform, Santander UK is able to digitalize its key processes and deliver excellent customer experience.

Christine Moosherr, General Manager, ACTICO

SANTANDER UK

KEY DIFFERENTIALS OF SANTANDER UK Relationship bankers are just one of the key differentials which sets Santander UK apart from other banks.

“Our relationship bankers continue to achieve very high scores in various surveys that the industry conducts about the quality and the experience which customers have from that relationship management.

“We're here, in digital, to augment that relationship team by improving their experience, which enables them to serve the customers more efficiently as well as direct customer touch points that we can improve.”

Holman pointed out their international proposition is also a key factor which gives them the competitive edge “We support high growth and international businesses and we can help businesses manage interest rate risks or foreign exchange risks.

“We've tried to create the idea that the digital and the customer experience can also be a differentiator. In the short term, we can create better experiences as a result of digitalisation and in the longer term the technologies and partners we have chosen will allow us a more nuances and targeted approach. Digitisation unlocks all those opportunities, which maybe wasn't previously possible in processes and systems.”

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close to the business as possible. My team is a hybrid mix of business subject-matter experts and those with technical expertise – configurers / developers on each respective platform that supports a particular activity in what we call domains in the team.”

“Those domains support the main, big ticket operational items and the horizontal processes of the bank. These are processes that apply across all products and services, we always have to do things like onboarding, financial crime, credit risk, legal and contracting, fulfillment activities, servicing and sales.

Holman pointed out the digital workflow of these universal activities is supported by an ecosystem of configurable SaaS solutions which include the following technology partners:

“We've let tech companies be great tech companies and we are concentrating on being a great bank” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

DocuSign – used in fulfillment and legal contracting

nCino – as workflow for onboarding and for credit risk

Salesforce – in sales activity, pipeline management and servicing activity

Tamr – for data continuity and a single customer view

By leveraging the nCino Bank Operating System, which is built on Salesforce and enabled to utilise the Salesforce AppExchange, Santander can now ensure data continuity at every stage of the lending approval cycle – from the opportunity being logged in Sales Cloud through to the loan facility letter being digitally signed by the customer.

Holman said this ecosystem will be critical to delivering the next stage in the bank’s digital roadmap. “It has also helped us to streamline and scale up our corporate and commercial lending processes.”

“We've got tools that are doing specialist activities plugged into tools like nCino, which are broad workflows,” said Holman who pointed out all those component parts are now integratable and able to be run fintechmagazine.com

55

Santander reduced onboarding time by up to 80% using ComplyAdvantage.

Santander UK discusses their implementation of ComplyAdvantage’s Adverse Media Data into their onboarding processes for commercial banking.

Awarded LIBF Best Innovation for Corporate Onboarding with Santander, ComplyAdvantage uses cutting edge AI and a unique technical architecture to support financial institutions in the fight against financial crime.

Utilising Machine Learning, a rapidly improving subset of artificial intelligence (AI), that enables the ability to identify news articles at a rate, depth, breadth and accuracy which is unmatched by regular consumer search engines or professional media search tools.

Santander spoke about their experience using ComplyAdvantage’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) software and financial crime data, in an effort to better manage financial crime.

In an interview with ComplyAdvantage, Jonathan Holman, Head of Digital Transformation, Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking, explained the main benefits for the bank when processing SME applications:

Benefits •

Configurability - enabling effortless changes and adjustments in response to financial crime, risk management or regulations.

•

Focused results - The solution covers a large number of categories with results summarised in one single profile

•

Efficiency - the use of context rather than keywords enables the solution to uniquely identify only true Adverse Media articles

•

Result - Customer onboarding time reduced by 80%.

•

A reduction in process time - around 60% reduction for customers, and almost an 80% reduction for staff.

•

A greater volume of applications can be processed, and customers receive a better quality service.

•

A higher level of accuracy when analysing customer applications.

“ComplyAdvantage has become a partner in the financial crime space. Someone that we see in multiple parts of the business has got a product right now that meets our requirements, but also that has a roadmap that means they can be a partner for years to come”, says Holman.

Watch: Santander reduced onboarding time by up to 80% using ComplyAdvantage

Find out more

>

SANTANDER UK

TECHNOLOGY CAN UNDERPIN FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BANKING First Principles Thinking is an idea recently popularised by entrepreneur Elon Musk – although it dates back to the philosopher Aristotle who defined it as ‘the first basis from which a thing is known’.

DID YOU KNOW...

Musk describes First Principles Thinking as “you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths… then reason up from there.” This is what inspired his quest to send the first rocket to Mars – an idea that would become the aerospace company SpaceX.

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Holman says it is important to think about the First Principles of banking when it comes to applying new technology.

“The basic banking system and intermediate takes those in the economy who have got money and lends it to someone who needs money. For example if someone is selling produce at a market they can get a loan to buy a bike and then they

May 2021

can carry and sell more produce, pay off their loan, and buy a car. The intermediation that enabled that lending, helps them to scale very quickly.”

“I don’t think we should forget how fundamental and important banking is to our economies and our job is to do that task as well as we possibly can. Creating the money supply is a powerful and significant responsibility. Technology can make that task possible in a way that's better than it's ever been performed.”

“If we choose to stick to the First Principles of effective banking, understand them and then choose the right technology to help us do them efficiently and quickly, with customer understanding, with context, with the right risk appetite and the right level of profit that is sustainable for our industry and the economy, I believe banking can do some powerful and amazing things and technology can help underpin that.”

SANTANDER UK

simultaneously with their specialists in any one particular activity.

“APIs and cloud mean that we can move more flexibly with those integrations, creating that continuity of data and natural efficiency. We’ve then got that historic data, a single view of a customer and processes to enable the customer all of which exist in one large system on the Salesforce ecosystem. That's how it manifests itself to our colleagues.”

“As a result of that duplication, some automation and continuity of data that's achieved by those technological components, we're able to offer a better service to the customer,” he said.

“That's really what the first phase of our digitisation journey has been about. It's been about creating efficiencies. It's been about doing what we do already. I don't think bankers have got the first principles of banking wrong. We do commercial and corporate banking well, and we've done it

broadly right as an industry for a long time.

“I wrote my master's dissertation on credit risk management techniques using scale social data and Machine Learning to improve them. But the main ratios we still analyse are the same ones identified in 1906 in the first ever article written about credit risk analysis – the basic techniques haven't changed – but how we do it has changed.”

“The technology we employ has just changed expectations in the business about what's possible. It's brought technology closer to the businesses, involving all departments far more in the configuration of that technology,” he said.

Digital strategy Holman commented that legacy core banking systems, with their dependencies and integrations makes change potentially more expensive and slower and involves

“ In digital you have to marry a banker with someone who is aware of and understands the capability of technology. It's only when you bring those two together that you can truly make change” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING fintechmagazine.com

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COMPANY NAME

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Enabling digital journeys and personalized offers are key strategic capabilities for every bank. The Earnix analytical platform enables banks to offer the RIGHT PRODUCT at the RIGHT PRICE based on data and analytics while fitting natively into your technology stack.

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SANTANDER UK

Santander statistics for 2020:

14.3m

active customers

£169.9bn UK mortgage loans

£27.5bn

UK corporate loans

6.3m

digital customers

huge amounts of regression testing.

“Banks are subject to change freezes when there are other priorities in the business that people are using these platforms for – such as big events like Christmas and Black Friday – where one doesn’t want to compromise your core systems, but we were able to extract ourselves from such dynamics by moving to the cloud and to SaaS.” “We took analysis of our customer experiences, as well as our relationship managers, director and our main sales staff. We were able to look at where they were spending most time and what would have the biggest impact to the customer and colleagues and what tech would lay the right foundations to support our progression,” said Holman.

He commented that progression started with Salesforce and digitising sales and servicing and then moved into onboarding

1,600

new active mobile users per day

and subsequently moved into credit risk and fulfillment.

“It’s really important to see the biggest impacts on customer and colleague experience first, as well as laying the right foundations to build upon so we can create a new architecture that allows us to move so much faster. We had to balance this with disruption and change capacity” he said.

Power of tech to re-imagine the future Holman reinforced the message that Santander UK’s technology partners provide them the time and focus to enhance the customer experience.

“Steve Jobs is famous for quoting that when a business moves from the period where a product-minded person is in fintechmagazine.com

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SANTANDER UK

charge to where a sales-minded person in charge, that is when they've stopped innovating and only want to sell as much as possible in an established market” “I think he speaks to the idea in that quote that businesses should serve a purpose and the purpose is manifesting the product and via their products is how they deliver the business's purpose for its customers.

“Practitioners in technical areas have to bring that sort of experience of how to 62

May 2021

execute something well in a domain. In digital, you need to have that technical understanding of what's possible with technology and which platforms suit which use case, particularly banking is now moving into data and data science. I think first-hand experience can't be beaten.”

“However, the digitalisation of any one industry vertical is more difficult in its idiosyncrasies than perhaps the digitalisation of a generic task. So if you take a platform

“ Digitisation unlocks all those opportunities, which maybe wasn't possible in processes and systems” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

like Salesforce which digitises CRM in servicing and marketing activities as a configurable tool helps every company complete those tasks.”

“But then it takes an nCino or a financial services cloud from Salesforce itself to begin to build that vertical specific capability. That concept, existing in technology, is that it has to get verticalised in order to continue to have traction and continue to improve how an industry functions; that speaks to the idea fintechmagazine.com

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COMPANY NAME

SANTANDER UK

“ I believe banking and financial intermediation as a first principle can do some powerful and amazing things and technology can facilitate that” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

that industry knowledge is crucial.”

“In digital we have to marry someone who is a banker with someone who is aware and capable within technology. It's only when you bring those two together that you can truly make change rather than saying, ‘we've got some systems now let's try and solve the problems of those systems.”

“Henry Ford classified that with the faster horse quote, ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,’ but, it's far more important if you're going to reinvent something to say like fintechmagazine.com

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SANTANDER UK

HOW SANTANDER UK HAS BECOME THE ‘BANK OF CHOICE’ Since its entry into the UK market in November 2004, Santander UK has transformed from its heritage of three former building societies to a full-service retail and commercial bank with focus on its digital future.

Santander UK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the major global bank Banco Santander.

Milestone moments include: • • • •

•

•

• •

•

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2004 – Acquisition of Abbey National 2008 – Acquisition of Bradford & Bingley 2009 – Acquisition of Alliance & Leicester 2011 – Breakthrough programme launched bringing funding, expertise and business support to high-growth SMEs reinforcing its commitment as the ‘Bank of Choice’ 2012 -1|2|3 World suite of products was launched – embodying our vision of Simple, Personal and Fair banking for all 2014 – Santander UK Group Holdings plc established to create a 'single point of entry' in case of resolution 2015 – Launch of the kitti and spendlytics apps 2016 – Launch of investment Hub, a digital end-to-end mortgage application process, the kabbage online loan platform 2017 – Roll out NeoCRM a customer relationship management tool May 2021

Steve Jobs did, you didn't know you want an iPad, until I showed you one. Sometimes, transformation is that radical – people can't even imagine it if they don't know what's possible with technology or how something could be re-imagined from a first principle.”

Operational excellence Looking ahead, Holman said he is excited about the next digital phase which is focused on listening to feedback from colleagues, customers and creating operational elegance.

“We have to continue to listen to stakeholders like every major business does from Netflix and Apple or Amazon.

They're constantly iterating their software,

listening to feedback and adding new features,” he said.

You can always seek to do better, do things faster and make things easier.

We try to listen to our customers and colleagues and make sure that we continue to use the power of the new platforms to get that right.”

“Our pipeline is very busy so we've got to make sure we prioritise in this next phase and pick off the smaller processes in the right order. But we've also got more complicated things going on as we move into the realm of Artificial Intelligence or thinking about tokenisation of loans and securitising them on the blockchain. These are concepts that are less intuitive than

“ The technology we employ has just changed expectations about what's possible. It's brought technology closer to the businesses, involving the business far more in the configuration of that technology” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING fintechmagazine.com

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SANTANDER UK

“ You can always seek to do better, do things faster and make things easier.

We try to listen to our customers and colleagues and make sure that we continue to use the power of the new platforms to get that right” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

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SANTANDER UK

making a document e-sign and they take more explanation.”

Education in open banking Holman said the speed of digitalisation within open banking both in the UK and around the world calls for education within the sector to smooth the transition for their consumers.

“We are undergoing the biggest ever change via open banking, so I think the banking sector and even the government have an education responsibility. It was launched by the industry three years ago, powered by technology and APIs, but there was no collective mass communication.”

“Despite this, a huge number of people have adopted it because it creates an interesting and more competitive banking environment and lots of technical possibilities,” said Holman.

Santander UK is going to launch a number of open banking propositions that will include helping customers permission data to them, as well as helping businesses collect payments from their customers by a smart invoice or via QR code payments.

“Those are the big innovations that we've seen take off in other markets, particularly China, but also increasingly in Europe, so we're hoping to bring those benefits to the UK. Finally, we're looking at AI and more end-to-end automation with our digital platforms and will continue to shape every customer experience to be the best version of itself that it can be,” he said.

fintechmagazine.com

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BANKING

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SHOULD BE CENTRAL TO BANKING STRATEGY Business Intelligence (BI) is a field that encompasses several elements critical to generating insights. We spoke to experts about best BI practices WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

B

ack in 2008, there was a generational shift to support greater agility in companies. Business Intelligence (BI) changed from a reporting-centric to analysiscentric stance. Although companies held onto their first generation tools, they also invested in second-generation solutions.

The pandemic has once again disrupted expectations, which have already triggered another generational shift and once again, companies have switched modes from passive to active in terms of BI strategy.

The gathering of data and its analysis in our ‘new normal’ is critical, because much of the information available in pre-pandemic times has altered. Effective BI practices streamline regulatory compliance, while performance analytics can help companies better understand where time and resources should be allocated.

The performance of the most basic, banking tasks have also been made

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May 2021

possible through the pandemic as a result of effective BI, explains Ken Miller, CTO at Panintelligence. He says, “From a customer’s perspective, they haven’t been able to go into a branch and ask questions to advisors, but of course, are still demanding the same level of service and insight from their bank that they enjoyed pre-lockdown. It’s been a challenge for banks, as the sector has not had years to prepare for this, and had to pivot quickly when the pandemic broke out.

But BI has played a crucial role in processing and communicating data for banks quickly, to continue providing a high level of customer service, and make that pivot easier to carry out.”

The importance of analytics Banks particularly, have access to vast amounts of data that when used strategically, can significantly improve services for customers as well as mitigating

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risk. Data also enables organisations to invest resources more efficiently so that innovation and creativity can maintain dynamism and progress within the institution.

The collection and use of data is not a new trend, but over the past decade particularly, strides in technology and the development of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have made the process easier and more efficient.

Al Karim Somji, founder and CEO of the Canada-based Zafin, a banking software enterprise platform, explains,”Analytics has always been at the heart of banking, and its role is even more important today.

With open banking, the instrumentation of banking operations and the digitalisation of customer touchpoints, banks are awash with data. The first step to making sense of that data is business intelligence that provides contextually relevant insights to bankers at every level.”

He continues, “Business intelligence used to be only about the descriptive

reporting of business metrics. Not anymore. Visibility of the security posture and the infrastructure services that underpin business capabilities such as fund transfers and bill payments is now of central importance to the business. While infrastructure and technical services are often well instrumented, the challenge

SIX essential reasons to invest in BI 1. Enables better understanding and service for customers 2. Provides services that help customers better manage their finances 3. Offers tailored services or opportunities to customers 4. Predicts when customers are about to default or churn 5. Assesses and manages risk 6. Predicts fraudulent activity faster *Provided by Avora fintechmagazine.com

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is to map these technical metrics back to business services. Effective business intelligence can help bridge this gap.”

Richard Speigel, BI Centre of Excellence Leader at Nationwide, agrees. He says, “Banking organisations have access to vast amounts of data that, used correctly, can significantly reduce risk and improve customer outcomes. A BI strategy allows us to access, analyse, and deploy data quickly, turning it into a transformational asset in the business.”

Speigel also advocates BI as an essential tool when it comes to cost-cutting to benefit both companies and customers. “It's important across every aspect of the organisation,” he says. “Effective BI increases accuracy and reduces time spent on reporting, connects 74

May 2021

disparate data and puts the right insight into the hands of the right people at the right time – all of which allows us to reinvest time in more valuable activities that drive tangible costsavings and improve customer outcomes.”

Real time analytics But simply gathering and aggregating data isn’t enough to produce razor-sharp insights. Real-time analytics is the tool of choice for most successful enterprises, with edge technology making faster delivery of information possible.

Somji explains, “Timely and trustworthy data is like oxygen. When oxygen levels are low, our decision-making ability gets impaired. That is to say, business intelligence is absolutely essential in banking today.

BANKING

“ Timely and trustworthy data is like oxygen. When oxygen levels are low, our decision-making ability gets impaired. That is to say, business intelligence is absolutely essential in banking today” AL KARIM SOMJI

FOUNDER AND CEO, ZAFIN

“Since BI is an essential service, its value permeates through the bank. From cashflow insights embedded into retail banking applications which support the financial wellness of customers, to dashboards for business executives who are able to monitor portfolio performance in real-time.”

BI technology The tools of the trade for efficient BI are numerous. Businesses need to assess exactly what they want from their data before investing in the solutions best suited to those needs. It’s a big marketplace out there, with a wide spectrum of SaaS options available. Adam Lieberman, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning at Finastra, advises, “There are an endless number of tools for business intelligence that range from the type of data you are wishing to analyze to the way it’s stored to the use cases and insights you are looking to extract.”

He continues, “As an avid developer, I believe the best solution is the one that your team custom builds. Leveraging scripting languages like Python enables endless use cases, from simple data analysis to visualization to statistical modeling. Furthermore, we can export our data and leverage tools like Streamlit that allow us to create deployable dashboards in minutes. For out-of-the-box and plug-

THREE new trends in BI Al Karim Somji, founder and CEO of Zafin, lists three exciting developments coming to BI in the near term: 1. Embedded analytics: Infusing analytics into everyday tools and workflows, which means being much closer to the action than a standalone management dashboard. Imagine the power of embedding a complete 360 view of a customer relationship directly into the workflow on the desktop of a relationship manager.

2. Natural language processing: Enabling business users to explore complex business information using natural language, much like they explore the web using Google. Picture a bank executive simply asking “show me recent digital adoption trends by seniors” 3. Simplicity: Simple, intuitive user interactions and contextually relevant data visualisations. For example, a student who is away at college gets a simple alert on his or her phone about overdraft risk due to unusually high spending.

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BANKING

How COVID-19 has affected BI Dima Kats, Clear Junction CEO, believes the pandemic has driven forward BI practices.

He explains, “Smaller businesses have expanded their use of business analytics, with the general use of BI tools dramatically increasing in the past year. As consumers shifted to digital and online channels, companies responded in turn. In fact, 80% of customers interactions are now digital in nature. By adopting more BI tools, banks have shifted processes away from their physical offices and kept employees at home. Simultaneously, their data and business activity remain visible and trackable, and customer service and experience remain high.”

and-play insights, tools like Power BI and Tableau are great options.”

Elena Zenina, Chief Innovation Officer at ImageNPay, concurs. “There is a whole suite of tools all playing their part in delivering business intelligence. First of all, data integration tools enable us to gather, process and transport business critical data to data marts and warehouses. Following that, we can utilise various data mining, modelling and prediction tools to provide meaningful insight on business operations.

“Data visualisation tools help us to bring this insight to life, and demonstrate the value to the business in a user friendly manner. As the complexity of the programme is growing, 76

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we focus on marketing automation, while keeping open a test-and-learn policy.”

New BI trends According to Gartner, by 2023, augmented data management will reduce the reliance on IT specialists for repetitive and lowimpact data management tasks, thereby freeing up to 20% of their productive time for collaboration, training and high-value data management tasks.

This shift in the BI sector will continue to trend as more effective analytics modelling and data presentation is developed.

Lieberman points out, “We are starting to see an increased trend in “automated

BANKING

“ As the complexity of the programme is growing, we focus on marketing automation, while keeping open a test-and-learn policy” ELENA ZENINA

CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER IMAGENPAY

machine learning.” Previously, developers were needed to preprocess data, generate features, define models, and validate them.

As many institutions in financial services do not have large data science teams, BI tools have increasingly helped fill this void.”

Sophistication goes hand-in-hand with accuracy, he says. “Gone are the days where BI tools provided simple visualization, now we are getting tools that provide more statistical modeling in an automated fashion.

Over the next two years, I envision BI tools providing more personalization into the use cases we are looking to solve in financial services – churn, product recommendation, balance forecasting, just to name a few.” fintechmagazine.com

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BANKING

BANKING

BI and security Adam Lieberman, Head of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, Finastra, says, “When we look at leveraging BI tools, or building our own, we like to observe three security principles: process level security, data level security, and system level security.

Process level security is an overall set of procedures to ensure our data is safe; data level security determines what data in each data source a user can see; and system level security concerns access, permissions, and management of users for the application.

“Data security is a top priority, especially within financial services. We often have sensitive information and attributes that we need to keep safe, and the top BI tools and best principles allow us to ensure this data is safeguarded.”

Lieberman adds, “I also see it incorporating more tools to analyze unstructured data such as service inquiries, comments, reviews, and alternate text data, especially as we are collecting massive amounts of this data in financial services.”

Such developments all have one goal in mind - that is, to learn the habits of customers in the most up-to-date and accurate way possible. Gaurav Chawla, sales engineer at InterSystems says trends in BI, such as AI, machine learning and analytics, all have

immense potential. But, they cannot thrive without data that is of high quality and which is fully integrated across all the available sources.

“Reliable, timely, properly integrated data is a prerequisite for meaningful BI. If banks or fintechs are to optimise ‘Know Your Customer’ rules, for example, they need all the data to be integrated,” he points out.

Security and BI Chawla also says that BI also encompasses cyber security and network fortification.

Incidences of major data breaches such as the SolarWinds hack at Microsoft have shocked the IT industry and revealed security as a critical consideration.

“Network challenges are common to many industries, and banking is no exception. The notable security issue for banks is problems with data. If the data is untrustworthy or incomplete, the outcomes are not secure.

Banks need, for example, to counter fraudulent applications for CBILS and BBLS loans, where in some instances, credit histories are hacked and other details were falsified or missing, such as financials or County Court Judgments.”

Chawla continues, “If back-end systems are integrated they flag up that a company has only existed for a week or that the data is incomplete, then such fraudulent applications could have been spotted easily. Lack of integration of back end systems left banks exposed as and a portion of the loans went out to the wrong people. The resultant PR damage then impacted all future recovery policies.”

“ As an avid developer, I believe the best solution is the one that your team custom builds” ADAM LIEBERMAN

HEAD OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING, FINASTRA fintechmagazine.com

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

LOCAL BANKING DONE DIFFERENTLY WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, elaborates on the importance of culture and a local approach in Banque Saudi Fransi’s transformation

A

Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer

s practically everyone in the banking sector continues to invest in digital technology, the extent to which a company chooses to focus on culture can often be an important differentiator from the crowd. Better yet, understanding how the latter informs the former’s development can lead to breakthrough innovations. Only the most visionary organisations are capable of producing such results, and Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) is positioning itself among this distinctive group.

Established by royal decree in 1977, BSF was once an affiliate of Crédit Agricole CIB, one of France’s largest banks. Since that time it has become Saudi Arabia’s secondlargest corporate bank and founded an extensive network that includes four primary offices (Riyadh [HQ], Jeddah, Al-Riyadh, and Al-Khobar), 84 branches, 563 ATMs, and over 3,000 employees. Emphasising a teambased structure that maintains a simple and customer-centric outlook, the bank prides itself on an agile ability to create big ideas and execute them effectively.

It was this exciting culture that drew Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, to BSF in 2018. “The opportunity captivated me,” he explains. “Being given the chance to be an agent of genuine change and to be a true intrapreneur was too good to miss.”

Responsible for five divisions within the bank - Strategy, Strategy Delivery, Marketing fintechmagazine.com

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Proudly working with BSF AVA to embrace digital transformation and realise future potential and opportunity WWW

LEBANON

KSA

CYPRUS

Dbayeh Highway Marina Bay Building Dbayeh Lebanon

Al Akaria Plaza Al Ulaya Street Riyadh Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

T. +961-4-417-796 T. +1 (408) 618-6278

T. +966-11-2930-699 T. +966-11-218-2860 T. +1 (408) 618-6278

Victory House 205 Archbishop Makarios Avenue Limassol 3030 T. +357-2504-0000 T. +1 (408) 618-6278

A modern, innovative bank has to think differently to defend its competitive advantage, in a world where new market entrants are challenging the traditional financial services model, emboldened by technology innovation and a regulatory environment which is shifting to accommodate new ways of serving customers.

Banque Saudi Fransi has proved that agile thinking and a willingness to adapt are key to success for a bank whose account holders might be tempted by the fully digital experience offered by challenger banks and payment service providers. BSF has opted to address the threat by working with technology partner eMcREY on a key project to help deliver digital transformation. This is part of a new generation of customer-centric banking solutions linked to the rapidly developing external digital financial services ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond.

What BSF has demonstrated is that true digital transformation goes far beyond adding new digital services in response to market opportunities or immediate threats. Transformation involves a visionary approach to reassessing the scope and ambition of the core business, implementing a digital-first culture and re-imagining the value proposition to proactively anticipate customer needs. Technology is integral to this way of thinking, says eMcREY CEO, Mona Yahchouchi. The future is about embracing collaboration and partnerships, as well as adopting a mindset that is open to learning from those who are making waves in the industry. eMcREY has significant expertise in developing digital solutions for the financial services domain, with projects at many of the leading banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East region. The company has worked closely with BSF on its digitization journey, as a partner on the bank’s AVA project, which will see BSF launch its own challenger bank on a separate platform and under the new brand.

Designed as a mobile-led service and targeting digital native millennials, the new bank is a significant milestone for banking in Saudi Arabia, clearly signalling the Kingdom’s intention to lead rather than follow in the field of digital financial services and compete with best-in-class fully digital providers. AVA includes innovative features that will certainly make it attractive internationally, not only to customers within the Kingdom.

This includes a digital wallet which will be integrated with global payment schemes for worldwide acceptance. eMcREY was chosen to partner with BSF thanks to the speed to market achievable using its Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription-based licensing and delivery model. The company has considerable expertise in delivering a range of business-critical digital implementations in the Kingdom, linking financial institutions to national, regional and global payments

infrastructure. An integrated end-to-end platform for virtual payments, the SaaS solution creates a proven foundation for growth and unlimited scalability across a complete range of payment services.

Mona Yahchouchi says that the speed with which financial institutions in the Kingdom are innovating is impressive. Banks have recognised the need to define agile strategies to enable rapid and seamless delivery, focused on building strong relationships with customers and increasing revenue by introducing new services.

Going forward, reputations will be established on the ability to innovate and willingness to embrace the next generation of new technologies. Security of transactions and customer data will be key to success, along with a focus on omnichannel payments strategies as the differences between payment types and markets become increasingly blurred. In technology terms, this means handling real-time account-to-account transactions and rapidly growing volumes of contactless and mobile payments. It calls for robust back-office solutions for customer acquisition and authentication, alongside scalable acquiring and reconciliation capabilities. There are new possibilities presented by blockchain and cloudbased, on-demand payment services; but there are also challenges associated with compliance and customer demands in an increasingly global payments market.

Since 2006, eMcREY has been using state-of-the-art technology as a powerful force for creativity in KSA. A Saudi company with offices in Riyadh, Dubai, Canada, Cyprus and Lebanon, eMcREY delivers dedicated solutions for financial services, government and fastgrowing market segments such as smart energy and smart transport to help achieve Vision 2030 goals. Its 200+ specialists in the Kingdom have built a reputation for strong technical expertise, commitment to customer service, quick-to-market solutions and excellent support for ambitious, future-focused businesses.

“Our collaboration with BSF has been exciting and fruitful,” concludes Mona Yahchouchi. “It is one of a number of key projects that are really beginning to show the results of Vision 2030 investment in the financial services digital ecosystem. We look forward very much to extending our work with BSF and helping them to fulfil their own dynamic, customer-centric vision.”

For more information about eMcREY products and services please visit www.emcrey.com or email info@emcrey.com

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

“ BSF is known as the ‘relationship bank’ because we’re more inclusive: we’ve stopped thinking like a big bank and now everyone has a voice” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

& Corporate Communications, Customer Experience, and Digital - Cunningham calls BSF’s employee value proposition “captivating” and a natural incubator of entrepreneurial vitality. An experienced leader in the EMEA banking sector as both an executive and mentor, he speaks with authority about the company’s superior cultural offering, “In my 25-plus years of work, I’ve never been made to feel so welcomed, so appreciated, or so integral to an organisation; it's like my home away from home.”

For BSF, success is dependent on establishing a clear vision and then assembling the right team to carry it out. Taking a ‘servantleadership’ role in managing its employees, which includes giving them the space to try out new ideas, the company has a “no BS [big shots]” policy when it comes to teamwork: each member is critical to generating a positive outcome. According to Cunningham, the challenges of modern banking make this highly collaborative philosophy indispensable, “Regulation, fragmented value chains and digital; when you add these three together, you can not only see how the cost of compliance has hit banking’s cost base but also how our 86

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entire business model is being commoditised.”

Recognising the writing on the wall, BSF has subsequently begun moving with the changes, fast.

When it comes to digital transformation, however, Cunningham is quick to point out that this alone doesn’t give BSF an advantage, “Having real differentiation in that regard is very difficult; most banks just look at what competitors are doing and copy them.”

However, BSF is determined to go one step beyond by actively listening to customers and implementing the changes that they actually need. BSF’s approach to developing products and services is much more akin to the agility seen in startups than legacy bank brands, yet this cultivated unconventionality is exactly why it prioritises the customer experience (CX) above all else. This is also where the bank’s storied reputation within its national community becomes invaluable, “we're part of the fabric of the Kingdom’s society, which we've achieved by staying close to our customers. BSF is known as the ‘relationship bank’ because we’re more inclusive: we’ve stopped thinking like a big bank and now everyone has a voice,” he explains.

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

BSF’s Digital Transformation Journey & Digital Banking Futures

MIKE CUNNINGHAM TITLE: CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: BANKING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SAUDI ARABIA Mike is a thought leader and digital practitioner of innovation within financial services and has an unmatched global network with the world’s leading VCs, FinTechs, Accelerators and the established corporates.

He mentors new FinTech start-ups at two of the region’s leading accelerators in Saudi and Lebanon. Before joining Banque Saudi Fransi, Mike attempted to build the UAE’s first ‘standalone’ digital challenger bank. With no appropriate licensing framework, it was three years too early and Mike had to concede round one. Prior, Mike was Executive Vice President at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank where he led Group Strategy and Innovation. Before that he

worked for Barclays in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East where he led the de-novo market entry and establishment of Barclays in India, Pakistan and Namibia.

With his 25+ years of financial services experience, Mike has a deep understanding of building and innovating digital financial services in emerging markets and coupled with his track record in customer experience transformation and his global network, is ideally placed to create the region’s preeminent digital first bank.

Mike has lived and worked all over the world and now resides between Saudi Arabia and the UK with his young family.

Change is our superpower.

Change can feel absolute, daunting and dramatic.

The end destination is great.

However, no-one likes the journey to get there.

Except Mambu. We love it.

Mambu’s SaaS and cloud-native banking and financial services platform is for those that are just starting out, and those that are global powerhouses.

Sure, we do core – and much more. Mambu can fast-track the design and build of nearly any type of financial product for banks, lenders, fintechs, retailers, telcos and others. And our unique composable approach means that independent components and connectors can be assembled and reassembled in any configuration to meet the ever-evolving needs of your business – and your customers. Let’s make change your superpower too.

www.mambu.com Contact us

Mambu and the UAE’s digital banking journey Miljan Stamenkovic, Mambu’s General Manager for MENA, talks technology and digital transformation In his current role as Mambu’s General Manager for MENA, Miljan Stamenkovic sees opportunity in abundance.

providers and cloud adoption. But this past year has been a wave of progress.”

“When I joined Mambu with my team in 2019, we came with the fintech, entrepreneurial mindset and DNA to build and grow Mambu’s business in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Before 2019, the region used to remind me of a desert, at least in terms of cloud service

He explains, “There are data protection laws. There are cybersecurity regulations and most importantly, a variety of major tier one cloud service providers that are available. But what particularly excites me here at Mambu is the opportunity to rethink business models together with our clients and really bring them to life.”

"Banks used to be built to last, but today they need to be built to change. And that's what we're enabling here."

—

Creating a neobank and challenger bank ecosystem has been his ultimate goal.

“In my opinion, this actually creates a unique opportunity to partner with some of the best fintechs in the region and build the region’s first and true challenger and neobanks.”

Miljan Stamenkovic, Mambu’s General Manager for MENA

Stamenkovic credits Mambu’s partnership with Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) for the success that has driven the bank forward in the region. “When I think about all the challenger and neobanks that have grown massively over the past decade, there is one common denominator for all these new initiatives. I would say they really operate like a tech company rather than a bank – BSF is leading this approach in Saudi Arabia.”

He adds that Mambu is helping BSF deliver an entire new banking experience while providing soft core banking services. “Mambu enables banking like a modern tech company. Banks used to be built to last, but today they need to be built to change. And that's what we're enabling here.”

Watch Mambu in the Middle East

Learn more

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

EMcREY: MORE THAN A MATCH FOR BSF

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DID YOU KNOW...

From all of BSF’s hardworking and valuable partners, Cunningham singles out tech solutions expert eMcREY as being particularly important to the company’s ongoing digital transformation.

Calling it a “fabulous partner,” he endorses eMcREY as being the epitome of expertise in its field: “There's no payment company anywhere on the face of the planet that understands Saudi Arabia better than eMcREY. “It powers all of our payments infrastructure and is even taking care of BSF’s new digital ventures’ processing. eMcREY behaves like a startup, possesses the venture spirit for which we were looking, and it’s also helped stop the bank from making the mistakes that others have made. It's been great to have eMcREY on board.”

The primary challenge for BSF as it develops further digital capabilities, Cunningham continues, is one experienced everywhere: a shortage of experienced talent. Despite the scarcity being magnified in Saudi Arabia, he insists that the bank has overcome this in two ways: 1) Importing the world’s brightest and best and winning them over with BSF’s culture; and 2) Launching its own digital engineering apprenticeship.

No longer seeing the utility of maintaining large data centres, BSF favours migrating its infrastructure to the cloud and adopting software as a service (SaaS) platforms.

However, Cunningham states there is still an element of waiting for big tech and global cloud players to arrive in Saudi Arabia, allowing it to catch up with BSF’s ambition, “cloud options within the Kingdom are

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

“BSF captures the voice of the customer, looks across all of our different customer journeys, and tries to find ways of removing friction” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

limited at this time. I think that hinders our ability to innovate at the pace that we want.

The Saudi Central Bank has been amazing in opening the doors for digital banking.

It’s got a great sandbox, not necessarily just for testing new products but also in terms of challenging and testing current and new regulations.”

It’s safe to say that BSF’s ultimate goal is to be nothing short of Saudi Arabia’s digital finance nexus, but Cunningham clarifies that there’s still some way to go. 2020, by dint of the COVID-19 pandemic, was an important test of its digital integrity and values, both of which passed with flying colours. “We were already set up to operate remotely. BSF’s first response was to look after our people, be there for them personally, and make sure that they received the support needed. What

the pandemic has done is accelerate our digital plan and placed a renewed emphasis on digital and mobile channels.” Therefore, 2021 and beyond will serve to realise the fulfillment of that new vision, including the development of ‘Project AVA’ - BSF’s own digital challenger bank. With details still kept tightly under wraps for now, Cunningham calls the project an effort “by Saudis, for Saudis” that will go beyond being a mere replication of successful brands elsewhere.

The bank will accomplish this by leveraging its close connections with the community and a campaign of ‘hyper localisation.’

Indeed, BSF understands its customer demographic well enough to know that “just lifting something up from one country and dropping in the other” won’t work. Different markets have different needs, and BSF, whether considering new product launches or technologies in which to invest, always has the end-user in the mind. “Mobile technology could fundamentally create a shift in not only the products, services and features that we have, but also our business and operating model,” states Cunningham. “Those benefits could be in terms of improved risk management for the institution, a better employee and customer experience, or better economics.” fintechmagazine.com

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

“ We're part of the fabric of the Kingdom’s society, which we've achieved by staying close to our customers” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

1977

YEAR FOUNDED

Banking INDUSTRY

3,000+

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEESS

USD 1.9bn REVENUE

As the availability of Saudi Arabia’s cloud infrastructure continues to develop, BSF is poised to take a prominent position in the country’s new banking industry. Calling the organisation a “universal bank” that attends to SMEs, large corporations, retail, private and underbanked individuals with equal drive and determination, Cunningham remains highly positive about the BSF brand’s future growth potential. “Culture and talent represent 80% of the digital iceberg,” he concludes. “BSF believes in finding people that think and work differently in order to create a culture that sets up the business for success. No one should settle for ‘second best’ in talent; I'm a big believer that the best talent attracts the best talent, period.”

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COVID, CASHLESS, AND CONVENIENCE:

THE RISE OF BIOMETRICS

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PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

Founders and thought leaders from Fluent.ai and PayByFace explain why our bodies are becoming the future of payment security WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

Vikrant Singh Tomar, Founder and CTO, Fluent.ai

B

iometrics today might be regarded as a relatively modern innovation; the ability to use one’s body as a verification tool instead of a password seems straight from the imagination of sci-fi, but the story has an origin story over 100 years old. In 1892, British polymath Sir Francis Galton created the first fingerprint classification system, which was subsequently adopted and adapted by various institutions over the proceeding decades.

The need, as the US Department of Homeland Security puts it, was simple, “the rapid urbanisation of the industrial revolution increased the need for formal methods of identifying people.” By the 1960s, facial recognition had already become semiautomated and the FBI had begun similar research for fingerprinting.

Today there exist four primary sources for biometrics: fingerprints, voice, face, and corneas.

Outside of law enforcement, however, these methods of recognition are having a profound effect on contemporary financial services owing to three socio-economic factors: 1. The potential for ‘cashless’ societies 2. Increased convenience for consumers 3. COVID-19

Emanuele Conti-Vecchi, Co-Founder, CBO and CFO, PayByFace

Interviewing two industry experts – Vikrant Singh Tomar, Founder and CTO of Fluent.ai, and Emanuele Conti-Vecchi, Co-Founder, CBO and CFO of PayByFace – we explore the rise of biometric payments and what it could mean both for consumers and society at large. fintechmagazine.com

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PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

COVID-19 and the age of convenience There seems to be little doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge of interest in biometric payments; a study conducted in November 2020 found that 59% of consumers would be willing to pay additional monthly fees if their bank offered biometric payment options. The advantages of paying without making physical contact,

Fluent.ai Fluent.ai is a speech and language understanding company, focused on bringing natural voice interfaces to embedded devices (AI on the edge).

Fluent’s unique, End-to-End Spoken Language (E2E-SLU) technology allows it to develop systems that are nimble, with a flexible voice user interface and high recognition accuracy on small platforms. Uniquely, the company’s tech is able to learn and recognise multiple languages concurrently.

Tomar describes Fluent’s mission as, “breaking down barriers to the adoption of voice user interfaces, thereby allowing everyone to talk to their devices in their native language.”

either through cards or cash, has definite appeal in terms of hygiene.

Although he has reservations about how much voice-recognition tech in particular has been affected, Tomar is certain that demand for biometrics is only increasing. “This is for three main reasons: an increased demand for more accurate or multimodal identification methods, a general improvement in the capabilities and accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and ease of use. For voice biometrics, the user-adoption/experience friction is nearly zero,” he states.

Indeed, compared to remembering a password or entering a PIN number, biometrics represent a practically seamless alternative that is also potentially more inclusive, too. “Once someone is set up with fintechmagazine.com

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PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

PayByFace PayByFace is a fintech provider of biometric payment point-of-sale (POS) platforms incorporating an out-ofhome digital signage advertising network.

Founded by serial entrepreneur Mihai Draghici in 2018, the company utilises cutting-edge facial-recognition technology

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to bring next-gen ease to transactions.

Users can set up the service by registering a payment card, selfies and a unique PIN code. Shoppers are then able to dispense with taking their devices or wallets and literally pay with their visage in-store.

PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

FaceByFace, transactions are authorised POS and they don’t need a device,” affirms Conti-Vecchi. This is an important detail for emerging markets, particularly in the MEA and APAC markets, where the democratisation of payment capabilities remains an ongoing project for FSIs collectively. “We’re already generating a lot of interest with companies in the Middle East, and large-scale investments like those recently pledged by Alipay ($420m over a three-year period) prove that there’s a growing market for facial recognition.” In fact, Juniper Research predicts that biometrics will be used to authenticate $2trn of global sales by 2023 – 17 times larger than 2018’s figure of $124bn.

THALES’ SEVEN BENEFITS OF BIOMETRIC PAYMENTS • Convenience • No PINs to remember • No spend limit • Added security • Less admin • Customers prefer it • Faster onboarding Security in a cashless society In addition to convenience and inclusivity, biometrics also have the benefit of being a much more secure form of ID. After all, it’s far harder to steal someone’s credentials when they themselves are the security incarnate.

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PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

However, this isn’t to say that there aren’t risks. In 2015, the US Government was hacked and the fingerprints of 5.6 million federal employees were stolen. While ordinary forms of authentication can simply be changed if similarly compromised, consumers cannot viably alter their voice or face. Despite this, the pressure should be on developing cybersecurity that can adequately address these issues rather than dismissing biometrics out of hand. The reason? The increasing feasibility of cashless societies.

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“Physical money – notes, coins and checks – has outlived its usability,” says Tomar.

Building on the inclusivity of new payment structures in MEA and APAC mentioned

by Conti-Vecchi, he notes that developing countries are leading the shift away from cash. “Perhaps the best example is M-Pesa, which has become the most used payment system in many countries in Africa. Some of the largest (by population) countries in the world, like India and China, have already made huge advances in digital payment

PAYMENT SOLUTIONS

systems.” In fact, the Indian Government’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has enabled app developers to facilitate both QR-code and seamless cross-border transactions.

The success of these programmes in Asia, Tomar suggests, will ultimately indicate how ‘cashless’ the immediate future might be. “Many places don’t even expect cash anymore. In China, you can even get a fine for jaywalking on WeChat.”

By comparison, Conti-Vecchi is more conservative in his views on cash’s impending obsolescence, “It’ll never disappear as long as one person still needs to use it; cash will always be relevant.” Indeed, the continuity of cash, at least in the short-term, seems sensible as common technical issues can still render biometrics difficult to use, i.e. wearing a face mask during the pandemic, or moisturiser on one’s fingertips. However, Conti-Vecchi cannot deny that a general

shift towards digital payments is already well underway and biometric technology is playing a big part. Another report by Juniper Research estimated that 600 million mobile devices would be equipped with biometric authentication by 2021, while Mercator forecasts that 66% of smartphone owners will use biometrics by 2024 (a 15% increase from 2020).

Synthesising payments Therefore, while it may be premature to assume that all other forms of security and transaction will be immediately replaced by biometrics, it does seem apparent that modern commerce would be remiss to not include them. This is perfectly expressed by the EU’s Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), which states that ideal financial security should feature at least two of three authenticators: • Something the customer knows: A password or PIN • Something the customer has: A device or payment card • Something the customer is: Voice, face, fingerprints, etc As the journey of biometrics’ development continues, it seems logical to conclude that the seamless customer experience they provide makes them ideally suited to 21st century commercial experiences. “Technology is improving day-by-day,” concludes Tomar.

“Current innovations in edge-AI hint at an ecosystem shift where biometrics could run entirely offline on small, low-power devices instead of cloud servers. This would very likely lead to new applications and use-cases of financial transactions built on biometrics running directly on users’ personal devices.” fintechmagazine.com

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LEVERAGING TODAY’S TECH FOR TOMORROW’S 102

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BCU

WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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BCU

Driven by their tagline, “Here Today For Your Tomorrow”, BCU is leveraging tech to help members achieve financial well-being

I

Mike Valentine, President and CEO, BCU

n June of 2020, for the second consecutive year, BCU was named one of Forbes Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions, ranking #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota. BCU’s purpose-driven strategy meets the member wherever they are, leveraging technology to empower people to improve their financial well-being and discover financial freedom. With shared values and a commitment to always put the member first, BCU's relationshipdriven culture is the catalyst that provides extraordinary service to enrich the lives of nearly 300,000 members. By nurturing a thriving work environment and recognizing employees as the valued individuals they are, BCU has become one of the fastest-growing credit unions over the last four decades. fintechmagazine.com

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BCU - Leveraging today’s tech for tomorrow’s well-being

Here Today For Your Tomorrow Driven by its tagline, ‘Here Today For Your Tomorrow,’ BCU offers innovative resources to members while supporting employees through growth and opportunities. Mike Valentine, president and CEO, shares a shining example of how BCU helps members leverage today’s tech for tomorrow’s well-being.

“Annually, BCU hosts a roundtable with Company Partners to share information and garner valuable insight into their best practices while gaining a better understanding of their employees’ needs.”

“High-rate payday loans and lack of overdraft protections were issues affecting members' financial well-being that BCU needed to solve. To tackle this problem, we partnered with QCash Financial to roll out an express loan product that allows members to get quick approval and access to funds without requiring traditional underwriting criteria or a credit report screen.”

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“Instead, we utilize BCU's internal data on spending and deposit habits, as well as the member’s banking history to serve as the underwriting criteria for the loan. This provides members with quick approval and access to funds while building credit and saving versus other high-cost alternatives.

By partnering with QCash, we’re able to offer this as a fully digital experience.”

In less than 60 seconds, a member can apply for an express loan by answering six

“ It's exciting to see our partnerships strengthened as we work together to succeed in this environment” MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

BCU

MIKE VALENTINE

BCU was named to the annual Forbes list of Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions for the second consecutive year, ranking #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota

LOCATION: USA

EXECUTIVE BIO

to eight questions using the mobile app and instantaneously receive funding. Features like auto-populated loan applications and single sign-on make the process even more streamlined and have proven essential to increasing adoption, especially during the pandemic as people have less access to physical locations.

BCU also provides a holistic financial well-being program that they’ve branded, Life. Money. You.®. Available to members and non-members alike, Life. Money. You. empowers people to make decisions today that will positively impact their financial future, like buying a home, repaying student debt, starting a family, or planning for retirement. The program is complimentary and includes one-on-one coaching with BCU-staff certified financial counselors, live (or virtual) events that cover a myriad of trending financial topics, and digital tools placed right in the palm of members’ hands using the BCU mobile app.

Partnering with companies like SavvyMoney® and using APIs and other transformative technologies, BCU members have free access to review credit scores at any time, so they can monitor their progress and achieve their financial health targets using mobile or online banking.

SavvyMoney is one of BCU’s strongest fintech relationships. Working together since 2013, more than half of the credit union’s digital banking users are enrolled with SavvyMoney and receive daily access

TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CEO

With over 41 years of sales and service experience, Mike brings unique insight and magnetic energy to the credit union industry. He joined BCU in 1984 as manager of lending and collections. After a decade of cultivating a strong sales and service culture, Mike was appointed president/CEO in 1994.

With a humble and approachable style, Mike sees himself as a coach and encourages his leadership team to treat BCU as a learning organization.

This team-based management style has led BCU to unparalleled success.

Mike received his bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University and MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

BCU

to credit scores, reporting, monitoring, financial education, and pre-qualified loan offers. SavvyMoney’s innovative, memberfocused approach aligns well with BCU’s core strategy.

To help keep their clients safe, BCU is now also partnering with Breach Clarity.

“This year, we began working with Breach Clarity, a company providing identity protection services that help us monitor and locate data breaches or attempts made at identity theft.”

Meeting you where you’re at BCU realizes members all have their own unique preferred banking methods. While some still choose to walk into a Branch or call to speak with a representative, both options allow BCU to connect and consult the member on whatever they may need.

And yet, there is another fast-growing segment that prefers the convenience 110

May 2021

“ We work closely with our core institutional partners, such as Visa® and PSCU, to provide the best functionality on our digital interface as possible.”

MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

of accessing services anytime, anywhere through digital channels.

“That's always my dilemma in this digital world,” says Valentine. “We have been so successful with our personalized member relationships and service building. How do we translate that same experience

BCU

DAVE BLUM TITLE: SENIOR VICEPRESIDENT, CORPORATE RELATIONSHIPS/U.S. BRANCHES As a leader in relationship management, Dave is responsible for all domestic branches and leverages Company Partner relationships to maximize member and eligible non-member value. His experience in fostering partnerships makes him a key influence in corporate relationship management, business development, and member development. Dave holds a bachelor’s degree from North Park University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

TITLE: VICE-PRESIDENT, MARKETING & BRAND STRATEGY Jill has accumulated 30 years of experience in financial services marketing. Her involvement in the industry began in 1991 when she joined BCU. She currently serves as vice-president of marketing & brand strategy, driving brand value, member engagement activity, and financial wellbeing initiatives. Recognized for her ability

MEET THE TEAM

with a digital device and create a unified experience?”

This is why BCU believes its job is to meet members wherever they are by providing a friction-free omnichannel member experience. By focusing on the intersection between human and digital, BCU hopes to humanize the digital experience and foster longstanding successful relationships that bring value.

“Our goal is to have a full product solution for our members, whatever their needs may be, both personally and professionally. From credit monitoring, investment advisory services, financing a house or a car, or improving their credit or even budgeting—we can help,” says Dave Blum, senior vice president, corporate services, and U.S. service centers.

“Over 50% of our existing members don't have access to a Branch. Over the years, we've put significant investment into

JILL SAMMONS

to manage strong cross-functional teams, communicate effectively, and positively influence others, her commitment to empowering people to discover financial freedom is reflected in everything she does.

Jill received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

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ower your users ke Empower control ofyour their credit users

to take control of their credit

is an award-winning fintech company that partners with more ancial institutions through more than 35 digital banking platforms SavvyMoney is an award-winning fintech company that partners with more n integrated credit report and score solution.

than 600 financial institutions through more than 35 digital banking platforms

provide integrated credit score solution. ore to and reportantool explains key report factorsand that influence users’ onitors for changes. credit score “offer Thetheir creditreports score and report toolThe explains key factors that engine” influence users’ y savings opportunities withreports pre-qualified loan The offers based on“offer a engine” credit and monitors their for changes. credit score score. highlights key savings opportunities with pre-qualified loan offers based on a user’s credit score.

’s analytics platform provides financial institutions with full SavvyMoney’s analytics platform provides financial institutions with full eir users’ credit score trends, wallet share analysis, and targeted visibility to their users’ credit score trends, wallet share analysis, and targeted paigns. lending campaigns.

Congratulations to BCU for their recognition as

Congratulations to BCU for their recognition as a Forbes #1 Best-in-State Bank and Credit Union for a Forbes #1 Best-in-State Bank and Credit Union for Illinois. Happy to have Happy been atoproud partner for 8partner years for 8 years Illinois. have been a proud

in joint pursuit ofinthe to the improve their members’ jointmission pursuit of mission to improve their members’ financial wellness. financial wellness.

JB Orecchia JB Orecchia SavvyMoney, President and CEO SavvyMoney, President and CEO

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Watch video

Learn More Learn More

BCU

Four out of 10 Americans are unable to cover a $400 emergency expense fund Board of Government of the Federal Reserve System

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BCU

digital channels, both desktop, and mobile, with mobile logins making up 65% of digital logins. More than ever, it's crucial that we provide our members and potential members with the same experience banking digitally that they would have if visiting a Branch location.”

"We now offer mobile tools like remote deposit that lets members deposit a check from their phone instead of going into a Branch. They can also transfer funds, monitor their credit score, and view financial well-being content. By significantly investing in our digital channels over the years, members are given as much flexibility as possible when banking with us."

“We have been most successful with our one-to-one relationship and service building. How do we translate that same service through a device?”

MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

Standardized offerings, a customized approach Jill Sammons, vice president of marketing & brand strategy, shares how BCU takes a customized approach to designing a program to best provide workplace financial well-being. "We have 40 years of experience partnering with these great companies, getting to know their cultures, and understanding how much they care about their employees.

We take all of that into consideration in order to customize a well-rounded, relevant offering that meets the needs of all their employee segments. BCU delivers valuable financial solutions that support everyone from the entry-level employee who’s just starting out to the C-suite." fintechmagazine.com

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COMPANY NAME

State-of-the-Art Technology.

State-of-the-Heart Service.

Your Possibilities Delivered.® Financial institutions are getting larger. Companies are merging.

Technology continues to rapidly evolve. But you shouldn’t have to choose between technology and service. PSCU delivers the best of both.

Our omni-channel payments solutions make it easy for members to personalize their experience, while our long-standing commitment to putting credit unions first makes it easy to personalize yours. What’s the state of your credit union’s solutions and support? Join PSCU today.

Payments ■ Risk Management ■ Digital Banking ■ Data Science and Analytics ■ Loyalty Mobile and Online Card Management ■ Contact Center Services and Solutions

pscu.com

Strategic Consulting ■ Marketing ■ Delinquency Management

844.367.7728

BCU

Here Today For Your Tomorrow

In summarizing how the credit union successfully serves such a diverse portfolio of Company Partners, Blum explains, "I have a team of directors who work with our Company Partners daily to align initiatives, increase engagement with our existing members, and acquire new members.

This helps drive the business development activities that we do."

Valentine highlights that in order to offer full-service products to Company Partner segments, "We've had to also work closely with our core institutional partners, like Visa® and PSCU, to provide the best functionality on our digital interface so that we can introduce these new products and services."

Valentine further explains, "We've shifted from a linear vendor management approach to strategically aligning with business partners. CUNA Mutual Group has a venture arm investing in FinTech

companies. PSCU has also begun to look at ways they can start investing as well. It's exciting to see our partnerships strengthened as we work together to make sure the member experience, from start to finish, is as seamless as possible."

Forbes Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions Report As Covid-19 threw the economy into turmoil, forcing banks and credit unions to step up their efforts—never before has the credit union's low-cost financial product offerings and personalized member service been in higher demand.

According to the Forbes article, The Best Banks and Credit Unions in Every State 2020, “Small and midsized banks were some of the most active participants in the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, pumping hundreds fintechmagazine.com

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BCU

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BCU

“Our goal is to have a full product solution for our members, whatever their needs may be, both personally and professionally.

From credit monitoring, investment advisory services, financing a house or a car, or improving their credit or even budgeting—we can help” DAVE BLUM

SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT CORPORATE RELATIONSHIPS/U.S. BRANCHES BCU

of billions of dollars into millions of small businesses nationwide to help them retain staff and survive beyond the pandemic.

From banks to credit unions, lenders also help members with relief efforts like temporary forbearance or low-cost lending and refinancing options to take advantage of rock-bottom interest rates. When the economy recovers, these lenders are likely to continue offering the most competitive rates on mortgages, consumer loans, and deposit accounts as activity picks up.”

“But there is a massive divergence on how well financial institutions are at doing this.”

To gauge which firms had the most satisfied customers, Forbes partnered with research firm Statista and surveyed nearly 25,000 U.S. consumers for its Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions report. Participants were asked to answer twenty questions regarding their financial dealings. Ratings were based on overall recommendations and satisfaction and five subdimensions; trust, terms and conditions, Branch services,

digital services, and financial advice.

BCU ranked #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota. The credit union was voted to the top spots based on overall satisfaction, trust, service, product offerings, and financial well-being resources, all the things BCU strives to achieve.

"It's validating to know we're doing the right things,” says Valentine, “and it's also an indication that we need to keep hustling to find where we can do better. The report does a thorough job of seeing if members and customers are getting what they need from their financial institution. I'm proud of our performance based on that criteria because that's been our strategy, what we aim to do for every member, and it's a wonderful feeling to know our members feel we are succeeding."

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TECHNOLOGY

OPEN FINANCE: THE FUTURE OF DATA SHARING Commentators from TrueLayer, Nutter, and Zilliqa Capital help us understand the value of data sharing and why Open Finance could be its future

WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

Data: What is it good for?

Although most of us probably don’t consider it as such, data could be regarded as one of the most recyclable commodities on Earth.

Every day, consumers produce it, companies collect it, extract the value, transform it into actionable insights, and then create new products and services for the market. From here the cycle continues, and the results it’s produced for financial service institutions (FSIs) so far have been favourable.

Data sharing can be best understood as a consent-based agreement by which privacy is waived in a limited capacity for commercial purposes. Customers gain products that have higher relevance to their lives while FSIs reap enhanced marketing and development opportunities. In Deloitte’s article ‘The next generation of data sharing in financial services’, the overall FSI benefits of data sharing are summarised into three categories: 1. Inbound data-sharing (acquiring data from third parties) = enriched decision-making.

2. Outbound data-sharing (sharing owned data with third parties) = enabling

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According to IBM

only 20% “completely trust” companies to properly maintain their data fintechmagazine.com

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LEVERAGING INSIGHTS IN DIGITAL BANKING RETAIL BANKING

+

SME BANKING

+

OPEN BANKING

Welcome to a new, more intelligent breed of banking that understands the individual needs of the customer and provides relevant advice.

Your relationship banking toolkit, based on smart financial decision-making.

Visit strands.com/request-demo

TECHNOLOGY

companies to draw on capabilities otherwise undeveloped within their own organisation.

3. Collaborative data-sharing (inbound and outbound sharing of similar forms of data) = allowing companies to create richer, larger and more comprehensive datasets than siloed efforts could achieve. This is particularly important as forming ‘data lakes’ becomes more popular.

And yet, despite the mutual beneficiality of data sharing, there still exist several potential drawbacks and aversions to overcome. For customers, there is a persistent reluctance to share sensitive data – Statista found that approximately 44.3% of US fintech app users experienced some degree of discomfort, whether related to account balances, loan history or investment information. Worse, a Harris Poll survey conducted on behalf of IBM found that only 20% of respondents “completely trust” organisations to properly maintain their data. With incidents of

“ Open Finance is all about empowering customers” JACK WILSON,

HEAD OF POLICY AND REGULATORY AFFAIR, TRUELAYER

compromised security involving major companies like Capital One and Microsoft still making headlines, this is, perhaps, not unsurprising.

Data sharing is also not without risks for FSIs themselves; creating such a forthcoming environment could erode competitivity by handing too much information to rivals, complex and evolving privacy regulations like GDPR and PSD2 could be breached by unforeseen tech developments, or companies could simply alienate clients by appearing too omniscient for comfort.

Among VC firms and investors data sharing is an important decision-making component, particularly during early-stage investment.

Michael Conn, Chairman, CEO, and Co-Chief Investment Officer at Zilliqa Capital, explains,

World Economic Forum: Using privacy enhancing techniques to unlock new value BENEFITS OF SHARING DATA

DRAWBACKS OF SHARING DATA

For institutions: better decision-making, access to third-party capabilities, greater scale of data

For institutions: competition hindered by lack of secrecy, could breach privacy regulations, could potentially alienate customers by appearing ‘omniscient’

For regulators: support for innovation and competition, enables effective system oversight

For regulators: possible breach of customer privacy

For customers: access to higher quality and more efficient products

For customers: personal data could be mishandled or misused

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“It is important that the target investment team be open and willing to share the data reflecting their performance to date, the market opportunity and any other metrics that would help demonstrate why they are a better investment than another in the same space.” However, at the same time, Conn clarifies that the value of data today can sometimes be overemphasized; for Zilliqa Capital, the quality of a potential investment’s team is often more of a determining factor. “The fact is that most, if not all businesses, will at some point be forced to pivot away from their initial plans – see Amazon. It is just not possible for data analytics, at least as of now, to prove itself superior to gut instinct when evaluating the quality of an investment target’s team.”

If not fully utilisable as a resource for decision-making, then, what’s needed is a re-evaluation of data sharing, both in terms of its place within modern finance and the methods by which its present shortcomings can be overcome. Open 124

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Finance and API (application programming interface) technology could represent such an opportunity.

Open Finance’s value proposition “Open Finance is all about empowering customers,” explains Jack Wilson, Head of Policy and Regulatory Affairs at TrueLayer.

“It gives customers the ability and the right to re-use their financial data in new and innovative ways. It does this by giving a role to third-party providers, who securely retrieve data and put it to work for the customer.” These actors can do so in a variety of ways, such as: • Consolidating multiple held accounts into a unified view • Facilitating electronic data transmission that eliminates the need for physical documents when applying for financial products • Using account data as a form of identity verification

TECHNOLOGY

“ It is important that the target investment team be open and willing to share the data reflecting their performance to date” MICHAEL CONN,

CHAIRMAN, CEO AND CO-CHIEF I NVESTMENT OFFICER, ZILLIQA CAPITAL

These capabilities are utilised in one of Open Finance’s most widely discussed aspects: Open Banking. Defined by McKinsey & Co as “a collaborative model in which banking data is shared through APIs between two or more unaffiliated parties to deliver enhanced capabilities to the marketplace,” Open Banking allows for a more direct consumer-bank relationship. The APIs themselves can be of three distinct models: public, partner and internal, each of which has specific functions and benefits. Regarding the latter, these include overall cost reductions, increased operational efficiency, enhanced innovation through collaboration with developer communities, and greater security.

“Consumers are increasingly demanding financial data aggregation services through APIs because it makes personal financial management much easier,” says Thomas J. Curry, Co-Chair of the Banking and Financial Services group at Nutter and former US Comptroller of the Currency. “Banks and fintechs each want to be the primary portal for financial services and they are competing to keep or obtain the customer relationship.”

MEET OUR COMMENTATORS

Jack Wilson HEAD OF POLICY AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, TRUELAYER Helping Truelayer to identify and create opportunities within payments regulation.

Truelayer builds technology that allows third party applications to access user's financial data (with their consent) and initiate payments securely.

Thomas J. Curry CO-CHAIR OF THE BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES GROUP AT NUTTER AND FORMER US COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY In 2012, Tom was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as Comptroller of the Currency – the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the federal agency that charters, regulates, and supervises national banks and federal savings banks.

Michael Conn CHAIRMAN, CEO AND CO-CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, ZILLIQA CAPITAL Strategist, Blockchain and Investment Management Executive with expertise in traditional and alternative asset classes, fintech/blockchain, start-ups, STO's/IEO's/ ICO’s, M&A, corporate developments. fintechmagazine.com

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Security: The elephant in the room Carried out in its most ideal form, then, Open Finance’s benefits for both customers and companies makes it an attractive proposition.

However, there remains what McKinsey calls the topic’s “elephant in the room”, security.

Data sharing in any capacity should be a central concern, with each dataset’s value accorded an appropriate level of protection, and customers need to understand how and why some data is used. “[I]nformed consent requires understanding the implications of sharing before approving — no small feat when the reflexive clicking of ‘I Agree’ on an unread set of terms and conditions is standard,” said McKinsey in ‘Data sharing and open banking’. Curry believes that cybersecurity and the protection of data form the major concerns for fintechs and banks

“Open Finance, which broadens out the types of accounts accessed, could offer yet more benefits for both customers and companies,” adds Wilson. He cites the following: • Aggregated savings and investment data, bringing more holistic financial oversight to consumers.

• Granting access to data that can bring value-added services, such as financial advice, “robo-advice”, better ID verification, and KYC. • Empowering third parties to carry out fund transfers between customer accounts (savings, ISAs, investments, etc) and initiate account switching.

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“ Consumers are increasingly demanding financial data aggregation services through APIs because it makes personal financial management much easier” THOMAS J. CURRY

CO-CHAIR OF THE BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES GROUP AT NUTTER AND FORMER US COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY

TECHNOLOGY

McKinsey & Company API models

Partner: These APIs create a more integrated connection between business partners, suppliers, etc. They offer better security, lower operating costs, and enable API monetisation opportunities.

Public: APIs used by external parties to develop new apps and products. These often facilitate innovative results as a consequence of broader community engagement.

regarding APIs’ functionality. “[In the US] Section 1033 of the Dodd Frank Act makes it clear that consumers have a right to their financial information. Some progress has been made in developing voluntary standards for APIs but regulatory clarity is needed. The Biden CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) will likely develop a more concrete regulatory framework for APIs.” Therefore, it seems clear that, in addition to general clarity regarding data sharing policies, what customers really need are examples that demonstrate why APIs are beneficial and what Open Finance can do for them.

A recent collaboration between TrueLayer and UK digital bank Monzo provided one such demonstration. With customers using Open Finance as a payment method for online gambling, Monzo needed a solution to protect its at-risk customers by blocking transactions to certain gaming

Internal: Only used by developers within a single enterprise, internal APIs offer cost reduction, better efficiency and greater security.

However, they also lack the potential with regards to integration and innovation.

sites. TrueLayer was brought on board to implement an enhanced API capable of notifying the bank whenever a customer with gambling restrictions on their account attempted to pay via Open Finance. TS Anil, Monzo’s CEO, praised the API and stated that it was “simple to build, proven to work, and will help protect hundreds of thousands of people.” The finance industry’s accumulation of such examples will be pivotal in convincing consumers that data sharing can be responsible and useful for safeguarding them.

Data sharing through Open Finance is ultimately a path towards greater convenience, better products and services, and significantly cheaper operations for FSIs. Making sure that customers are aware of these benefits, concludes Wilson, will be the aim of the game. “At the very least, dealing with physical paperwork and documentation in financial transactions will become a thing of the past." fintechmagazine.com

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SAN MARINO’S FIRST NEO BANK LEVERAGED BY BLOCKCHAIN

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BKN301

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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Chief Executive Officer of BKN301, Stiven Muccioli, named his FinTech start-up to reflect its European location - 301 marks the year San Marino was founded - and BKN - draws on the word blockchain which is a critical component of the digital platform.

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Stiven Muccioli, Chief Executive Officer at BKN301, reveals how blockchain technology is driving FinTech in the emerging market of San Marino

B

anking-as-a-Service startup couple of years we can improve a lot on BKN301 will reach a value of transactions and customers and we dream €1 billion within three years, to reach a value of €1 billion in the next is the bold prediction from three years. the Founder and CEO of the “I sold my company Ventis at the end of Republic of San Marino’s 2020 for a very good deal and decided to first neo bank which was launched in come back to my country where I can now March 2021. bring my experience and skills to drive this Chief Executive Officer of BKN301, new startup FinTech business,” said Muccioli Stiven Muccioli, named his FinTech who launched the bank with Federico start-up to reflect its European location; Zambelli Hosmer and Luca Bertozzi. Hosmer 301 marks the year San Marino was was former CEO of PayPal in Italy and founded and BKN draws on the word Bertozzi was former CFO of Ventis (Iccrea blockchain - which is a critical component Banca Group). of the digital platform.

Muccioli was also inspired to return to San Marino-born Muccioli has returned the emerging market of San Marino - which to his home country after 10 years is landlocked on all sides by Italy - due to following a successful career as an investor the fact that although it is not a European and tech entrepreneur to launch the neo member state it is permitted to use the bank which provides embedded financial euro by arrangement with the Council of services and token issuing services with the European Union. Another bonus is that a B2B model. He sees this as the first of it’s granted the right to use its own designs many as his aim is to open on the national side of the FinTech banks outside the euro coins. constraints of the European Muccioli is using Union and in emerging blockchain technology to markets from central Asia drive the FinTech bank but to North Africa. faces challenges converting Despite the challenges the traditional population faced by the COVID-19 of San Marino, one of the pandemic, Muccioli aims world’s smallest countries to reach a fast growth with a population of 33,860, for BKN301. “We want to to convert them from STIVEN MUCCIOLI double our revenue during brick-and-mortar style of CHIEF EXECUTIVE this year and in the next banking to a neo bank.

OFFICER, BKN301

“BLOCKCHAIN IS A HUGE NEW OPPORTUNITY AND A NEW SCHEME OF IT ARCHITECTURE”

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DID YOU KNOW...

BANKING IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

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Could you summarise the major changes that increased digitization will bring to banking?

Could you summarise the major changes that increased digitization will bring to banking?

“I think digitalization will bring about the closure of a lot of branches which will mean a lot of employees could lose their jobs. It’s a huge political and a social problem for the entire financial ecosystem - not only for banks. We need to rethink the future of finance and the future of payments because we need more technology and innovative systems plus we have to think about the people who work in this business,” said Muccioli.

“We would work with other FinTech companies and telcos. If I am thinking of our customers, the best could be telecommunication operators, banks in other countries and software companies with a huge amount of customers with payment needs. This is because we can help increase the revenue and have more frictionless transactions. The best for us is to have customers, clients and business clients with a lot of customers and a lot of payments.”

May 2021

BKN301

He cites the use of blockchain and bankas-a-service as two of the most disruptive innovations in banking during the past year.

“Bank-as-a-service allows corporates, that are not banks, to work in the bank business.

It is a very new thing but it is possible to share banking services and mobile banking services without having the physical branches.

Blockchain is a huge new opportunity and a new scheme of IT architecture. I think these two trends are the biggest in the banking business during the past 12 months,” he said.

Muccioli outlined the three key strategy points of BKN301 which includes the following:

STIVEN MUCCIOLI TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER COMPANY: BKN301 INDUSTRY: NEO BANKING LOCATION: SAN MARINO

1 | Payments improvement Firstly filling the gap vs the market standard, secondly leading innovation, addressing cross-border customers though tha BaaS. 2 | Product customisation and new business model Enabling new services and integrating new technologies in order to create a high quality customised product.

€740m Transaction volume

€1bn

predicted value within the next three years

EXECUTIVE BIO

3 | Incremental revenues streams Improving financial services and being able to generate new revenue streams, thanks to a broader and international approach to open banking APIs and blockchain.

Tech Entrepreneur and investor.

The Financial Technology Report awarded him as one of the Top 25 CTOs of the world in the FinTech industry and he was selected as one of the Top 150 FinTech Leaders and Influencers in Italy. Founder and CEO of the Bankingas-a-Service startup BKN301 and the Venture Capital firm SM Capital.

Founder of Ventis, Fintech company sold to Iccrea Banca Group and co-founder of the multi-awarded SportTech startup Golee and the sustainable fashion startup KNIIT Milano. He founded Libertas, the first widely used news App in the Republic of San Marino and founded and later sold the e-commerce company Tippest. Early investor in SpaceX and Palantir (NYSE: PLTR) and Angel Investor of the Founder Institute of San Francisco, the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator, based in Silicon Valley, through which he invested in startups like Realty Mogul, Andalin and MallIQ.

BNK301

TOP FIVE SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY BKN301 BKN301 offers white-label and API-based payment solutions including:

M-WALLETS LOYALTY PROGRAMS REMITTANCE SERVICES

“ I THINK THE PANDEMIC COULD BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US DUE TO THE CHANGE IN BEHAVIOUR OF PEOPLE AS THEY MOVE TOWARDS DIGITAL PAYMENTS, AS CASH IS NOT THE FUTURE FOR THE BANKING SYSTEM”

PEER TO PEER PREPAID AND CREDIT CARD PROGRAMS

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STIVEN MUCCIOLI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BKN301

BKN301

2021

BKN301 was founded in 2021

San Marino

has a population of 33,860 and is one of the world’s smallest countries

301

the year the Republic of San Marino was founded

Balance of innovation and tradition and know-how inside of our company Muccioli admitted it is not always easy from other countries and also from our to introduce white label and API-based country. Our main challenge is to grow as payment solutions into an emerging a team inside a small country and inside economy - especially the financial ecosystem when you will be the first which is very traditional FinTech bank operating in and not so dynamic and TARGETS San Marino. not so innovative as a FOR BKN301 “It's very challenging platform,” he said. because the banking Local banks BKN301 will offer system of our country is Telcos white-label and APIvery traditional and not Utilities based payment solutions digital. Our main challenge Transportation from M-wallets (a will be to connect our companies virtual wallet that systems to the traditional Retailers and and stores payment card banking systems of our players that needs information on a mobile country. We then want financial services device), loyalty programs, to bring great innovation, to feed their remittance services, peer to bring people with customers’ needs to peer and prepaid and the huge experience credit card programs. fintechmagazine.com

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DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?

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Blockchain technology is being used to drive the service platform - based on international payment schemes.

Formally, blockchain is a digital mechanism to create a distributed digital ledger where two or more participants in a peer-to-peer network can exchange information and assets directly without the need for a trusted intermediary.

Records are unchangeable, timestamped, encrypted and linked to each other in blocks; each block is a cluster of about two thousand transaction records grouped together. The ledger grows as participants transact.

But informally, what does that definition mean? According to a report by Gartner it can theoretically do business with an unknown partner located anywhere on the planet and trade any asset at any transaction size and not need a lawyer, a bank, an insurance company.

Blockchain combines existing technologies and techniques into a novel architecture composed of five elements which include:

May 2021

1 | DISTRIBUTION Blockchain participants are located at a physical remove from each other and are connected on a network. Each participant operating a full node maintains a complete copy of the ledger, which updates with new transactions as they occur.

Nodes are the machines owned or used by participants and equipped to run the consensus algorithm. Any participant can review the ledger but cannot change it except under prescribed circumstances.

Created by Hamed from the Noun Project

2 | ENCRYPTION

Blockchain uses technologies to record the data in the blocks securely and semiCreated by Pascil Bom anonymously as participants from the Noun Project have pseudonyms. The participants can control their personal identity and other information and share only what they need to in a transaction.

BKN301

3 | IMMUTABILITY Completed transactions are cryptographically signed, time- stamped, and sequentially added to the ledger. Records cannot be corrupted or otherwise changed unless the participants agree on the need to do so. Such an agreement is known as a fork.

Created by priyanka from the Noun Project

4 | TOKENISATION Transactions and other interactions on a blockchain involve the secure exchange of value.

The value comes in the form of tokens.

Created by Philipp Petzka from the Noun Project

5 | DECENTRALISATION Blockchain network information and rules for how it operates are maintained by computers, or nodes, on the distributed network. In practice, decentralisation

means that no single entity controls all the computers or the information or dictates the rules.

Muccioli said: “Blockchain is super secure because when you send information or a transaction from one point to another point everyone can see it and it is not possible to hack or stall the data - it is super clear and it's open.

“It will bring about a huge change in behavior and infrastructure because with blockchain you don’t need third party infrastructure. You don't need Visa or MasterCard. It's possible to send cash or money from one point to another point without any other player in the middle. It's very strong for efficiency and for safe transactions,” he said.

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BKN301

Disrupting traditional schemes of payments with Blockchain | Stiven Muccioli | BKN301

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BKN301

“BLOCKCHAIN IS SUPER SECURE BECAUSE WHEN YOU SEND INFORMATION OR A TRANSACTION FROM ONE POINT TO ANOTHER POINT EVERYONE CAN SEE IT AND IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO HACK OR STALL THE DATA - IT IS SUPER CLEAR AND IT'S OPEN” STIVEN MUCCIOLI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BKN301

Post-pandemic opportunity in long-term The COVID-19 pandemic has been responsible for the migration of more people to digital banking services which could benefit the launch of BKN301 as it moves forward.

“I think the pandemic could be an opportunity for us due to the change in behaviour of people as they move towards digital payments as cash is not the future for the banking system. I think in the long term, it could be a good thing for the business but in the short-term, it's not so easy for us because there are not a lot of digital transactions as people spend less money. It's not a super strong moment for the business but I think in the long term we'll be fine.

Focus on emerging markets “Our key message is that we want to grant access to financial services to emerging markets and to people that are not allowed to enter into the financial system right now.

“San Marino is one of these emerging markets because we don't have payment systems, we don't have Apple pay, we don't have Google pay and we need to grant access to these kinds of services and mobile payments and digital finance,” said Muccioli who pointed out BKN301 is looking to extend into Eastern Europe, central Asia and North Africa.

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TOP TEN 10

FINTECH From internal initiatives to whole-community campaigns, we explore a sample of the most exciting innovation labs developing fintech globally

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TOP TOPTEN 10

INNOVATION L ABS WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

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TOP 10

10

Goldman Sachs - GS Accelerate Established: 2018 Number of locations: 1

Goldman Sachs’ GS Accelerate initiative gives employees the chance to have a direct impact on their company’s future.

Staff are encouraged to submit their ideas for ways that Goldman could be improved through further efficiency, improved customer experience, new revenue streams, and more. The limit is peoples’ imagination and competition has been huge - of the 1,400 ideas submitted so far, approximately 1% have been given investment.

Elsewhere, the company has made a $500m commitment to investing in BAME entrepreneurs to increase sector diversity.

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09

AmEx Digital Labs Established: 2017 Number of locations: 3

AmEx Digital Labs’ focus is a logical choice for the payments giant behind the venture: contactless payments, mobile payments, and QR code-based transactions are just some of the areas it is exploring.

Determined to stay ahead of the latest trends in payments tech, AmEx has also partnered with leading e-wallet providers like Google Pay and Apple Pay. However, in addition to internal development, the company is also interested in facilitating the growth of promising fintech startups, which it manages through its VC arm, American Express Ventures.

TOP 10

08

PayPal Innovation Lab Established: 2016 Number of locations: 1

Based exclusively in Singapore, PayPal’s Innovation Lab unites from the lowest and highest stratospheres of fintech - from students and SMEs to industry experts and government agencies - in a single collaborative space.

Ambitious in scale and highly inclusive, PayPal’s venture should serve as an inspiration for all organisations seeking to leverage the full capability of a single location.

The Lab itself offers infrastructural advice, access to fintech mentors and business leaders, and connection opportunities with investor networks.

07

PwC Experience Centers Established: 2015 Number of locations: 15

Bringing people together in a sandbox environment, PwC’s Experience Centers are among the most numerous fintech innovation spaces in the world - a total of 15 locations at the time of writing.

The company is able to bring together experts from each aspect of a product’s journey, from data scientists and consultants to programmers and end users, in order to create a holistic, multidisciplinary development arena.

It’s clear that PwC recognises the value in breaking down legacy barriers and siloes in modern fintech.

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FinTech Podcast Listen Now Listen Now

TOP 10

06

Fidelity Labs

Established: 2005 Number of locations: 5

Fidelity Labs’ approach can be summarised as a three-step process: 1. Identify customers’ most “meaningful” challenges and assess the profitability in solving them 2. Test ideas with clients in order to determine their impact 3. Create new products and scale up the most promising ones “Our challenge is to find the right balance between continuous organization and long-term planning. But the key is that we can’t wait for customers and clients to tell us what they want or like. We must stay nimble and anticipate what customers need,” said CEO Abby Johnson.

05

Citi Innovation Labs Established: 2009 Number of locations: 5

In 2009, Citi’s first Innovation Lab went live in Dublin as part of an effort to understand what effect prevailing finance trends would have on its customers. It soon proved both popular and successful in that mission, with subsequent Labs opening in the UK, Israel, Mexico and Singapore.

“The Innovation Labs’ engagement with clients revolves around educating them about the promise of emerging technologies, while also ensuring that at Citi, we are addressing the unique problems they face,” said the company.

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TOP 10

04 JP Morgan Chase Financial Solutions Lab Established: 2018 Number of locations: 1

Goldman Sachs’ GS Accelerate initiative gives employees the chance to have a direct impact on their company’s future.

Staff are encouraged to submit their ideas for ways that Goldman could be improved through further efficiency, improved customer experience, new revenue streams, and more. The limit is peoples’ imagination and competition has been huge - of the 1,400 ideas submitted so far, approximately 1% have been given investment.

Elsewhere, the company has made a $500m commitment to investing in BAME entrepreneurs to increase sector diversity.

03

FIS Ventures and Impact Labs Established: 2020 Number of locations: 1

The most recently established Lab on this list, FIS set up its Ventures and Impact Labs in Denver during April 2020.

The company’s intention is to invest $150m over a three year period, targeting only the most promising fintechs for development. The Lab’s emergence at the initial height of the COVID-19 pandemic is significant; FIS was determined that, at a time when others were hesitant to innovate, it remains at the forefront: “FIS is deepening its commitment to stay at the forefront of innovative technologies that can help our clients accelerate digital transformation and emerge even stronger from the current pandemic,” stated Asif Ramji, Chief Growth Officer.

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02

TOP 10

Visa Innovation Centres Established: 2013 Number of locations: 5

Visa Innovation Centres strives to provide an immersive experience for fintechs tackling their biggest challenges, as well as a forum to help identify and develop new revenue streams.

The company achieves this through a combination of “humancentred design principles”,realtime experimentation and access to Visa’s team of expert innovators.

Specific areas of focus include authentication, security, cloud, and digital.

Located in five global hubs, including San Francisco and London, Visa’s spaces are enabling the world’s leading fintech communities to stay connected and continue producing the exciting developments that transform the sector on a regular basis.

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“ Innovation at ING isn't about the latest gadgets or gizmos, but rather creating a differentiating experience for customers.

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TOP 10

ING Labs Established: 2014 Number of locations: 4 Located in Amsterdam, London, Brussels and Singapore, ING’s Labs are dedicated to finding faster, better and more cost-effective ways of operating within finance.

In a recent article, FinTech Magazine had the pleasure of speaking with Olivier Guillaumond, Global Head of Innovation Labs and Fintechs, about the company’s distinctly forwardthinking approach. Always on the lookout for faster, better and more cost-effective methods of operation, he related that ING strongly believes in fostering experimentation and community on a local level for a global effect: “In each specific area, we make a small selection of the most promising companies that we feel could solve a particular business problem experienced by ING or its clients.”

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BETKING

BRINGING

A DATA-CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE TO

GAMING WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

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BETKING

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BETKING

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BETKING

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics, outlines BetKing’s the company’s digital transformation story, which is placing data and CX at the core of its roadmap

O

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics

fficially entering the African gaming market in 2018, BetKing is a company where entertainment and the latest digital technology have been fused with a highly customercentric, data driven approach to produce an exceptional platform with its sights set firmly on the future. Now with operational bases in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia, BetKing offers its services on a variety of sports, both real and virtual, and continues to explore innovative new methods for achieving one of its primary objectives: bringing fans closer to the sports and games they love.

To find out how one aspect of its digital journey, data, is helping to push the company into exciting new territory, we spoke with Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics.

A graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Thomas’s formidable career includes 20 years’ experience working in data and analytics at some of the world’s largest tech companies. He joined BetKing in mid-2020 on the promise of a fresh challenge. “The company attracted me because it provides the opportunity to build a data and analytics function from scratch.

BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data,” he explains. As a seasoned veteran of the industry, Thomas’s experience, particularly as a ‘DataIQ 100 2020’ listed data and analytics leader, has fintechmagazine.com

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BETKING

Ian Thomas | BetKing

proven invaluable as BetKing prepares for its next phase of development. In particular, his aversion to “overburdening people with process” and planning for future scalability have been crucial to the company’s transformation strategy.

When Thomas talks about scalability he isn’t just referring to data volume, but rather thinking in more holistic terms: if a process relies on manual elements, how can it be automated? How can teams be built to optimise their capabilities? “Those kinds of issues are really important, as well as conscientiously thinking about our responsibility and place in society. BetKing is very mindful and respectful of the role that it plays in the markets and communities we operate in,” he adds. This places data management far beyond simply being a technological concern and elevates it to being a core enabler of cultural bestpractice. In keeping with this, the company is shifting from passive to proactive data 156

May 2021

management, which has resulted from an increased emphasis on compliance and legislative requirements, as well as the company’s growth.

BETKING

Thomas’s vision for data management at BetKing is to create a “common foundation for helping people to access and share data and insights.” This requires a flexible approach that many older and/or larger companies in the gaming industry could not achieve easily because of their legacy technology, processes and organizational structures. BetKing, an agile, digital native organisation, is unencumbered by similar restrictions. “Larger organisations can struggle with fragmentation in their data, with siloed teams often competing for who can provide the definitive view of business performance,” he says. “Instead of that, they need to build a common data foundation that democratises access to data while providing a level playing field for insights.” BetKing has taken stock of gaming’s transformation over the last two decades and opted not to follow the “preconceived notions” of how it operates. This impulse to break new ground is indicated by the company’s decision to target Africa, a historically under-served market. “The African territories in which we operate have some very significant differences to the UK and Europe in terms of player behaviour.

There aren't many established businesses that understand that.”

IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

TITLE: VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS INDUSTRY: BETTING & GAMING LOCATION: AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data”

IAN THOMAS

I help companies turn data into action and results, from day-to-day marketing decisions all the way up to senior leadership. I've enabled teams across Microsoft and Publicis Groupe to unlock product and marketing innovation through data, working with some of the largest, most complex datasets in the world.

My experience encompasses all parts of the data value chain: Data collection, data management and governance (including GDPR compliance), analytics and reporting, data visualization, and automated decisioning and Machine Learning/AI. The effective multidisciplinary data teams I've built have drawn on the talents and energy of diverse individuals to deliver value with data, ensuring consistently high employee satisfaction and low turnover.

I'm passionate about using data to drive impactful, customer-centric Digital Marketing, CRM and Advertising. I've built a Machine Learning-based system for Microsoft to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, in the right channel.

Azure.

Invent with purpose.

Microsoft Azure lays platform for BetKing’s gaming success Watch: Microsoft and BetKing partnership

Adrian Gatt, Microsoft’s iGaming Business Development Manager, and Eva Angelopoulou, Data and AI Specialist, explain how it supports the sport betting site’s growth Microsoft is not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, but also provides guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, including migrating to the cloud, and utilising tools and services such as Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory.

The Microsoft account team’s relationship with BetKing and the team behind their platform began in Summer 2019, while before that time BetKing worked primarily with Microsoft partners, said Adrian Gatt, iGaming Business Development Manager.

Eva Angelopoulou, who is responsible for Azure and its Data and AI technologies, said: “Initially we migrated the whole infrastructure onto Azure, to ensure agility with minimum maintenance and administration, and they maintained their own on-premise data center as Disaster Recovery site. In the second phase, we moved that over as well.”

Microsoft provided BetKing with technical guidance, governance and best practices, and involved a team of Azure engineers

to ensure a smooth transition. “We have invested a lot of effort in streamlining the support experience and discussed their concerns with regards to regulation and potential hybrid approach to cover data sovereignty needs, as iGaming is a highly regulated industry,” she added.

Gatt said its primary focus is to support the organisation as it goes through its M&A cycle, and enhance the platform’s monitoring. “We are making sure the customer’s Azure platform is more resilient in view of expansion into new markets, helping modernise applications and infrastructure, develop and infuse AI into their platform, and enhance Azure skills of BetKing’s technical team through our skilling initiatives,” he said.

“BetKing now has a cloud-only Azure set up but this is an ongoing journey, with more cloud services and continuous modernisation of applications and infrastructure.”

Microsoft ensures that all capabilities that can bring value are recommended and adopted. Consultative services are also a part of Microsoft’s armoury.

Invent with purpose

BETKING

DATAIQ 100: TRACKING DATA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

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DID YOU KNOW...

Thomas calls his inclusion on the 2020 edition of the DataIQ 100 list “a great honour.”

While acknowledging the value he’s been able to create for businesses, Thomas still cites the positive impact he’s made in the lives of individuals, from customers to team members to stakeholders, as his proudest career achievement.

The biggest challenge in terms of digital transformation, he posits, is not necessarily the acquisition of technology so much as the cultural investment that gives it a foundation.

BetKing’s entrepreneurial spirit and collaboration with a strong network of registered agents combined with its large online user base makes for a unique customer landscape. Thomas states that this customer profile has been partially generated by using Google Analytics, an important component of BetKing’s digital transformation. “Our roadmap consists of continuing to build a horizontally scalable platform, both from a technology and from a data perspective. We really need to start expanding that concept to create a more heterogeneous data management environment.” Referring to an automated system that integrates disparate databases into a unified interface, ‘heterogeneous’ databases will be important as BetKing seeks to optimise its user experience (UX). “Data

BETKING

“ Larger organisations usually have one big team that manages all of their data and insights.

Instead of that, they should be taking a democratised approach” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

from the front-end of our application stack should be treated no differently from the data we get from our backend BI (business intelligence) environment. We want to be able to expose that information at high volume to our growing data science team and build a range of value-added models against it.” The resulting opportunities could include recommenders, predictive monetization features, and enhanced fraud detection/problematic player recognition capabilities.

These new features will also fit into BetKing’s broader development plans, not least of which is a significant market expansion to new territories and product areas. Although exact details are currently being kept under wraps, Thomas indicates that entertainment broadcaster MultiChoice Group, one of Africa’s most prominent companies in the sector, will play a key role. “[MultiChoice has] broadcast rights for premiership and other top-league football in Africa,” an important asset for a continent whose primary consumer betting interest is focused on that sport. “BetKing’s goal is to deliver an integrated entertainment experience straddling the consumption of sports content and live games and placing bets on them,” he adds. “A lot of our product investment and expansion over the next 12 to 24 months will be focused on that area.”

BetKing’s growing maturity in leveraging data across all levels of the company affords one of its biggest opportunities for growth. Thomas reasons that unlocking this information will improve decision-making, help BetKing understand its customers better, price its products appropriately and create a better experience overall.

“Operating in Africa creates some unique challenges,” he says, “a lot of which has to do with the rapidly changing state of internet fintechmagazine.com

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BETKING

access. Bandwidth is still a major challenge for many of our players, so we have to offer low bandwidth versions of our products to drive engagement.” BetKing’s ability to meet customers’ needs was put to the test at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the cancellation of major sporting events and put a strain on its business model.

Undeterred, the company quickly launched a range of virtual sports betting products, thus resolving the issue and diversifying its product portfolio simultaneously. “Since professional football has come back, our 162

May 2021

“ Our business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's actually grown significantly” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

BETKING

business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's grown significantly.”

In many ways, BetKing’s steady and assured COVID-19 response is emblematic of its business overall: it is secure in its market, its brand is popular with its customers, and knows the metrics by which it will measure future success. For Thomas, this ongoing journey of refinement will be dependent on a highly data-centric philosophy, which will not only solve the problems of today but anticipate the innovations of tomorrow. “BetKing is building

DID YOU KNOW...

MICROSOFT One of BetKing’s key partners for a long time has been Microsoft. Not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, the software giant has provided guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, such as migrating to the cloud.

Thomas explains: “My team and I have been moving fast as we can towards more of a platform as a service (PaaS) approach to infrastructure. We're making use of things like Azure Synapse, Azure Databricks, and Azure Data Factory to create that kind of modern approach.

“More recently, we’ve been implementing a data lake so that we can start housing unstructured data on a large scale. Microsoft has been very supportive in providing advice and architectural consulting to help us make smart choices and build that infrastructure out in a scalable way.”

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“ Trying to evolve [the data team and platform] simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

self-serve dashboards and reports to place insights directly into peoples’ hands on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. People need to understand how the questions they have can be answered with the data that's available, and the more we can do to help them become self-sufficient the more that data-driven decision-making will take hold across the organisation.”

This democratised approach – with a central team providing the data, tools and expertise to enable the day-to-day use of data to support decision-making across the business – is at the heart of Thomas’s plans to build out his team and the company’s data platform in 2021. “Trying to evolve those two things simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now. That opportunity is really exciting because we can act fast, the demand is there, and our CEO [Byron Petzer] is leading the commitment.”

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