FinTech Magazine - November 2021

Top 10:

Digital european banks

UnionBank: Innovation in the Philippines

November 2021 | fintechmagazine.com

Finserv:

Banking:

Technology:

AmWins:

Hannover Re:

Cybercrime xxxxx in finserve

Cybercrime in finserve

Moving Banking: industry forward xxxxx

Resiliant insurance

Payment Solutions: xxxxxx

JENNIFER LOPEZ KOUCHIS ON

DIGITAL MORTGAGE TRANSFORMATION Senior Vice President of Real Estate Lending, explains the ‘Technology-focused heart of VyStar Credit Union' FEATURING:

HOME TRUST

MARSH

SINGLESTORE

Get contract management expertise that you can bank on Digitization of contract management enabled Raiffeisen Bank International to work seamlessly on contracts with both external and internal business partners. Rich insights and robust regulatory compliance solutions from SirionLabs helped the bank further extract maximum business benefits.

Learn more

Raiffeisen Bank: Smarter Contracts, Better Banking with SirionLabs Founded in 1886, Raiffeisen became a pioneering financial force in Austria before expanding its horizons beyond the country’s borders a century later into Central and Eastern Europe. Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) today has 45,000 employees servicing 17.7 million customers. By partnering with SirionLabs, the bank has rolled out a 36,000-contract system across 14 countries in 18 months.

Better Banking: SirionLabs will allow the bank to refocus on more complex, forward-looking challenges. “Now, we have all the documents we need in that system,” Janssen explains. “We have a single source of truth for all of our contractual information. We have all relevant metadata including the complete relevant regulatory information stored in the system and we have the flexibility to add metadata if it is required.”

Smarter Contracts with SirionLabs: As Edzard Janssen, RBI’s Chief Procurement Officer, explains it, regulation in banking is ever strengthening and bringing more complexity also in the areas relevant to outsourcing risk management. This meant RBI needed a way to store its contracts and prove to Austrian and European regulators that it met the irrequirements by a) having complete visibility of contractual landscape, b) identifying and managing outsourcing relationship, c) ensuring ease of reporting. This may seem straightforward, but it’s slightly more difficult than it sounds. European regulators, after all, don’t differentiate between internal and external suppliers when checking for banking risks and compliance.

In this regard, SirionLabs enabled RBI to track more than 1,000 internal suppliers in addition to its 36,000 external contracts. “In other words, SirionLabs provided RBI with a fully-fledged contract management system,” says Janssen.

“With their Smarter Contracting Platform, we can report to all authorities in real-time – on whichever dimensions they decide to track. SirionLabs’ system is compliant by default.”

So far, Janssen has been highly pleased with how the contract management platform has unfolded.

After all, SirionLabs excels at what it does. The company was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave for CLM, Q1 2021, a Visionary in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant, and a Value Leader in the Spend Matters CLM Solution Map. But RBI and SirionLabs are good partners not only because they lead their respective industries but also because they’re aligned on final outcomes.

“There are many contract management systems out there. The technology itself is not a differentiator. What is important to us is how much flexibility we have to adapt to changes in our banking environment. And here, SirionLabs helps us to solve specific banking challenges, specially in regard to compliance,” says Janssen.

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The FinTech Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JOANNA ENGLAND EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JACK THOMPSON JANE ARNETA PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE

CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON DUKE WEATHERILL JORDAN WOOD

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EVELYN HUANG HABBIE AMOS JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE MARKETING MANAGER

EVELYN HOWAT PROJECT DIRECTORS

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

JAKE MEGEARY MICHAEL BANYARD JOE PALLISER

MOTION DESIGNER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

RICHARD TURNER

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JOE MARRITT

MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

IT’S A POST-BREXIT BOOM FOR FINTECH The doomsday story of yesteryear has almost reached its second birthday – and the outlook is surprisingly sunny

“Fintech has weathered not only the roadblocks of Brexit, but the tidal wave of the disaster wrought

by COVID-19 as well”

FINTECH MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

The past five years have been a sickening roller coaster ride in terms of news headlines. First, there were riots and doomsday predictions regarding Brexit – and after that, the pandemic struck. Life, as they say, has been better.

However, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the feedback for this month’s lead feature, which looks at the fallout caused by the UK’s EU withdrawal in relation to fintech.

While supermarket shelves lack their usual array of continental cheeses and fuel supplies suffer a meltdown, fintech has weathered not only the roadblocks of Brexit, but the tidal wave of the disaster wrought by COVID as well.

Of course, it’s not a coincidental bounce-back.

Indeed, much thought (and cash) has gone into helping the UK maintain its impressive global position as the world’s number two in the industry.

The Khalifa Report earlier this year was instrumental in pinpointing new strategies to help fintechs grow, and the UK government has stuck to its word and supported the space by easing cross-border recruitment with unique fintech passport tunnels and additional funding.

Businesses have also shown great forethought, by acquiring new licenses that allow them to operate in Europe, and expanding within those marketplaces with much success.

All in all, it’s a story that shows good sense and preparedness can prevail – even in the worst of circumstances. And that’s a lesson we can all take on board.

JOANNA ENGLAND

joanna.england@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

fintechmagazine.com

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Timeline:

The story of Stripe 16 Trailblazer:

Jack Ma 20 Five Minutes With:

Corey Gross

44

Banking

A year on... brexit and the fintech space

54 26

UnionBank

Banking on the future: digital services for people

Marsh

Digital transformation of the insurance industry

68

Finserv

Data analytics and the future of business Intelligence in Finserve

76

SingleStore

Best when choosing a database partner

90

Payment Solutions Paytech revolutionising the payments space

112

98

Fortified fintechs: Security and cybercrime in finserve

Becoming Canada's first integrated health organisation

Technology

Green Shield Canada

120

Home Trust Procuring diversity: the benefits of balance

THE FUTURE OF

FINTECH

DEMOCRATISING TRADING THROUGH AGNOSTIC TECHNOLOGY

FIND OUT MORE AT SAPHYRE.COM

146 VyStar

134

Lending built on innovation

Top 10

Digital european banks

162 174

AMWINS Group

Event Review

The ultimate Fintech & InsurTech live event

Insurance by design: Amwins innovation moves industry forward

188

Hannover Re

From insurance to resilience

202

Temenos

Banking for the digital age is all about collaboration - and the cloud

BIG PICTURE

Fintech future in the Far East China

China is still leading the world in fintech innovation despite recent government crackdowns on digital banks and cryptocurrency services.

New surveys suggest that there are now over one billion mobile payment users in China. Data also shows that 87% of Chinese respondents now use one or more fintech services and an incredible 99.5% are aware of online apps that facilitate money transfer, mobile payments, and non-bank money transfers.

fintechmagazine.com

11

THE BRIEF “SECURITY HAS SLIGHTLY HIGHER VISIBILITY IN FINTECH SOFTWARE DISCUSSIONS BECAUSE THE SOFTWARE SO DIRECTLY AFFECTS ASSETS THAT NEED PROTECTION”

BY THE NUMBERS

CRYPTO GOES MAINSTREAM

We asked you which of the top three cryptocurrencies (after Bitcoin) you were most likely to invest in. You said:

Binance Coin 6% Ethereum 73%

Jonathan Knudsen

Senior Security Strategist Synopsys Software Integrity Group 

READ MORE

“NEARLY EVERY FACET OF HOW A BUSINESS OPERATES IS INFLUENCED

BY DATA” Natalie Cramp CEO, Profusion 

Cardano 21%

READ MORE

“BREXIT INTRODUCED RESTRICTIONS THAT REDUCED THE TALENT POOL, PARTICULARLY FOR TECHNICAL ROLES, WHICH COULD HINDER INNOVATION ACROSS THE SECTOR”

PET MAD The Californian fintech startup Sincere Financial has launched a debit card for ‘pet parents’ that offers pet-related rewards including animal shelter donations and pet food perks.

IN DEBT DO US PART In July, former Revolut executive Alexy Nikityuk founded Maroo – a fintech startup that helps engaged couples save for their weddings sensibly without getting into debt before the big day

Karl MacGregor

Co-founder and CEO, Vyne  READ MORE

12

November 2021

CHILDCARE COSTS Ensemble is a new app that helps separated parents in the US manage the expenses of co-parenting their kids. The venture secured US$3mn in seed funding earlier this year.

UNBANKED POPULATIONS

Morocco According to the latest figures from Statistica, a massive 71% of Morocco's population remains unbanked as we enter the later stages of 2021.

The reasons for this high number (26.6 million) are complex. Experts believe key signifiers are “low income and less educated, they often lack the identification and documentation requirements to open a bank account, [and ]they tend to live in rural areas far from bank branches.

Vietnam The country with the second largest unbanked population – with an estimated 69% of its people that have no bank account nor are registered on any digital bank network. However, experts are convinced the country could well be the next emerging fintech hub from the APAC region because investment in the space is growing swiftly, and the young and mobile savvy population in Vietnam is open to fintech adoption.

Egypt With stats showing 67% of its population is still unbanked, Egypt could soon be dropping from the top of the unbanked list, to the bottom. New changes in the country’s banking laws in 2020 has resulted in a number of new startups flourishing in recent months.

The revisions addressed the regulation of a number of fintech sectors, which included digital banks, cryptocurrency, and cashless payments. Thriving Egyptian startups include Fawry, Money Fellows, Paymob and Yomken.

 HIPPO HOLDINGS Following its move to go public, Hippo Holdings – which aims to improve homeowners’ insurance by leveraging customer data – has since been valued at US$5bn.

 NICKEL 76% of first-time cryptocurrency investors are hesitant about cryptocurrency due to scant regulations and market instability.

 LLOYDS BANK The FCA issued Lloyds Bank a £90mn fine for misleading its home insurance customers. The fine was the largest issued since 2019 when Standard Chartered Bank was fined £102mn for breaching money laundering regulations.

GOOD TIMES BAD TIMES

 GLOBAL INDUSTRY ANALYTICS Predicted by Global Industry Analytics, the digital insurance platforms industry is predicted to reach US$169.2bn in value by 2026.

NOV21

fintechmagazine.com

13

TIMELINE The story of

The world’s most successful ecommerce payments platform, Stripe began when two young brothers from a rural village in Ireland, decided to fix the sluggish business of online transactions.

2009 AN IDEA IS BORN John and Patrick Collison decide to troubleshoot the concept of clunky online payments in the first step of a journey that will revolutionise internet shopping and ecommerce.

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November 2021

2013 GETTING CONNECTED

2010 THE FIRST PAYMENT The brothers hit their eureka moment that creates a simple way for online transactions to be carried out. The very first transaction occurs via a company called 280 North following a two-week period during which John, Patrick, and 280 North’s founder, Ross Boucher, build a prototype payment portal. Stripe is launched and the company receives seed funding from the US-based seed accelerator Y Combinator.

Following the launch of Stripe Connect the previous year, e-commerce platform Sellfy expands its payment options to include credit card processing via Stripe. The service opens for merchants in North America and Canada.

20 RECOGNITION FROM INVESTORS Following a successful beta launch in the US the previous year, Stripe raises $18mn from investors that include Sequoia Capital. It is also valued at $100mn.

2021 2017 2014 CURRENCY AND CRYPTO The brothers announce that Stripe is able to facilitate transactions in 130 currencies.

In the same year, they also revealed the company will also support Bitcoin.

GOING APAC Stripe launches in Hong Kong and then partners with AllPay - China’s largest commercial transactional platform.

John Collison is also named the youngest self–made billionaire in the world

WORLD DOMINATION Following a US$600mn funding round in March, Stripe is valued at $95bn and is currently considered to be the world’s fastest-growing fintech startup.

2016 A BUSY YEAR Following commendations from US president Barack Obama, Stripe teams up with ApplePay and Stripe acquires Tonic, an app development and prototyping solution that boosts Stripe's developer offering.

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TRAILBLAZER

JACK Ma Job Title:

CEO and founder Companys:

Alibaba and Ant Group

A

s co-founder and former CEO of Ant Group and one of the world’s most prominent billionaires, Jack Ma’s formative years make for remarkable reading.

Ranked second in the annual World’s 50 Greatest Leaders’ list by Fortune, he is generally considered an iconic figure in the Chinese business world.

But life wasn’t always comfortable for China’s most prominent businessman who recently felt the wrath of the Chinese authorities when his IPO for Ant Group was scuppered

by Communist Party officials.

Humble beginnings Born on October 15th, 1964, the business magnate and investor’s first home was a humble dwelling in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, in Southeastern China. He lived with his low-income parents, elder brother, and younger sister, and he grew up during the cold war years that saw communist China isolated from the post-war booming economies of the democratic West.

It was an unglamorous existence that saw the young Ma - whose original name was Ma Yun, work hard at his local schools, and then at a local hotel that housed international guests.

16

November 2021

$500mn

Donated to charity (2020)

The hotel actually wasn’t that local to Ma. So the story goes, the teenager had to cycle 27 kilometres there every day from his home. But determined to improve on his school-learned English skills, he stayed the course, speaking with guests whenever he could to improve his conversational abilities.

It was at the hotel that he started to use the name Jack after hotel guests struggled to pronounce his Chinese name.

Employment issues But despite Ma’s keen determination to succeed, good luck evaded in those early years. Teachers who knew him said he was poor at mathematics and it took Ma three attempts (each one held annually) to pass his university entrance exams at the Hangzhou Teacher's Institute - now known as Hangzhou Normal University.

Once enrolled, Ma embraced college life and became head of the student council. He eventually graduated in 1988 with a degree in English and took a job as a lecturer in English and International Trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. However, still determined to improve on his education, he continued to apply for

fintechmagazine.com

17

TRAILBLAZER

higher education degree courses - it has to be said, without much success. Ma today claims he was rejected from Harvard Business School an impressive ten times.

During this time, Ma met his wife - Zhang Ying, a teacher at the school they both worked at. Later, they had three children.

She once said of him, "[He] is not a handsome man, but I fell for him because he can do a lot of things handsome men cannot do.”

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November 2021

Zhang was right. Knockbacks did not deter Ma, and upon leaving academia, he faced numerous difficulties in the commercial market and found himself rejected from numerous jobs - one of which was a position at KFC. "I went for a job with the police and they said, 'you're no good," Ma told one interviewer of that time. "I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four

What Happened to China's Superstar Entrepreneur Jack Ma? | WSJ

people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. I was the only guy they rejected..."

But an undeterred Ma was planning on creating an empire of his own making, and during these turbulent times, set up a number of enterprises. In April 1995, Ma finally found the winning formula. He and his friend He Yibing (a computer teacher) opened the first office for China Pages (a company that created websites for US companies), and Ma started his second company.

By May of that year, they registered their first domain - chinapages.com in the United States. Within three years, the company had made 5,000,000 Renminbi - the equivalent to US$800,000.

After that, Ma began building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. Describing the moment when the

first site went live, he recalled, "The day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house - and on a very slow dial-up connection. We waited three and a half hours and got half a page.

We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved the Internet existed.”

Stratospheric success From that point on, Ma’s upward trajectory has been stratospheric. He founded Alibaba - and later co-founded Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm, with equal success. Next came the fintech empire for which he is most famous - Ant Group.

Today, the name Jack Ma is synonymous with the words ‘business’ and ‘billionaire’.

He is the third richest man in China and has an estimated personal fortune of US$51bn. fintechmagazine.com

19

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Corey Gross CEO AND CO-FOUNDER Corey Gross is the co-founder and CEO of Sensibill – a Toronto-based fintech that tracks spending and data for business customers and creates greater spending transparency. We talk inspiration, favourite reads and best achievements this year

“ In order to support people when they need it most, we’ve got to understand what makes them tick at a more granular level”

Q. WHO WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD HERO AND WHY?

» If you asked me when I was a child, I’d probably

have said Wayne Gretzky. With more perspective, the answer is, without a doubt, my dad. He was a dual threat – right brain and left brain; extremely well read – like a walking encyclopedia. Gifted in maths, but also a dreamer, he was a serial entrepreneur. He lit up every room with his sense of humour and big personality.

Most of all, he was a great father who would do anything for his family. He taught me what’s most important in life, and I just hope I can live up to that model as I raise my own family. All that said, Gretzky scored 894 goals.

Q. W HAT'S THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE YOU EVER RECEIVED?

» Be good to people on your way up because they’ll be

waiting for you on your way down. Lesson learned, show appreciation and respect to those who helped you get ahead, and pay it forward to those you can help.

Q. W HAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ – AND HOW LONG AGO DID YOU READ IT?

» If you aren’t counting the 15 childrens’ books I read on

a weekly basis, the last adult book I read was ‘Competing Against Luck’ by Clayton Christensen, which I was overdue to read. It details the ‘jobs to be done’ approach for product development, where innovation is about finding the best possible way to solve for a particular job, which should galvanise the culture around a customer-centric mission. Today, JTBD is obviously a well known framework, and I’d recommend it for anyone building a product company.

Q. N AME ONE PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY YOU COULDN’T LIVE WITHOUT AND TELL US WHY (EXCLUDING YOUR MOBILE PHONE).

» Either my daughter’s white noise

generator or my food processor. The latter helps shave time off my food prep but the former keeps my child asleep fintechmagazine.com

21

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

at night. On balance, it’s probably the white noise generator.

Q. W HO DO YOU LOOK UP TO IN TERMS OF LEADERSHIP AND MENTORSHIP?

» I really look up to Sensibill’s Chair, Tom

Shen. I could write a treatise with the lessons he’s imparted on me about how to become a better, and more effective leader and professional. Tom’s a financial services entrepreneur and pioneer, a real fintech legend, and he’s got this infectious energy for company building and developing high calibre collaborative leadership teams.

His style balances integrity and humility, with decisive and precise execution. I learn something new every day from Tom, and I get better as a CEO every week for having been able to work with him.

Q. W HICH ACTIVITY ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING WHEN THE PANDEMIC IS OVER?

» Getting away from here. Top of my

list would be Italy, but I’ll settle for the Caribbean. Also, I’m just looking forward

22

November 2021

to sitting in a packed movie theatre, checking out the latest piece of IP designed to tap into my 80s nostalgia, and disconnecting with the world for a couple hours. I’d settle for that right now.

Q. I S THERE A PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT FROM THE PAST 12 MONTHS THAT YOU’RE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF?

» In the past 12 months, we’ve welcomed

our son to the world, which concludes our (purposeful) child-producing efforts. I also have a 3.5 year old daughter, so we have achieved the million-dollar family.

Q. W HAT INSPIRES YOU IN FINTECH TODAY?

» I’m inspired by companies that make

financial services more accessible through better education and more human messaging, fuelled by better, more actionable data. I think fancy modern UI + banking has reached critical mass, but we’re still in the early stages of truly personalising the financial experience to speak to the segment of one.

What the pandemic revealled is that everyone’s financial needs are unique, and in order to support people when they need it most, we’ve got to understand what makes them tick at a more granular level: peoples’ lifestyles, their spending preferences, their goals and aspirations, social causes they care about, cultural values, and so on. Open banking will level the playing field when it comes to financial data, but it isn’t going to help fill the gaps in customer knowledge that will enable us to communicate with people in relatable ways about their finances.

I guess you could say that one of our reasons for being is to help fill in those gaps. Today, Sensibill can help financial institutions break down data silos and produce a stronger, unified understanding of their customers.

Paired with highly differentiated, alternative data, like SKU-level purchase information, that reveals more of customers’ true needs, FIs can truly create a highly personalised digital banking experience.

“ BE GOOD TO PEOPLE ON YOUR WAY UP BECAUSE THEY’LL BE WAITING FOR YOU ON YOUR WAY DOWN”

fintechmagazine.com

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

With a foreword by our very own COO, Stacy Norman, FinTech Magazine brings you the Top 100 Women in FinTech as nominated by you!

Brought to you in association with:

A BizClik Media Group Brand

READ NOW

Creating Digital Communities in FinTech

BANKING ON THE FUTURE: DIGITAL SERVICES FOR PEOPLE WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

26

November 2021

UNIONBANK

fintechmagazine.com

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UNIONBANK

Henry Aguda

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November 2021

UNIONBANK

Union Bank of the Philippines is leading the way in terms of banking innovation in the region. Henry Aguda, UnionBank’s dynamic CTOO and CTO, tells us more

H

enry Aguda hasn’t always worked in finance. In fact, the charismatic banking whizz who is currently both Chief Technology and Operations Officer, and concurrently, Chief Transformation Officer at UnionBank, says that it was his experience as a customer, first, that led him to his career in the banking sector.

“I joined the bank five years ago. I'm originally a telco guy, but five years into the banking industry I could call myself an aspiring banker,” he laughs.

Aguda spent his former years working as a merger of technology and finance, but mostly in the telco space. He then joined the bank and two years into the banking tenure, the board decided to create the fintech spinoff venture for UnionBank, which is UBX. Since then, he has been able to mix both technical and financial experience to create a unique banking subsidiary that is focused on creating technology innovation around financial services.

His innovative leadership within the bank, he explains, has been led by his experience as a bank user. “Well, let's just say I'm a consumer of the financial sector. In the olden days, I avoided going to the bank branch unless it was necessary. I don't like lining up, and like most people, I don't want to be signing documents.”

“As a consumer, what has attracted me most about this industry is that I know I can make an impact in terms of making people's lives easier If we apply the digital discipline appropriately.” fintechmagazine.com

29

UNIONBANK

Technical innovation Another aspect that has fed Aguda’s enthusiasm has been Union Bank of the Philippines executives’ willingness to embrace new technical innovations. In just five years, immense and groundbreaking changes have been implemented. These changes have not only digitally transformed the bank’s services, but also led to the ‘work-from-home mandate during the pandemic, operating seamlessly.

Currently, Union Bank of the Philippines is known to be number one in terms of profitability, ranking top in terms of ROE and ROI. It is also one of the six biggest banks in the Philippines and has 32

November 2021

won several awards for its services and achievements.

Managing the pandemic While many companies and organisations globally had crisis management strategies in place prior to 2020, the unexpected pandemic still managed to throw them into disarray. Having previously implemented innovative technology strategies to handle situations as wideranging as earthquakes, active shooters in the building, floods, and terrorist attacks, Aguda says the transition to the entire organisation working from home, was carried out with relatively few bumps.

UNIONBANK

Henry Aguda

“ They realised that it was actually more convenient than the traditional channels to open an account with UnionBank during the pandemic”

TITLE: SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY AND OPERATIONS OFFICER, AND CHIEF TRANSFORMATION OFFICER AT UNION BANK OF THE PHILIPPINES, AND CHAIRMAN AT UBX PHILIPPINES INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: PHILIPPINES

HENRY AGUDA

EXECUTIVE BIO

CTOO AND CTO, UNIONBANK

Henry Aguda is the Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Technology and Operations Officer, and Chief Transformation Officer of Union Bank of the Philippines, and also Chairman of the Board of UBX Philippines, the fintech venture studio of the bank.

Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Philippines Diliman Technology Management Center, a Global Faculty Mentor and Director of the Academic Advisory Board of the Asian Institute of Digital Transformation (AIDT), a Board Member of Insular Health Care, Inc. (IHC), and a Fellow Member of the Institute of Corporate Directors (FICD). He is also a former board member of the Philippine Clearing House Corporation (PCHC).

Mr. Aguda obtained his degrees in Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Juris Doctor in Law, both from the University of the Philippines. He is the author of the book, “Data Privacy & Cybercrime Prevention in the Philippine Digital Age”.

He was recognised as one of the “Top 10 banking and financial technology leaders on Digital Reinvention in ASEAN 2021,” featured in an E-book that The Asian Banker co-published with Backbase. Also just recently, he was awarded “Privacy Advocate of 2021” by the National Privacy Commission and “CTO of the Year – Southeast Asia” by The European Global Banking and Finance Awards 2021.

fintechmagazine.com

33

Accelerate and Optimize your Digital Transformation Journey with eCloudvalley, ASEAN’s Leading Cloud Provider Through AWS, the world’s most comprehensive cloud platform, eCloudvalley is committed to helping customers achieve maximum productivity through aggressive cost optimization and aims to simplify the technology so customers can focus on their business success.

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UNIONBANK

“ If you give customers a facility that allows them to borrow money with competitive rates, nothing that would prevent them from repaying, that impacts people's lives”

One step ahead of the curve This forward-thinking approach has been applied to all areas of the bank’s services and is yielding extraordinary results. Indeed, Union Bank of the Philippines was the first regional bank to employ the use of enterprise architecture as part of its digital transformation process. Aguda believes this is the biggest innovation he’s brought to the table in terms of creating a better regulatory strategy in the banking sector.

HENRY AGUDA CTOO AND CTO, UNIONBANK

UBX - DIGITAL BANKING FOR THE FUTURE

DID YOU KNOW...

He explains, “In 2017, we started a massive shift to future-proof our business by using emerging technologies. We started retiring most of our desktop computers and started giving laptops to our employees. The world is a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous place even before a pandemic, and we’d prepared for everything from earthquakes, tidal waves, shooters in the building, and terrorist attacks.

“We also went into an aggressive programme, giving cell phones with data loads to our employees. And we've created an infrastructure that is scalable as people start using the network. When the pandemic hit, it was just the right disaster that tested all of the readiness that we prepared for.

So because of that, 87% of our people immediately were able to work from home, and they can work securely with VPNs and secured connections. This allowed us to ensure that our employees are working safely from their homes while we continue servicing the public.”

UBX is a fully owned subsidiary of Union Bank. The purpose of UBX is to multiply the digital capabilities of the bank.

It’s a specialist arm that invests in the fintech industry, helping new startups to grow, and also using technology that is strategically aligned to the vision and aspirations of the bank. UBX is part of UnionBank's transformation B - a comparison would be the way AWS functions symbiotically with Amazon.

UBX is also one of the fastest-growing FinTechs in Asia.

fintechmagazine.com

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UNIONBANK

1968

Company founded

11.6 Bn

Php Revenue (2020)

3,525

Number of employees

36

November 2021

UNIONBANK

Coming from a telco background, his skills were well-honed and he was surprised when he realised such systems were not present yet in the banking industry.

He explains, “The biggest innovation that I was able to bring to the banking industry was the use of an enterprise architecture that is standard and internationally accepted. It's called the Banking Industry Architectural Network. It was quite a surprise for me because I thought banks being highly regulated and standardsbased, would already have the discipline locked in. But apparently, they hadn’t come across such a discipline.

“The biggest innovation that I was able to bring to the banking industry was the use of an enterprise architecture, that is standard and internationally accepted” HENRY AGUDA CTOO AND CTO, UNIONBANK

“So in joining the bank, while I was learning banking, I was also teaching my colleagues how a bank can be architected, such that it follows a digital template adopted worldwide.”

From there, Aguda orchestrated a technological revolution within the bank, shifting it to technologically innovative systems including AI and robotic process automation, among others. Recently there were also discussions on the metaverse and how UnionBank can use its architecture to explore ways of serving people in Web 3.0.

Ultimately, says Aguda, the success of the transformation has been down to the willingness of executives to embrace technology and trust in the new direction. fintechmagazine.com

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Union Bank of the Philippines utilises cybersecurity as a business enabler in their digital transformation framework Sustaining Security in the Digital Transformation Journey As digital innovators in the Philippine banking sector, UnionBank was committed to finding a cybersecurity partner who would further strengthen their commitment to safe and secure digital banking.

Fortifying Cloud Security with Palo Alto Networks Having seen tangible benefits from deploying Palo Alto Networks’ security solutions, UnionBank wanted to continue this long-standing partnership and ensure its secure migration to the cloud.

UnionBank looked to Palo Alto Networks for consistent threat prevention across UnionBank’s cloud deployment and broad security and compliance coverage - for applications, data and the entire cloud native technology stack.

“UnionBank realized a 50% time reduction in conducting real-time threat intelligence after securing our infrastructure with Palo Alto Networks.

We are confident that these benefits will extend to our cloud environment” Joey Rufo

First Vice President Chief Information Security Officer, UnionBank

Industry Financial Services Challenge Secure UnionBank’s cloud infrastructure, adhere to regulatory requirements and scale security operations to support innovation Solution Palo Alto Networks’ security platform, powered by a comprehensive suite of modern security detection and protection capabilities, provides threat prevention, cloud compliance and monitoring that enables ease of security governance while scaling their on-premise and cloud native resources. Collectively, the solutions enable for a comprehensive cloud security strategy while addressing organisational objectives and regulatory requirements.

Outcomes • Increased visibility and scalability, ideal for cloud environments • Boost compliance and risk management requirements • Ability to secure infrastructure, applications and data across hybrid environments

Boosting Cloud Security Posture Palo Alto Networks was able to provide UnionBank a scalable solution, which was ideal for cloud environments. The consolidated security management enables consistent and advanced threat protection for UnionBank’s deployments, all whilst addressing organisational objectives, compliance and regulatory requirements.

Learn more

UNIONBANK

Banking on the future: Digital services for people

“I was lucky enough that the people I work with are all passionate and forward-thinking. They adapted to the new solutions quite easily.”

Addressing the unbanked In 2019, according to an official financial inclusion study, an astonishing 51.2 million people in the Philippines were still unbanked. The pandemic has undoubtedly changed that - but in terms of addressing financial inclusion, the situation remains a challenge.

In 2015, for example, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) set a goal to increase the number of digital payments in the country from just 1% to 20% by 2020.

“We've exceeded that target and are hitting an estimated 30% in terms of digital transactions. We are still lower compared to our peers in the CN region, but we'll be at parity with them in one to two years’ time,” predicts Aguda.

In part, cultural attitudes to digital banking were responsible for a large number of unbanked people. “Some said, prior to the pandemic that people are used to traditional banking that they will never choose not to go to the branch. But then in the age of social distancing when you remove that option, people just gravitate towards what is available,” says Aguda, who recalls that in early 2020, there was initial hesitation in adopting more digital banking services, but once customers discovered how easy it was, the adoption level increased.

“They realised that it was actually more convenient than the traditional channels to open an account with UnionBank during the pandemic, you don't have to leave your house. You just have to download the app, take a selfie of yourself, take a picture of your government-issued IDs, and within three minutes, you already have a bank account.” fintechmagazine.com

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UNIONBANK

The pandemic and the ease of use were the biggest contributing factors to customers seeking digital banking alternatives. As Aguda points out, culturally speaking, such services have been welcomed because they have made moving money around so much easier for users. He also believes the pandemic has been instrumental in changing transactional behaviour in the Philippines.

“There's a lack of extended family in the Philippines, and there’s a cultural nuance where we take care of our extended families, whether they're living with us or living overseas, or in the rural areas.

Because of that need, people had to adapt to the platform that allows them to extend their assistance to those extended family members.”

Cyber security and privacy practices But as with all major digital overhauls, cybercrime is never far behind - and has been instrumental in toppling many large-scale institutions since the pandemic began. It has therefore been at the forefront of many recent discussions by leading banks and institutions.

Union Bank of the Philippines has responded to the threat by creating its own cybersecurity operations centre which is so technologically innovative that it has now become part of the banking regulatory framework.

“Years before the pandemic, we started making our own cybersecurity operation centre, which has now become a standard required by our regulators for the other banks,” Aguda says. He goes on to explain that as one of the first banks in the region to implement such a programme, the centre,

UNIONBANK

“ Engaging in the industry personally, with both people inside and outside of the Philippines, is number one on my bucket list” HENRY AGUDA CTOO AND CTO, UNIONBANK

which can be operated from three different continents, has proved remarkably effective.

“We've been consistently recognised by our regulator for the education campaign in the ‘privacy by design’ approach that we take with our systems. You have to be one or two steps in front of the criminals. Otherwise, they will eat your lunch if you snooze. So, that's the approach we’ve taken.”

He explains, “Privacy by design is a prescription by the National Privacy Commission. Everything we do from starting off an IP product check to creating a product, to creating an employee programme, has to be built into those programmes from day one, with data privacy protections, whether it's processes or technology implementation.

“Often, the problems arise because companies do an IP project or a product development and the privacy compliance comes at the end. In our case, nothing gets started until it has the approval of our data fintechmagazine.com

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privacy group that says that we're building it according to data privacy regulations.”

Strategic partnerships and banking ecosystems While Union Bank of the Philippines has worked hard to create a better climate for the region’s banks in general, it has also relied on the resources provided by a number of strategic partnerships. These working relationships have been critical to the bank’s success.

“We value our strategic partners in the same way that we value our employees.

We call them UnionBankers with a different company ID. AWS has been essential for our cloud infrastructure, Palo Alto for cybersecurity, VMware for the Virtual computing platform that powers the bank.”

5 of the world’s top 10 banks use Appian.

Leading nancial institutions trust Appian to accelerate delivery of new products and services, reduce risk and improve operational eeciency. Discover how Appian connects people, systems and data with exibility and speed.

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UNIONBANK

He continues, “We collaborate with them in a partnership that is meaningful in the pursuit of a common vision. And for UnionBank, that common vision is financial inclusion for the broadest number of Filipinos in our country.”

The system appears to be working because Union Bank of the Philippines has been awarded best digital bank for several consecutive years. “We have the passion for continual reinvention. For example, we recently got our license for a full-blown digital bank that will be called UnionDgital. Our plan is to continue to reinvent the way digital banking is being done.”

Aguda explains that the bank’s backroom processes will be reconfigured to herald a new era in digital banking that is based in the metaverse - a new buzzword that has planted Web 3.0 or the spatial internet.

“It's the merger of the physical and the virtual world. So UnionBank wants to be the first bank to plant its flag in the metaverse.

We're now talking to gaming companies that provide play for pay as entertainment and e-sports, and looking at ways of how we could convert the crypto, immediately to fiat and fiat to crypto. Allowing gamers in the blockchain virtual world to easily participate in the traditional economies and vice versa. So, that's another exciting pursuit of UnionBank.”

This aspect concludes our conversation, a subject that is clearly a passion for Aguda.

“What inspires me in banking today is the way that it is affecting people's lives,” he says. “If you give customers a facility that allows them to borrow money with competitive rates, nothing that would prevent them from repaying, that impacts people's lives. So that continues to sustain my interest in the banking industry.”

Ultimately though, it all comes down to creating better services for the bank’s loyal customers, whether that is for the unbanked or the latest armchair investors. People, says Aguda, are at the heart of the matter - and as a highly sociable person, he can’t wait for things to get back to ‘normal’ - even if digital transformation has been fun.

Customer-first philosophy The world of play-for-pay is where the future lies in terms of progress for Union Bank of the Philippines, says Aguda, who explains that play-for-pay gamers often struggle to get bank accounts. “And because they don't have bank accounts, the yield on their conversion falls and they end up paying huge transfer fees. But by providing banking services, their earnings are immediately accessible and offer them a way to improve their lives.”

“The first thing I'm going to do is to go out and meet people. I want to have proper meetings. I want to fly to other countries and see our partners and colleagues. Before the pandemic, we travelled a lot. It’s one of the few things I really miss. So engaging in the industry personally, with both people inside and outside of the Philippines, is number one on my bucket list.”

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A year on...

Brexit and the Fintech space IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR SINCE THE UK ENDED ITS BREXIT TRANSITION PERIOD WITH THE EU. WE TAKE A LOOK AT THE POST-BREXIT IMPACT ON THE UK’S FINTECH INDUSTRY WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

I

n January 2020, the UK left the European Union, ending 47 years of partnership. The transition period of 12 months ended on December 31st, 2020 - and the UK is now into its complete post-Brexit state. At a time when digital transformation has turbo-boosted growth in the industry globally, we take a look at the changes that have occurred in Britain the world’s second largest fintech hub - and how it is managing the changes.

Fintech outposts in Europe While the pandemic has been raging and dominating the headlines, fintech operators in the UK have been quietly managing a

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November 2021

VENTURE CAPITAL

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BANKING

crisis of their own. The impact of Brexit has resulted in significant changes in several key areas - not least the fact that many talented, UK-based fintech experts originally hailed from EU countries.

Other challenges include licensing problems, increased costs, reduced market options and confusion over how data should be handled now the industry is no longer under the strict regulatory eye of the EU. Karl MacGregor, co-Founder and CEO of Vyne, an Open Banking account to account payment technology firm, says the greatest impact of Brexit on fintech companies has been caused by the restricted access to EU markets. He explains, “In order to offer EU businesses payment services, or sell to EU merchants, we now need to be regulated in Europe, which requires having a European entity, or partner with another business to provide these services.”

And though setting up an outpost presence in Europe can circumvent this problem, it's an expensive and time consuming business, which, MacGregor points out, introduces, “significant new costs, delays and complexity – especially as neither the UK nor the EU have increased the speed at which they approve new businesses.”

As such, he concludes, “there is currently a huge backlog of businesses unable to operate effectively.”

“ IN ORDER TO OFFER EU BUSINESSES PAYMENT SERVICES, OR SELL TO EU MERCHANTS, WE NOW NEED TO BE REGULATED IN EUROPE” KARL MACGREGOR VYNE

Overcoming post-Brexit challenges However, despite the obvious difficulties that have faced UK fintechs, some experts say that preparation has been key in limiting damage, and many companies have managed to cushion the impact due to good forward planning.

Liudas Kanapienis, co-founder and CEO of Ondato, an identity solutions fintech with a presence in London, Poland and Lithuania, believes the preparedness has even been beneficial for some companies.

He explains, “The fundamental change, without a doubt, is that the UK is no longer part of a common system, which means that so-called license passporting is changing. Therefore, even before Brexit and , during uncertainty, everyone hastily started looking for licenses in Europe.

As a result, many companies now have licenses in the UK and the EU.” However, he admitsthat the cost of preparedness has not been cheap for the sector, even though the investment has ultimately paid off. “Fintech itself has clearly faced a negative impact as a result, requiring additional investment, time, and so on. On the other hand, for some, this has become an advantage for licensed fintechmagazine.com

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BANKING

activities. Two licenses instead of one can significantly reduce several risks. Of course, providers who have adapted to a more diverse environment have advantages.”

Passport problems for UK fintechs Brexit resulted in the rights of EU professionals to work in the UK being automatically removed. Many European nationals also returned to the EU following Britain’s exit from the trade collaboration.

In February this year, the UK government put legislation in place to decrease the problems surrounding fintech experts from the EU working in Britain. The scheme provides visas to fintech experts from the EU, and is similar to the currently existing Global Talent visa, which was developed in partnership with the industry body Tech Nation - the UK’s startup network for technology entrepreneurs.

It is hoped that the move will fill the gaps in the workforce in the financial technology sector, created due to a loss of skills from the EU following the UK’s departure from the European bloc at the end of January 2020.

However, the problem is not that simple to solve, says MacGregor, who points that there are still far too many roadblocks in place that are hindering companies in their hiring processes.

He says that until the UK Government and EU agree on streamlined equivalency and passporting processes, most UK fintechs will suffer. “The UK fintech industry has been built on diversity and expertise, attracting people from across the EU and, indeed, the world. Brexit introduced restrictions that reduced the talent pool, particularly for technical roles, which could hinder innovation across the sector.”

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Post-Brexit opportunities For those Fintech companies already established in Europe, the repercussions of Brexit will have been fairly minimal. But for the companies solely based in the UK, the impact would have been significant, points out Andrew Doukanaris, CEO of the payment solutions fintech start-up Pomelo Pay. “They would have lost all their European customers and been unable to trade on the continent until they’d managed to register an office somewhere in the EU and secured a new banking license. Consequently many companies would have wasted an entire year of business trying to navigate this transition.”

However, he continues, it's not all doom and gloom. The pandemic created an increase in demand for cashless and

“ ALL CHALLENGES WITH LICENSING AND GDPR, AS WELL AS SIMPLE BUSINESS TECHNICALITIES ARE CURRENTLY BEING ADDRESSED” contactless payments, with more and more businesses and consumers turning to digital banking. “So, despite Brexit, the UK Fintech sector has experienced significant growth and recently hit a multibillion pound peak of investor interest.”

Governance changes to the fintech sector The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic also took a toll on the route the UK had designed to keep its services sectors streamlined. Yet, despite all these, companies in the fintech sector must comply with so many changes in governance that Brexit has brought.

For example, offering services and products to an EU-based market will involve more paperwork than ever. Considering that

LIUDAS KANAPIENIS ONDATO

fintech institutions must deal with contracts, KYC, and relatively complex things, handling everything from a UK-based headquarters could become problematic.

Similarly, there is an even bigger puzzle when it comes to GDPR and data management. Britain was one of the many countries to accept the EU’s GDPR. As a result, institutions now must move the data stored in the EU back to the UK for seamless access.

In short, the governance changes brought by the fintech sector are not to be overlooked.

Doukanaris confirms, “The change in banking license requirements is fintechmagazine.com

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Forging solutions Mark Lamers, CTO of Vartion - a Netherlands-based technology company, says, more challenges will be encountered, alongside new opportunities.

“The expected move of financial services assets and people from London to the European mainland is yet to happen. London will remain an important financial hub that will continue to support the growth of an innovative UK FinTech industry to cater for its needs. However, we believe that many challenges lie ahead, starting with the attractiveness and retention of highly qualified FinTech professionals in London''.

"Brexit’s newly introduced immigration policies, followed by the COVID 19 pandemic, have deeply affected labour dynamics.

We see a new generation of flexible and international professionals seeking dynamic,

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family-friendly and multicultural places to work and live, with great transport links and a favourable business environment. The Netherlands provide just that."

“We do not see a divergence but rather increased collaboration between FinTech hubs and solution providers in Europe in the future. As the European Union has clearly stated its ambitions to become a global tech champion, we see greater opportunities to build synergies and partnerships. Ultimately, it will depend on the support the European FinTech scene gets from both European and national governments. We might see more private and public initiatives to foster greater innovation across Europe, assist with start-up creation and lead to the development of competitive hubs”.

BANKING

“ THE FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE, WITHOUT A DOUBT, IS THAT THE UK IS NO LONGER PART OF A COMMON SYSTEM, WHICH MEANS THAT SO-CALLED LICENSE PASSPORTING IS CHANGING” LIUDAS KANAPIENIS ONDATO

without doubt the biggest governance shift impacting UK Fintech companies following Brexit. Previously, they could passport their UK banking license to other European countries enabling them to serve customers right across the EU. However, from March, their UK license was no longer valid in the EU and companies had to apply for a separate European license to serve European customers. This is a fairly laborious process requiring you to register an office somewhere in the EU, with license applications taking up to three months.”

Fintech in Europe after Brexit It's not just UK-based fintechs that are feeling the post-Brexit pinch as users from the EU who are using UK-based fintech services could potentially face issues too.

But MacGregor says positive strategies that work with the new restrictions could strengthen the UK’s fintech services globally.

He says, “The UK is in a fortunate position as we can take existing European regulations and build on them to create a world-leading framework that allows British businesses to innovate and create new market segments.”

MacGregor points to the recent Khalifa Review and says the report was the first step towards a future where the UK cements its role as the leading fintech hub ahead of challenger nations, but only in the right conditions.

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“In order to continue to lead Europe in fintech, disruptors must be empowered to disrupt, challengers cannot be stifled by incumbents, and the fiscal gaps between startup and established businesses must close.”

He also believes that simplifying and streamlining regulatory and crossborder application processes will increase both market participation and competition. “These were two of the primary aims of PSD2. This will drive more, and faster innovation in the UK and Europe and remove the regulatory hurdles that hinder growth today.”

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The future of fintech Ultimately, measures taken prior to Brexit seem to be paying off. The UK-based digital bank Curve is one example of this. Following Brexit, fintech obtained governmental approval in Lithuania and launched an operation that enables it to keep serving customers who are in the European Union. This move also transitioned the authority from the UK to the European Union, thus enhancing the company’s customer base.

“All challenges, with licensing and GDPR, as well as simple business technicalities

BANKING

“ OVER THE NEXT 10 YEARS WE WILL CONTINUE TO SEE THE UK FINTECH SECTOR FLOURISH IN CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION AND CEMENT ITS POSITION AS THE FINTECH LEADER OF EUROPE” ANDREW DOUKANARIS POMELO PAY

are currently being addressed. However, it is not yet clear what will happen in the future, whether there will be major differences in terms of regulation, in terms of data protection and whether there will be additional barriers,” Kanapienis says.

But ultimately, the future of fintech in the UK is bright, and although there have been some casualties along the way, in general, Brexit has not wrought the negative destruction that was predicted for the space.

Doukanaris says that despite Brexit and the pandemic, London has maintained its status as the Fintech capital of Europe.

“Fintech is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the UK economy. New figures by Innovate finance show that the UK Fintech sector raised a total of $5.7bn in H1 2021, an increase of 34% from the previous year ($4.3bn).

“Over the next 10 years we will continue to see the UK Fintech sector flourish in creativity and innovation and cement its position as the Fintech leader of Europe.”

He continues, “An important change is to make sure there’s enough financial support for early stage Fintech startups.

Despite Rishi Sunak recently launching the government’s £375mn Future Fund, a scheme designed to drive investment in innovative firms of the future, some Fintech companies may struggle to be eligible unless they’re at the cutting edge of R&D. So, I believe there should be more allocated funds from the government to help Fintech startups thrive in this crucial early stage.”

The UK has not lost it’s international appeal either, and is still considered a leading fintech hub, says MacGregor.

“Happily, despite Brexit, many skilled workers from across the channel do still find the UK an attractive place to settle and work. It is crucial that British businesses can continue to access European talent, so the government must eliminate as many of the unwanted logistical hurdles for these in-demand individuals as possible.”

Kanapienis agrees, and says stability has been achieved and fintech in the UK will continue to thrive and be world-leading, despite the dire pre-Brexit predictions and the added complication of a pandemic.

“A number of European countries have exploited Brexit by inviting financial companies to license and set up offices in their countries, but the pace seems to have slowed significantly and the need is no longer as pronounced as it initially seemed.

As a result, the UK will certainly remain the capital of fintech for the next 10 years.

He adds, “Europe does not yet see an environment that can compete successfully with the UK, as there must be synergies between both the business environment and regulation.” fintechmagazine.com

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Digital transformation of the insurance industry WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

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PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

MARSH

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Alistair Fraser-Hawkins (Left) Adam Kemmis Betty (Right)

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UK Corporate CEO Alistair Fraser-Hawkins and Digital Leader Adam Kemmis Betty of Marsh insurance brokers discuss a digital transformation built on 150 years of history

P

ossibility. A word you hear a lot in insurance circles when it comes to managing risk, but at Marsh it is far more than an empty mantra – it’s something the world’s leading insurance broker and risk advisor has lived and breathed for more than 150 years. Now, the possibility is also the digital opportunity, which means serving commercial and individual clients better and connecting Marsh’s 40,000 colleagues across 130 countries in a new hybrid workplace.

Marsh is renowned for leveraging data, technology, and analytics to help reduce clients’ total cost of risk and that move to a digital mindset has only been accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Alistair Fraser-Hawkins is the Chief Executive Officer of the UK Corporate business at Marsh, which helps Middle Market clients with their risk and insurance needs.

“Marsh is the world's leading risk and insurance advisor and we work with clients across all segments of industry, all sizes of clients from the very smallest to the very largest, working with them to identify risk, understand what risk is involved in their business, and helping to design a risk management and insurance programme that satisfies their needs and allows them to transact their business,” says Fraser-Hawkins.

The company has been in business for 150 years and continues to respond to the

world’s most pressing challenges. The recent pandemic was no exception.

“2020 was a year like no other,” admits Fraser-Hawkins. “For us it brought risk to the forefront of conversations with clients at boardroom level.

“Many companies now look at not just the risks they can see but at those intangible risks that perhaps historically we would have thought are very rare and would have limited impact. We’ve also seen that risk isn't just a local issue – it could be a global issue and organisations can be affected by risks across the world.”

Fraser-Hawkins believes the global lockdowns also helped further solidify Marsh as a “global family”.

He witnessed increased interaction across the globe in terms of how Marsh helped clients through the pandemic and equally a real shift in terms of their own ability to transact in a digital and virtual sense without dropping the level of service delivered to clients.

“Interestingly, I think it actually brought us closer together as a global business,” says Fraser-Hawkins. “The collaboration we see across geographies, across business units, was accelerated despite the fact that it was challenging for all of our colleagues across all the countries we operate in. It was a very challenging but pivotal year that sets us up for the next 150 years.” fintechmagazine.com

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Marsh: Digital transformation of the insurance industry

Putting people first Fraser-Hawkins talks at length about the people within the business. Marsh is, he says, a people business, which clients appoint for the insight and intellectual capital they bring.

He believes that they are now able to benefit from combining the best of both worlds; both video conferencing and faceto-face engagement will enable Marsh to get in front of clients in a more efficient manner.

A true hybrid solution, whereby colleagues from Marsh engage with clients face-to-face but also with the ability to bring in expertise from around the globe at a moment’s notice.

The pandemic put a strain on everyone, but Fraser-Hawkins says he is proud of how his colleagues adapted to the situation.

“Our colleagues have been phenomenal throughout the pandemic,” he says. “Seeing them work from home anduggle challenges such as homeschooling, while continuing 58

November 2021

to look after our clients was inspiring. I think the hybrid model that we're adapting going forward means we have the ability to make better work-life choices and support all our colleagues in creating powerful working environments.

“We talk about work-life choices rather than work-life balance because at times you have to make one choice over another, but the flexibility that we've embraced as part of working virtually at times means that it's a great opportunity for us to connect.

I think we've demonstrated how we continue to focus on an approach of leading with kindness. We appreciated that colleagues were dealing with challenges but we moved almost seamlessly to virtual working. I think a number of us were pleasantly surprised to hear how quickly we were operating as ‘normal’ for being in an abnormal environment.”

MARSH

Fraser-Hawkins says that Marsh’s digital transformation journey was already advanced but wouldn't have accelerated further quite as quickly as it did were it not for COVID-19 – a familiar message we hear from many large organisations who had the foresight to implement digital.

Marsh is a global business that had crisis plans in place should teams need to move to working from home. Most Marsh employees had the technology at hand already to do just that, as well as the processes and procedures for a seamless transition.

“I think it was a very positive experience,” says Fraser-Hawkins. “We've learned some brilliant things. That being said, the office is still very important to us, so the hybrid solution sets us up for a great future.”

ALISTAIR FRASER-HAWKINS TITLE: CEO OF UK CORPORATE AT MARSH INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Alistair is Chief Executive Officer for Marsh’s UK Corporate business. In this role he is responsible for over 520 colleagues across the UK driving strategy, execution and overall growth of Marsh’s Corporate business. He is also a member of the UK Executive Committee and is a main Board Director of Marsh Limited.

He has 25 years of experience in the Insurance industry. He began his career in 1995 in the London Market with an underwriter and has spent the last 20 years in Broking.

“ New normal isn't just how you operate your business, it’s also how you lead your business” ALISTAIR FRASER-HAWKINS CEO OF UK CORPORATE, MARSH

EXECUTIVE BIO

Moving the insurance industry to digital From an industry perspective, insurance is probably, it’s fair to say, one that needs to do the most catching up when it comes to digital transformation. Fraser-Hawkins says this is imperative for servicing clients while also being better for business.

“The ability to get information to our clients quickly, in an easily digestible format, is imperative if we're going to be an agile business going forward,” says Fraser-Hawkins.

MARSH

ADAM KEMMIS BETTY TITLE: DIGITAL LEADER INDUSTRY: FINANCIAL SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Adam leads Digital for Marsh in the UK & Ireland and is responsible for transformation of our client and colleague digital experience, digital innovation and insurtech engagement.

Previously a strategy consultant for McKinsey and Oliver Wyman, with a focus on digital and data transformation. Adam was also previously Peru Country Director for Innovations for Poverty Action, using data analytics to combat poverty more effectively.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“I think the digital generation is a given and I think as an organisation we are embracing it both here in the UK and globally. It gives us a competitive edge when we are transacting with clients. It's vital for us that we're able to serve the smallest businesses right up to the largest, and the core of that is our digital transformation.”

Driving Digital Transformation Adam Kemmis Betty is the Digital Leader for Marsh in the UK & Ireland, responsible for developing and delivering the digital strategy, with a particular focus on client-facing technology.

MARSH

“ There's no doubt that the insurance sector as a whole is a laggard when it comes to digital and we're playing catch up” ADAM KEMMIS BETTY DIGITAL LEADER, MARSH UK & IRELAND

He tells us that Marsh’s digital transformation really started in 2018-2019 and has accelerated during the pandemic as clients have moved more activities online.

“We've got a journey to go on,” he admits.

“The great thing is that we've really got commitment from our business leadership to invest in that journey and to stay the course.

Digital transformation of Marsh really has three components to it which correspond to clients, colleagues, and insurers.

Firstly, Kemmis Betty is responsible for creating a digital experience for clients. This ranges from enabling small business clients to get insurance quotes and buy insurance in fintechmagazine.com

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1874

Year founded

40,000+ Colleagues worldwide

130

Countries operating in

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real time online through to supporting large corporate clients to get real-time access to key data and documents, as well as insights and analytics.

The second area is about transforming internal processes – something Marsh calls its operational excellence programme.

“That's not just about technology,” says Kemmis Betty. “It's got other components but obviously technology is a big part of that, and that includes modernising some of our core technology platforms. We're moving to a low code no code platform in many regions of the world and it also includes using new technology, such as robotic process automation and AI to make some of our processes more efficient.”

The third area is how Marsh interacts digitally with insurers.

Of course, with digital transformation comes digital risk, and many of Marsh’s clients have transformed their business models, which has created new areas of risk for them.

“We've seen a huge increase in interest in our cyber consultancy services helping clients to understand and manage that cyber risk, and also in purchasing cyber insurance to protect them against that risk,” adds Kemmis Betty.

“For Marsh, the key benefit from digital transformation is enhancing the client experience. The transformation of our internal processes means we're able to respond to clients’ needs much more quickly. Then the data that we’re able to gain and use through that digital transformation means that we can provide richer insights back to clients which can really help them manage their risk and structure their insurance programmes in the most informed way.” fintechmagazine.com

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LEADERSHIP STYLE

DID YOU KNOW...

Alistair Fraser-Hawkins shares his view on a more agile leadership style required post pandemic

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“I'm very conscious, as we come out of the pandemic, of the change in leadership style that's going to be needed in organisations.

I think leaders now have to be more agile.

I think we've seen that over the last 18 months, in terms of your ability to lead teams – they aren't just teams that you sit in front of everyday. They'll be geographically dispersed, they could be different parts of the business.

“We're working very hard with our leadership team to give them the skills that are needed to operate in the ‘new normal’ and for

November 2021

some people that would be a big shift change, but I think the ability for us and our success to lead with agility will be a defining factor for us going forward – not only in leading our clients but leading our colleagues as well.

“New normal isn't just how you operate your business, it’s also how you lead your business, and we want leaders who are able to lead in both physical and virtual environments simultaneously, which is a different skill set.

“I think that's a great opportunity for us as an organisation to really define ourselves as a continued global leader in this field by having a different style of leadership.”

MARSH

It’s not just about the benefits of course, and Kemmis Betty does highlight adapting to change as the biggest challenge when it comes to digital transformation.

He says the sheer volume of change and level of investment that Marsh is making across all these initiatives means colleagues require support to adapt to new processes and new ways of working at a time when the business is growing – plus of course managing all of that while also trying to serve clients and gauge the right pace of transformation.

“The advice I would give to any client or organisation embarking on a digital transformation is really to stay laserfocused on the end-user experience,” says Kemmis Betty. “That's how the big tech firms have created really successful applications – that ruthless focus on the user experience that's difficult to do in a large organisation where you've got many different stakeholders with different opinions. The way to do it is by adopting a truly agile approach.”

Disruptive insurance Many people would never believe they would hear the next sentence: it’s an exciting time to be working in insurance right now. That is obvious speaking with both Kemmis Betty and Fraser-Hawkins.

Previously there was a much clearer distinction between traditional tech suppliers who would provide platforms or services for the large incumbents and insurtechs who were digital attackers competing with those incumbents. Now that's evolving, particularly as many of the insurtechs have pivoted their business models to be more about partnership and collaboration with the incumbents – which opens up exciting areas of opportunity for large organisations like Marsh.

“The thing I'm hoping for most of all is increased diversification of talent within the insurance sector,” says Kemmis Betty. “I think if we're going to be successful as a business and as an industry overall in innovating and disrupting the traditional way of doing things and using new technology, that means that we've got to attract and retain new talent that we haven't traditionally been able to do.

I think if we achieve that it will go a long way to modernising the sector.”

“There's no doubt that the insurance sector as a whole is a laggard when it comes to digital and we're playing catch up. When we started, we could see that some of our competitors were moving faster than us but now, with the investments that we've made, particularly in new talent, we firmly believe that puts us ahead of the competition and really gets us on the right path of leading the insurance sector towards a more digital future.”

“It's vital for us that we're able to serve the smallest businesses right up to the largest, and the core of that is our digital transformation” ALISTAIR FRASER-HAWKINS CEO OF UK CORPORATE, MARSH

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MARSH

The final word has to go to Fraser-Hawkins as he looks to a brighter future in the aftermath of COVID-19. The last 18 months have been turbulent for everybody and not just from a professional perspective, but also from a personal one.

“The next 18 months will be exciting,” says Fraser-Hawkins. “I think we're already seeing industries booming. I think there will be some challenges.

“The insurance industry has a responsibility, in my opinion, to support the business community to enable them to rebuild their business and thrive.

“I think that's our real test – that we are an industry that is seen to be absolutely supporting growth in the economy and supporting customers, some of whom have completely changed their business models to make sure they've got the necessary insurance protection. This enables them to focus on what they do best, which is running their own business and let us worry about their risk and insurance needs.”

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DATA ANALYTICS AND THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE IN FINSERVE WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

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ears Modern banking solutions have been integrating innovative technologies into their conventional and hybrid infrastructures over the past decade. A considerable part of the banking sector has succeeded, but there is ample room for improvement.

Experts and veteran analysts believe that data analytics and business intelligence fill that void perfectly, creating a better space for financial services.

Big data analytics Banking was one of the first sectors to recognise the potential of big data in improving products and services. However, unlike the old days, handling big data has become simplified, requiring minimal infrastructure and reasonable investments.

In addition, big data analytics has also become a more secure option, thanks to technological improvements. As a result of 68

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these changes, more institutions from the banking sector are adopting big data analytics.

Providing banks can rely on multiple sources of the data streams and that more markets have moved to digital modes of transactions, adopting a big data-inclusive approach has become more accessible, logical, and profitable for banks and financial services providers.

Unfortunately, the numbers from the industry indicate that less than 10% of banks and finserve institutions use big data analytics.

However, these numbers are expected to rise in the coming years.

Augmented Data Analytics A big contributor to the problem is the legacy system. Incumbents are slow to act when it comes to managing their data in the most innovative of ways, says Rupert Morrison, CEO, Orgvue, an SaaS provider that implements data management systems for large corporations.

BANKING FINSERV

“Right now, the biggest barrier to constructive organisational planning is decision paralysis” RUPERT MORRISON ORGVUE

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FINSERV

“We will see more personalisation in this field as fintechs in this area expand their customer base” NATALIE CRAMP PROFUSION

“Right now, the biggest barrier to constructive organisational planning is decision paralysis.

Leaders know that their decisions can have far-reaching ramifications. However, their organisations are too large and too complex for them to see what these could be – and they don’t have the data, analytical capabilities or tools in place to guide them.”

As a result, leaders are kicking decisions on the health of their organisation down the road, and missing opportunities to improve business performance, he argues.

Experts believe augmented data analytics is one of the biggest innovations to happen in the finserve space in the past decade. Augmented analytics enables banks and finserve providers to make worthwhile decisions based on the vast amount of data from the latest data streams.

Business Intelligence has also benefitted from predictive analysis and data-driven decision-making. For example, banking institutions can make their decisions by analysing customers' feedback and raw data. Augmented analytics also helps many institutions streamline their performance metrics, such as net income, expenditure, etc, while maintaining distinct boundaries and containers.

FIVE WAYS BI AND DATA ANALYTICS ARE CHANGING BANKING 1) Risk Management Strategy Risk evaluation in banking is essential.

Every loan and investment requires evaluation. BI tools provide banks new insights into their systems, transactions, customers, and environments to help them avoid certain risks.

2) Better marketing Data provides a clearer picture of customer wants, needs and preferences.

Analytics draws accurate insights from that data, allowing for a much more personalised marketing approach.

3) Retention of high-value customers If banks can better ascertain the preferences of their customers, they can create products better suited to their needs. The knock-on effect is better customer retention.

4) Future-proofing By looking at past and present date patterns, better analytical predictions can be made that shape the growth strategy of the bank. Trends can be predicted and crisis management more accurately planned.

5) Security and compliance The latest analytic tools can assess customer behavioural predictability and are far more efficient at spotting fraudulent activity. Better BI and data analytics also provides better regulatory compliance.

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FINSERV

Natalie Cramp, CEO of the data science company Profusion, says the role of Business Intelligence is essential to operations and its importance is difficult to overstate. She explains, ”Nearly every facet of how a business operates is influenced by data. Being able to collect, analyse and present this information in near real time in a way that is accessible and meaningful to every level of the business is absolutely crucial.

“Financial services is becoming an increasingly competitive field with fintechs providing more and more innovative and specialised offerings. This is increasing consumer expectations – people demand personalised and seamless products and services.”

Cramp points out that for financial institutions to remain competitive, they need to know what their customers want, where they can make efficiencies in their businesses and how they can optimise functions such as marketing. They can also use business intelligence tools to enhance the customer experience by displaying these insights directly to the consumer, for example, by showing them insights on how they are spending their money.

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“This can serve to strengthen the connection with the brand by helping to meet their increased expectations. Achieving all of this requires advanced business intelligence infrastructure. Without the insights gleaned from BI, a company is essentially blind to what it is doing, what it should be doing and what it can develop in the future.”

However, although basic business intelligence principles can be operated without the use of data analytics, its scope is limited, and Cramp says they vary often, this is just the first step businesses take before they embark on much more data heavy processes.

“It helps to get data into a presentable and easy to digest form. The second fundamental step should be widespread data education – to ensure everyone knows how to take the next best action with this data, and doesn't leap to conclusions based on a lack of understanding of the insights.

“Ideally, every member of an organisation from the CEO to the most junior intern should have a basic understanding of data.”

Cramp believes the crucial third step should be adding data analytics capability.

This, she says, moves a business from immediate insights into the ability to predict or anticipate what will happen next.

Finserve and data analytic trends But the use of data analytics and business intelligence isn’t just about efficiency. It’s a matter of security too. With cyber attacks on technology companies having increased by more than 150% since the endemic began, analysing data to fight financial crime has become essential.

Ultimately, a more secure system can better attract more customers, provided the increased options for recognising and acting upon key performance metrics.

FINSERV

“A wider point to remember is that innovation trends evolve rapidly based on often temporary media or consumer interest” NATALIE CRAMP PROFUSION

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Speaking about the recent innovations, Steve Elliot, LexisNexis Risk Solutions explains, “Tech-enabled big data and analytics tools can help businesses transform the detection of financial crime and shift their focus towards prevention rather than detection.

“Good quality data alone can significantly transform a firm’s AML process effectiveness by reducing data silos and providing a far clearer picture of the risk a potential customer presents, reducing false positives and associated remediation tasks in the process, which as this report highlights, accounts for a further fifth of firms’ AML costs.”

Elliot also believes that an over-reliance on people is expensive and unsustainable in the long term. However, he also points out that the answer isn’t to reduce human resource, rather, it’s to employ technology to do the 74

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repetitive tasks that can then free up people’s valuable knowledge to be deployed where it’s most effective, such as “applying a robust and regulator-approved risk-based approach that will really make a difference to the effectiveness of AML activities.”

Cramp agrees, but says It’s difficult to single out one particular technology because financial services is undergoing such a rapid transformation on the back of multiple trends.

For example, the acceleration of digital transformation projects on the back of the pandemic, competition from fintechs and the opportunities offered by Open Banking.

“Open Banking in particular is fuelled entirely by the liberalisation and utilisation of data.

Without data architecture and analysis, the products and services it enables would simply not function.

FINSERV

“Good quality data alone can significantly transform a firm’s AML process effectiveness by reducing data silos and providing a far clearer picture of the risk a potential customer presents” STEVE ELLIOT

LEXISNEXIS RISK SOLUTIONS

Personalised approach Cramp is right. Over the past 12 months, everything from financial data aggregators and AI money managers to bespoke financial and insurance products are growing in popularity.

A more personalised marketing approach to BI and data analytics is considered paramount.

However, instead of focusing on lead generation and more effortless follow-ups, a greater understanding of how data analytics can help banks develop a more personalised marketing campaign for their services, is required. With the help of ML and AI, big data can be segmented and used for determining what individual customers are looking for.

But it's a long-term process.

Cramp says, “We will see more personalisation in this field as fintechs in this area expand their customer base, create more partnerships and have access to more data that will help them shape new products.”

However, enabling all of this to happen will likely require more specialist data analytics tools and services – we’re likely to see a subsector of data analytics developing that caters entirely in the B2B field of enabling Open Banking innovation.

"A wider point to remember is that innovation trends evolve rapidly based on often temporary media or consumer interest. Data analytics is no different.

Companies can reduce the chances of backing the 'wrong' innovation if they develop a wider data skills base that can look beyond the immediate shiny new technology to understand what will actually work for their business.”

She adds, “Similarly, in fields such as AI, we know that ethical concerns cannot be ignored. Incorporating ethical principles into how you innovate and the technology you adopt makes it much more sustainable." fintechmagazine.com

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SINGLESTORE

SINGLE IS BEST WHEN CHOOSING A DATABASE PARTNER WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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SINGLESTORE

SingleStore is challenging the fragmented cloud database market in what its CEO, Raj Verma calls The Modern Database Era. Here’s his vision for a business that touches all our lives

R

Executive Team Standing with Nasdaq Billboard in Times Square

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aj Verma has lived his whole adult life exploring and navigating the landscape of data and data storage. His education focused on computer science engineering and maths. When studying for his degree he toyed with the idea of making his university thesis all about artificial intelligence and robotics. He’s a data junkie.

He sees the industry in which he works as nothing new and likes to tell you data database technology and the world of data storage has been around far longer than he has: “Fifty years, maybe even longer,” he says.

“It’s not that this industry is anything new.

It's just the way data has been processed and the way computers and storage have tangled together, which has changed.”

Untangling that past and streamlining the way the company stores and processes data in the future is Raj Verma’s mission as CEO at SingleStore.

It’s not that he is a man ahead of his time. He is a man of his time… and he is on a mission to explain – which he does with great clarity. Why? Because data storage is no longer the preserve of the few. It is now a global requirement of us all. Raj says data storage is something which touches all our lives, even though many of us may not realise it. We cannot function without it.

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The Vision Behind SingleStore’s Shake-up Of The Database Market

Raj Verma likes to take highly complex concepts and explain them in a way so we can all grasp them.

“Twenty years ago, data was a certain type of data. We were very used to it.

The volume, variety and velocity of data was very well understood and had been understood for about a couple of decades.”

“Yes, I know the Internet has made some difference to it and we thought “oh my goodness, because of the Internet, data is exploding.”

“But not fundamentally. The velocity and the volume did not increase that dramatically... and then this happened, right around 2008.” As he says this Verma waves his smartphone in the air… and the point is made.

Verma cites the birth of social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook as the turning point. Add to that the way internet delivery speeds ramped up at 80

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“ The last 18 months has fundamentally made a huge paradigm shift as to how companies use data” RAJ VERMA

CEO, SINGLESTORE

the end of the last decade and you have all the criteria for a perfect storm which changed the face of the data landscape.

This is what Raj Verma refers to as ‘Modern Data’.

“There was this explosion of data that happened. And this modern data had a very different volume and a very different velocity.”

SINGLESTORE

EXECUTIVE BIO RAJ VERMA TITLE: CEO LOCATION: SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA Raj Verma is CEO at SingleStore.

He brings more than 25 years of global experience in enterprise software and operating at scale. Raj was instrumental in the growth of TIBCO software to over $1 billion in revenue, serving as CMO, EVP Global Sales, and COO. He was also formerly COO and CRO at Aptus Software and COO at Hortonworks. Raj earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore, India.

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Verma uses the example of taking a holiday to Italy in the pre–Modern Data era. Take a picture, come home, develop it and send it to a few friends. “Now you pick up your mobile, take a lot of pictures and BOOM! You send it to forty thousand people – some of whom you have never met and will never meet.”

“Just imagine. Multiply this amount of data from one person by millions and then by more millions. This is what is now being thrown at enterprises.”

Back in 2011 as CMO of Tibco Software, Raj Verma gave a speech where he said the volume of data was doubling every eighteen months. When I said that I remember people were saying “Holy hell. Data is doubling every eighteen months, how are we going to

“IBM, Oracle and SAP have had a lock on the database market for decades and now people are paying the full price for this” RAJ VERMA

CEO, SINGLESTORE

manage that?” And now I’m reading that data is doubling every month and some people are claiming it’s every week.

So, that kind of deluge of data being thrown at all of us is something which the old technologies and databases, like the Oracles and the IBMs and the SAPs of the world, just weren’t built to manage.”

And in that statement, we get to see the real driving force behind Raj Verma and his mission at SingleStore. He is in this business to shake it up, force it to evolve and ensure SingleStore’s technology is sitting right in the eye of this storm. fintechmagazine.com

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But Verma makes another of his intentions very clear. This seismic change in the way we need to manage and analyse and process data is also about collaboration between older legacy systems and the new kids on the block.

“I'm not here to beat up a competitor. I’m just saying they were used to handling the non-modern data, the pre-2008 data.”

Removing the barriers Verma says it was impossible for those nonmodern data enterprises to predict what was going to happen back then. He says when they began managing data with computer power it didn’t come with a warning that forty years on, data would start to engulf them. But he also says those that survived did so because they were nimble enough to react to the changes.

Nimble, yes. But, according to Verma this reactive approach was ultimately short sighted. He calls this the ‘Swim Lane’ mentality which companies adopted to ride out the tsunami of data.

“All this data came at these enterprises so they started buying Oracle or IBM’s DB2, Mongo or Couchbase or X, Y or Z technology – all in the hope these ‘Swim lane’ solutions would bridge the gap between modern data reality and the data architecture of the past.”

Verma says this has been going on for some time and there are at least three hundred of these ‘Swim lane’ databases to choose from. But, he says, this is ultimately a counterproductive strategy. This is where SingleStore comes in. From the outset, just under a decade ago, the SingleStore approach was not to pick a swim lane but remove the barriers.

“Databases take a long time to build,” says Rama. “It’s been eight years from inception to our first release and now we are in the perfect position to take on the modern data era and provide companies with a single solution, 84

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so they no longer have to run multiple databases with all the complications which go with them.”

Verma describes how he sees the rapidly expanding service economy where everything is a service, everything is on 24/7, the competition is a click away and the user experience is everything.

“User experience and low latency are connected,” he says. “If I was to ask you if you want to stay on the end of the phone for one

SINGLESTORE

second or five minutes, of course, you want the response quickly – and if a service provider wants to make that happen and improve its customer’s experience it needs to change its data layer or that's not going to happen.”

“We feel SingleStore fundamentally allows you to manage the modern world of data and the service economy better.”

Ellison and the old guard So, if some of the older database companies

are dinosaurs, does that make SingleStore a raptor? Is SingleStore a predator?

Verma has a lot of respect for the old guard – especially for the founding mothers and fathers of the database business - Oracle and IBM. “I often say that if Larry Ellison (Oracle’s Founder) was to create a data database today it would look very much like SingleStore. I have the highest regard for Oracle and for Larry Ellison, Oracle is a solid product and it changed the fortunes of a lot of companies – as did IBM.

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“ The database market is now growing at around seventeen percent (17%) a year and it is currently worth between $100 - $125bn” RAJ VERMA

CEO, SINGLESTORE

It is just a different era and I think a lot of those companies are now struggling. History is littered with them. These companies went on to dominate for fifty or sixty years and they are still a force to be reckoned with – that’s nothing short of phenomenal really.”

Phenomenal it may be, but Verma leaves us in no doubt that he believes there is now a revolution in the evolution of the database business. SingleStore has sharp teeth and the hunting instinct for survival while the old guard of Oracle and IBM are stumbling as they carry the heavy burden of outdated legacy systems.

Legacy in chains “I do believe there is a better way of handling modern data and building applications.

I also believe SingleStore is one of those companies to do this, if not the best option among the better options.”

Verma says this is down to a fundamental problem faced by the database world and those who use its technology.

“This is not about a willingness to change,” he says. ‘It is just the amount of legacy these businesses carry to make that change.

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SINGLESTORE

SingleStore is a modern scale-out database and the first real-time operational cloud database to support separation of storage and compute.

Of course, the legacy companies understand what they must do. But can they do it? They have so many chains around their feet in terms of tens of thousands of customers who want to stay where they are and keep their data where it is.”

Verma describes this dilemma as a tussle between the past and the future where too many businesses believe they are minimising risk by corralling their data ‘in a box’, modernising around it and then, over time, migrating to the new systems.

Verma argues that this is also an example of short term, counterproductive thinking.

He also claims the investment market has woken up to the huge potential of the SingleStore route.

He cites the recent surge in investment.

This is not just about his entrepreneurial optimism. It’s about hard business decisions.

‘Think back to 2017. For probably two decades, or two and a half decades before that, we did not have a database company go public to the best of my knowledge. Then Mongo came about and things changed.”

But, according to Verma, that change only came about after the new entrants to the market – spurred on by the Mongo IPO – embarked on an intense “mission to explain” to the public market just how important modern era database technology was going to be in the social media age.

“IBM, Oracle and SAP have had a lock on the database market for decades and now people are paying the full price for this,” says Verma.

But he adds it was new investment flooding towards the challengers to the old guard which finally gave the market the boost it needed.”

He says everything fell into place when investors began to understand that the new players were more likely in the short term to work alongside rather than displace the Oracle generation. fintechmagazine.com

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“The point was being able to explain that the market was going to be big enough for new players to come in.”

In the last 10 months, SingleStore has raised over $160m from investors, which values the company at around a billion dollars.

Verma cites the success of MongoDB and its rivals as a sign that the market has shaken off the old guard. Post going public Mongo was valued at around three billion dollars ($3bn).

“The last time I checked, Mongo is worth ten times that initial offering at around thirtytwo billion ($32bn). Now, that's a validation that there is a change of guard in what is happening across the database market.

As we were digesting the success of MongoDB, who I think executed brilliantly, we had Snowflake hitting the open market and it is now a hundred-billion-dollar ($100bn) company.”

Raj Verma points out that this would value Snowflake at around eighty percent (80%) of IBM’s market cap.

Paradigm shift in the covid age Raj Verma talks about how the database business is not only expanding in size but more importantly, in what services database companies - especially the newer ones – can now offer customers. He also says the Covid era was partly responsible for escalating this change.

“I do think that the last 18 months has fundamentally made a huge paradigm shift as to how companies use data.

Pre-covid even some of the most avid users of data used it as ‘taillights’ to assess a company’s progress: To measure what happened, to learn and to implement new strategies based on the way they analyse their data. Data was used primarily to execute decision making.

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However, in the Covid era data can no longer be used as ‘taillight’. It has to be used as a ‘headlight’. It has to help you see through the fog that we are all experiencing in our business and personal lives.”

Verma says the challenges of Covid have forced us to use a database in real time. It has made us demand information based on the data we feed to help us predict the actions we take. This has been highlighted in the way we now expect to order food from our smartphones and know exactly when it will arrive, or know exactly when to walk onto the street to pick up a ride-share.

It also enables the service provider to marry up an array of conditions. In the

SINGLESTORE SingleStore provides real-time parallel ingestion from Kafka, Spark and other distributed data sources with simultaneous interactive speeds for BI tools like Looker and Tableau.

ride-share example this would include weather, traffic congestion and information about the customer.

“Only when all the factors needed to supply a service are taken into account – from the way you analyse data – can you activate the supply chain. This level of detail – in real time – and the analysis behind it – is just not possible in anything but a modern database such as SingleStore.”

Disruption is a force of good Verma argues that the database market is now growing at around seventeen percent (17%) a year and it is currently worth between $100-$125bn.

“Per annum it creates a $20bn new market, so it's probably the biggest enterprise space in software and technology or any other business. So I think there is room for a few more disruptors in this market.

MongoDB disrupted it, Snowflake disrupted it and I do believe that there is a bigger disruption to come, meaning the database market will contribute to valuations that will probably result in between two and a two and a half trillion-dollars of cumulative market cap.”

And if that happens Verma predicts there will be between five to ten eventual winners.

Which, of course, SingleStore will be one.

“So,’ he says. ‘It’s an exciting market.”

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DIGITAL PAYMENTS

PAYTECH

REVOLUTIONISING THE PAYMENTS SPACE

Transactional technology has never offered so much variety to customers or vendors

T

WRITTEN BY: TANMAY PATANGE

he last decade has brought about a groundbreaking change in how people make payments. From Apple Pay and Google Pay to NFC payments and smart POS, many things have changed.

We take a look at some of the most innovative devices and solutions in the paytech sector that are impacting businesses and consumers in their day-to-day payments.

Contactless payments have been around for the past decade and online shopping has expanded the sector technologically as more 90

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and more users buy online. However, over the last two years there has been a massive driver in the paytech space, enhancing solutions and motivating innovation so that transaction solutions increasingly enable seamless, instant results.

Currently, contactless payment technologies use RFID or NFC, the latter being popular on smartphones and smartwatches.

RFID-enabled cards remove the need for entering the passcode, cutting down the amount of contact required for the transaction.

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BANKING DIGITALISATION DELIVERED DIGITAL ENABLEMENT is driving

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Digital initiatives in financial services encompass a variety of technology areas requiring experience and skill.

DVT provides a complete array of critical skills and services including web and mobile application development, DevOps, Backbase digital banking engagement implementation, UX / UI, data and analytics.

DVT is a proud

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DIGITAL PAYMENTS

Recent surveys illustrate that customers prefer enterprises that accept contactless payments instead of/alongside conventional transactions. There is no scarcity of apps and platforms that make contactless payments easier — for both the buyer and the seller.

Contactless payments are also being seen as sound investment opportunities because the demand is so high. In the Asia-Pacific regions, for example, many famous Paytech giants are making long-term investments in these regions.

Innovative payment solutions New and increasingly ingenious ways of enabling customers to pay for their transactions are also emerging. For example, VibePay recently became the first company in Europe to offer account to account voice activated payments.

The company, which uses Open Banking technologies, launched the innovative solution in September.

VibePay’s users can pay or request payment from others with their voice directly (via Siri) and instantly from one UK bank account to another, without fees. The solution was put into production after the company listened to community feedback on new tools to make account to account payments, quicker and simpler.

Users can activate the voice-initiated technology using Siri with a sentence as simple as “Hey Siri, send money to Luke!”. It is the latest offering in VibePay’s mission to transform how consumers and businesses interact with payments.

The move comes ahead of the launch of VibePay Pro later this year, which will fintechmagazine.com

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Four leading paytech trends New payment products Recently, Visa reported that its contactless payments services have experienced a 75% upsurge since early 2020. In March, the UAE also said that its contactless payment services had seen a 100% increase. Near-field communication (NFC) is now classified as mainstream.

Biometric security Increasingly innovative ways of ensuring faster, more secure payments are growing in popularity. VibePay’s launch of the first voice-activated payment solution in Europe is evidence of the trend. Customer authentication currently includes facial recognition and fingerprint identity.

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Integrated payments Payment Initiation Services (PIS) are being activated by merchants via their platforms to enable them to seamlessly interact with a customer’s bank account via Open Banking.

The earlier distinction between financial service providers and merchants is disappearing.

B2B payment solutions The recent advances in consumer payment solutions have left the B2B payment services behind in terms of innovation. By way of catchup expect significant inroads to be made imminently in this space.

enable sellers and entrepreneurs - such as businesses built by content creators, video game streamers, social commerce sellers and in person sellers - to interact with their customers and audiences in new ways.

By leveraging the capabilities of Open Banking, the service ensures sending or receiving money is not the end of a transaction, and instead enables meaningful and on going interactions to occur in-app.

Speaking about the launch, Luke Massie, CEO of VibePay, explains, “This first of its kind feature highlights another significant step in the evolution of payments in Europe. It highlights our commitment to matching the quality of services provided by the likes of WeChat, CashApp, Alipay and Venmo globally.”

He continues, “We are always listening to our users, whether they are business or consumers and believe transactions should be brought to life with conversations and actionable tools. As we move a step closer to launching VibePay Pro, we are excited about our journey in transforming payments for our community across Europe.”

Contextual Payments Contextual transactions are another emerging trend. These methods seek to make payments as natural and seamless as conversations.

Amazon Go stores are utilising contextual transactions, where every payment is automated. A cluster of cameras and sensors analyse all customer movements, making changes to the cart as they pick up and put back products. In the end, the final charge is added to the user’s card/ preferred payment method. In short, the buyer can get inside the store, get all the products they want, and get out, without even removing their wallet.

QR code revolution QR codes have been a part of the paytech space for years now - but they have only recently come into their own and achieved mainstream significance. Today, they are essential for restaurants, online shopping returns and the travel industry, which issues tickets and boarding passes with QR codes, as well as passenger locator forms.

These have risen in popularity because a single QR code can be scanned and used by different payment applications.

So, offering choice to the customer does not incur any extra costs. The omnichannel nature of QR codes can also help customers expand their commerce domain to a new extent.

5G and interconnectedness Though in the nascent stages, 5G networks will further transform the payment technology sector. Considering more businesses want to embed more payment fintechmagazine.com

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“ WE ARE ALWAYS LISTENING TO OUR USERS, WHETHER THEY ARE BUSINESS OR CONSUMERS AND BELIEVE TRANSACTIONS SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO LIFE WITH CONVERSATIONS AND ACTIONABLE TOOLS” LUKE MASSIE VIBEPAY

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options into the systems, lightning-fast mobile technology will offer endless opportunities for innovation. More importantly, the low-latency nature of the technology brings about an interconnectedness that makes things easier for customers and businesses alike.

With the help of sensors and transmitters, business owners can design the entire workflow of the space. For instance, a business can sense the arrival of the customer and speed up the delivery accordingly. Eventually, these trends will create an optimised environment for dayto-day transactions. Furthermore, as said earlier, embedded payments will be an easy-to-achieve reality with the help of custom-made POS.

DIGITAL PAYMENTS

Crucial in this path towards interconnectedness is the role of wearable tech. Wearable tech has already proven its worth in enabling contactless payments with the help of NFC. However, with the 5G tech and robust mobile apps at their disposal, wearables will change how users follow through with transactions, regardless of the specific flow.

Indeed, the way authorities react to cryptocurrencies and blockchain tech will impact the popularity of these solutions.

Swift adoption is set to happen sooner rather than later, with central bank digital currencies on the brink of circulation and countries like El Salvador flying the flag for Bitcoin.

Better use of blockchain Cybersecurity remains a significant concern even when the world of paytech is moving forward. On the bright side, blockchain is remarkably secure. In addition to being a capable platform for a wide variety of transactions, blockchainbased apps are safe from many types of conventional cyberthreats.

The bottom line It is worth noting that these platforms and solutions are not fighting for the top position. Instead, they are supposed to work alongside each other to create a more effective payment technology space. Even if these specifics vary, the end goals are the same - speed, efficiency and security for both customer and vendor. fintechmagazine.com

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Becoming Canada's First Integrated Health Organisation WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS

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PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

GREEN SHIELD CANADA

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Green Shield Canada tells us about becoming Canada's first health insurer to integrate health services, all with a strong social mission at its core

G

reen Shield Canada (GSC) is best known as one of the country's largest health and dental benefits providers, and in the six decades since it was established has maintained its social mission at its core.

Bill Wilkinson, a pharmacist from Windsor in Ontario, decided to start the company after a young mother visited his store and was faced with having to choose between paying for her daughter’s prescription or her own. This led Wilkinson, along with four other pharmacists, to create North America’s first pre-paid drug plan, a concept that is widely in use today.

CEO and President Zahid Salman explains that GSC today remains committed to its structure as a not for profit, social enterprise whose business earnings are used to fund its social impact priorities. "Our business activities, community investment and health system advocacy work all support better health outcomes in our communities,” he says. "In the end, we operate for the purpose of making it easier for people to live their healthiest lives, and our mission is delivering meaningful solutions to improve health and wellbeing. Our purpose and our mission are what guides our business and social impact priorities."

To better serve its customers, GSC is currently repositioning itself, from being solely a health and dental benefits carrier to being Canada's only integrated health fintechmagazine.com

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"We're moving to radically enhanced CRM capabilities, new data and analytics platforms, and develop an increased cloud posture" DAVID WILLOWS

EVP INNOVATION AND MARKETING

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services organisation with capability across health insurance, pharmacy benefits management, health and benefits administration, and health services delivery.

Salman says this expansion will in turn help increase the company's social impact. It will generate greater funding and provide new service capabilities that can be deployed in local communities.

This has led to the current focus on digital transformation at the company, which will be crucial as GSC enters new markets and deploys new services. "A key component of the broader business transformation we are undergoing will be digital, as the vision for our future business models is digitalfirst," Salman says. "While GSC has always been strong from a technology perspective,

GREEN SHIELD CANADA

ZAHID SALMAN TITLE: CEO AND PRESIDENT

as evidenced by our proprietary Advantage claims and pharmacy benefits management platform being used by other providers in the market, being digital-first across our business lines will need to be enabled by things like increased agility, having greater customer insight, delivering improved analytics to our plan sponsors to support their decision making, and by better leveraging the cloud."

The company recently took its first step along this journey by launching “GSC everywhere”, a web and mobile portal that serves existing plan members, and that was co-designed with their input. "The aim was to be modern and flexible and ease navigation for the basics – claim submission and eligibility checks" David Willows, EVP

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: GREEN SHIELD CANADA Zahid Salman joined Green Shield Canada as CEO and President in September 2018.

Prior to this he spent several years in executive roles at various global HR services and wellbeing organisations.

He says that what drew him to the position at GSC was the focus on its social mission, and being able to expand its social impact.

Salman describes his management style as "results oriented, but client and people focused. That fits nicely with our organisational values, which are putting client's needs first, positioning people for success, and committing to a culture of excellence.

I think my style has definitely evolved over the years based not just on what I've experienced and learned, but also based on the attributes needed to lead today. The workforce has vastly different expectations compared to 30 years ago."

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Seismic or small, change is all around us With technology and human ingenuity, we can make change work for you and your business.

Let there be change

Accenture and GSC: Building a prosperous relationship Paulo Salomao of Accenture tells us how they are helping Green Shield Canada to digitally transform their business.

Paulo Salomao is a Managing Director for Financial Services at Accenture Canada, where he has overall responsibility for the company’s insurance business in the country. He is also responsible for the day-to-day partnership with Green Shield Canada (GSC), one of the country’s largest health and dental benefits providers.

Salomao explains that the partnership formed when GSC was looking for a lead partner to help drive their ambitious digital transformation program. “They wanted to both introduce a new digital health business, as well as drive a step change in the performance of the legacy group benefits business” he says.

Accenture is a global professional services company with leading capabilities in digital, cloud and security across 40 industries. The firm offers Strategy and Consulting, Interactive, Technology and Operations services—all powered by the world’s largest network of Advanced Technology and Intelligent Operations centers. “We have around 10,000 strategists globally, which is on a par with the largest strategy firms around the world. We also have

around 50,000 professionals who help our clients bring transformation to life through people, technology, and change efforts” Salomao explains. The company is also the largest digital marketing agency in the world, with more than 60,000 data and analytics professionals.

Salomao says that partnerships such as the one with GSC are at the heart of Accenture’s business. “It’s very difficult to unlock substantial value for our clients through one-off efforts, so the primary focus of our organisation is to develop partnerships with clients like GSC. We go out of our way to ensure these are win-win, and they create value for all of those involved.”

The partnership is still in its early days, and Salomao says their key objective is to become the partner that will help them achieve their broader digital transformation aspiration in a way that is both cost efficient and market-relevant. This will involve three main things: taking GSC’s existing capabilities and complementing them with new cloud, CRM, data and analytics technologies; futureproofing the legacy business so GSC can quickly react to changes in the operating environment; and bringing together the legacy business and the new digital health business, so GSC can continue to be a market leader. “When we successfully do that, then I think we’re going to have a very prosperous partnership with GSC for many years to come” he says.

Learn more

GREEN SHIELD CANADA

GSC: becoming Canada's first integrated health organisation

for Digital, Innovation and Brand Experience explains. "Of course, it being 2021, we put in lots of API layers too, in order to allow our partners to plug in and bring added health services to our customers – all part of our vision of evolving into an integrated health services company.”

The platform took existing legacy software and modernised it, and Willows explains they are planning to ramp up their digital capabilities. "We're moving to radically enhanced CRM capabilities, new data and analytics platforms, and developing an increased cloud posture. This is a much longer term initiative, over three to five years, and it will certainly be more complex for the organisation, but it will serve our commercial goal of moving from core health and dental benefits administration to an integrated healthcare company."

Willows says that GSC's digital strategy was profoundly impacted by COVID-19, particularly in terms of delivering care 106

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"We operate for the purpose of making it easier for people to live their healthiest lives" ZAHID SALMAN

PRESIDENT AND CEO

DAVID WILLOWS TITLE: EVP INNOVATION AND MARKETING

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: GREEN SHIELD CANADA David Willows has worked at GSC for 10 years, during which time he has primarily worked in product innovation and branding.

Like Salman, he also worked at AON where he spent four years as senior vice president. Before that, he had focused on driving innovation into Life and Disability management at Canadian insurers in senior leadership positions.

"I look back and feel I've had some tremendous leaders who have mentored me and opened my eyes to what works and possibly what doesn't," he says. "I love to surround myself with very capable, smart people who are creative as well. Once those people are with you, you trust them to use the skills that they bring to bear, and empower them to do the work.

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"Our digital transformation will deliver digital services and help patients more effectively navigate care" ZAHID SALMAN

PRESIDENT AND CEO

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virtually. "I look back at 2018 and 2019 when we were starting to strike our first investments in virtual care, and displaying these new capabilities to Canadian employers, and by extension, their plan members. There was interest, but I'd say their thinking was that they didn't want to commit new or existing funding to it.

"That changed quickly in March last year," he adds. "All of our data suggests that the attitude of plan sponsors and plan members has changed quickly. Namely, by living through a life of lockdown and not having access to traditional services, digital health services were more front of mind.

The response has been universally positive, both with the customer experience and satisfaction with health outcomes. Now we have a landscape where we can expand these offerings."

GSC's partnership with Accenture is enabling the company to add new capabilities it hasn't had before. "We just built the new GSC everywhere platform, and historically we had built and managed these platforms on our own. We were confident upgrading such offerings on our own," Willows says. "But when we are talking about introducing vastly increased CRM capabilities, changing and adding data and analytics platforms, and increasing our cloud posture, a lot of this will be new to the organisation. We're able to say that for this next generation work we need to enhance our team with additional subject matter experts and certainly Accenture is a company that has done this with organisations small, medium, and large many times before."

Having a strong partner ecosystem will be vital to this digital mission. "It was a really critical topic even before we contemplated some of the specific aspects of our digital

GREEN SHIELD CANADA

1957

Year Founded

Health Benefits and Services Industry

1200

Number of Employees

$800M Revenue

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transformation," Willows says. "People are doing good work in digital health in Canada… they're ahead of the curve and in the market already. As a company of 1200 people, we're not going to build everything from scratch.

Early on we made strong connections in the technology and virtual health communities, and have curated, we think, offerings on the virtual health side that are the best of the breed. We certainly will not be able to deliver on our vision without having very strong, mutually beneficial ties with both technology and virtual health partners."

Ultimately, Salman says that the priorities of GSC's digital journey are driven by the needs of customers. "They're looking for convenient, seamless services that can 110

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"We're focused on repositioning Green Shield as an integrated health services organisation. By doing this we'll help improve the health and wellbeing of Canadians across the country" ZAHID SALMAN

PRESIDENT AND CEO

GREEN SHIELD CANADA

be accessed whenever they want, from wherever they want. From a services perspective their needs have evolved rapidly as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and now they're increasingly focused on things like mental health, faster and easier access to physicians, and more cost-effective procurement of prescription drugs.

"The pandemic has shown everyone the great potential solutions like digital mental health, telemedicine and e-pharmacy have to improve the patient experience. The digital transformation we're contemplating will enhance our ability to not only deliver digital services like these, but also connect them where relevant, and help patients more effectively navigate care."

There are also benefits to the workforce, as things like automation will add speed and efficiency to routine tasks. "This will enable GSC to better focus on helping people, which is the reason people choose to work here," Salman says.

Looking ahead, GSC has several projects in line with its social mission.

One is the Green Door Project, launched in 2020 with the University of Toronto to establish a new dental clinic providing free care to underserved populations, alongside conducting a five-year research programme. "This is actually the largest single donation to dental public health research in Canadian history," Salman says.

"We'll also be launching a signature women’s mental health programme later in 2021. Recognising the adverse impacts COVID-19 has had on female participation rates in the workforce, our aim is to provide necessary supports to reverse that trend, with a particular view to facilitating women’s movement into leadership roles, recognising both historic underrepresentation as well as the ways the pandemic has further exacerbated this. We think this is a very important programme that we'll expand over the next three to five years.

"From a business perspective, we'll remain focused on our multi-year business and digital transformations, with the goal of repositioning Green Shield as an integrated health services organisation.

By doing this we believe we will help improve the health and wellbeing of Canadians right across the country."

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FORTIFIED FINTECHS:

SECURITY AND

CYBERCRIME IN FINSERVE

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TECHNOLOGY

As financial services are under threat from cyber security breaches, fintechs are key to adopting AI, machine learning and using big data for resilience

S

ince its inception, the fintech sector has faced the inevitable risk of cyber threats.

According to Verizon’s 2021 data breach report, social engineering, web application attacks, and misconfiguration represent 81% of breaches against the financial services sector.

Banks have had to deal with a variety of threats, including employee errors, state-sponsored attacks, errors involving third-party vendors, and the use of complicated technologies for well over a decade. Each threat actor has a different motive and organisations require adaptive systems to manage these attacks.

But the fintech sector has become more resilient and created a safer space for financial transactions to take place.

How? By building, secure digital spaces that allow institutions to offer qualityrich financial services with minimal risk concerns. As a result, many of these cuttingedge technologies play an essential role in defining the future of the fintech sector.

According to Safi Raza, Director of Cyber Security at Fusion Risk Management, recognising these technologies and integrating them into the existing finserve infrastructure is crucial.

“Using Artificial Intelligence to examine metadata, content, context, and typical user behaviour to detect anomalous emails has been effective,” says Raza. “Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) has also been

proven effective in securing the remote workforce during the pandemic. It is a cloudbased architecture that delivers network and security services to protect users, applications, and data.”

Technologies securing the fintech industry Several threats are currently looming over the fintech industry. Unencrypted data, which poses the risk of data loss, and thirdparty service errors—to name a few. At the same time, the lack of core awareness and inefficient management methods pose further challenges within systems. However, many of the following technologies are used to keep the system and customers as secure as possible.

As Jonathan Knudsen, senior security strategist at the Synopsys Software Integrity Group summarises, “Security has slightly higher visibility in fintech software discussions because the software so directly affects assets that need protection.

Fundamentally, however, the challenges of software security in FinTech are the same challenges as software security in every other field.”

He says, “More than a half century of experience has taught us that software and security are inseparable. Nowadays nobody would consider talking about automobile manufacturing without acknowledging that safety is an integral part of every phase of

“ Privacy-by-design and zero trust are good, but they aren't panaceas” SAM CURRY

CYBEREASON fintechmagazine.com

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Avoid the Top 5 Most Common Open Source Vulnerabilities Within Financial Organizations Learn what open source vulnerabilities are commonly found in financial services organizations.

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TECHNOLOGY

the process. Likewise, one day soon it will seem nonsensical to speak of software without understanding that security is part of every phase of development, deployment, operation, and maintenance.”

Zero-trust networks, blockchain and biometrics Regardless of the technologies in use, the current fintech sector requires a redefining of user privacy. Many technologies are effective here, but zero-trust networks, blockchain-based systems, and biometricsbased authentication are the future solutions of choice. In the light of recent ransomware and other malware attacks, Zero Network Access (ZNA) ensures that a user does not receive access to a network without properly confirming their identity.

“ For too long cybersecurity solutions have focused on protecting the machines in an organisation, and not the people running the machines and handling huge amounts of data” TIM SADLER TESSIAN

“Advanced machine learning that can automatically detect threats - like phishing or insider threats - by understanding the behaviours of employees in an organisation.

This type of technology not only automatically

MACHINE LEARNING, BIG DATA, AND ANALYTICS

Every day, financial service providers receive an abundance of data. Although many institutions lack the expertise to create a protective layer against cyber threats, the data they have gathered for many years can be applied to the security of their systems. With the help of Machine Learning and standard data analytics practices, companies are capable of leveraging big data to find irregular patterns from these data streams to continuously redesign risk management systems, allowing them to detect problematic behaviour in seconds and protect customers from potential data loss/exposure without considerable investment.

Embedded authentication interventions Embedded systems have been on their edge for some time, but the fintech sector has only recently discovered the real potential of these systems. Instead of relying on hardware or software alone, an embedded system can combine both to confirm a customer's identity. For instance, a hardware identifier on users’ endpoint systems can be used along with a traditional PIN/passcode to verify access to finserve platforms.

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Deloitte Cyber Crime

detects these threats, but it can also alert employees to the risks in front of them, consequently nudging people to make safer cybersecurity decisions and preventing data loss, without burdening security teams,” explains Tim Sadler, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, Tessian.

Early adopters of these technologies have found these security options to be effective, but according to Sam Curry, Chief Security Officer at Cybereason, the principles of these security methods—not necessarily the solutions themselves—should be adopted by fintechs.

“Privacy-by-design and Zero Trust are good, but they aren't panaceas. They are really principles to use in design and improvements and not things you can buy and deploy as a packaged product like a firewall or a router, no matter what vendors claim,” says Curry.

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TECHNOLOGY

and movies, biometrics are not the answer.

They can still be beaten. The systems that back up the biometrics can be compromised, and signals from readers can be replayed or cracked if these systems aren’t designed and built well. In these cases, biotelemetry amounts to a password you can't reset.”

“If we could jump to a zero trust network today, we probably shouldn't as it would amount to a new attack plan with the added pain of interrupting a lot of businesses and adding latency to transactions. The best course of action is the pursuit of these principles rather than the attainment of a naive and even counterproductive solutions false promise of fixing everything.”

Experts also foresee the integration of blockchain technology into the security aspect of the fintech sector. “Blockchain technology has a huge potential to strengthen cyber security. Data on blockchains cannot

be tampered with, as network nodes automatically cross-reference each other and pinpoint the node with misrepresented information. Also, as blockchain technology automates data storage, it eliminates the leading cause of data breaches – human error,” says Kris Sharma, Fintech Sector Lead at Canonical.

Biometric authentication has become more of a norm in the past decade, as context-aware systems are likely to overtake the competition in the coming years. For example, voice-based identity confirmation systems and the zero-trust model will make transactions safer while keeping the user passive.

“ Blockchain technology has a huge potential to strengthen cyber security” KRIS SHARMA CANONICAL

“ Security has slightly higher visibility in fintech software discussions because the software so directly affects assets that need protection” JONATHAN KNUDSEN

SYNOPSYS SOFTWARE INTEGRITY GROUP

Fintech security in 10 years It is impossible and impractical to predict which security technologies/protocols will have the upper hand in a few years.

For instance, the growth of blockchain technology was not even considered possible in 2010.

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November 2021

could benefit fintechs at this stage, but there is still hope for suitable technologies. “There is significant scope for Machine Learning and analysis to assist and speed up the discovery of new attacks.

Together with better threat Intelligence and the exchange of learned information could make for some very powerful defence technologies in the future. Financial services

TECHNOLOGY

authentication options and zero-trust network environments will play a crucial role in this aspect. “Cybersecurity solutions will work seamlessly in the background, only alerting them [organisations] to a threat when they need to know about it. This approach will empower people to do their best work, without security getting in the way of them doing their jobs or hindering their productivity,” Sadler adds.

The crux of the matter is that fintech security will be more effective and reliable in ten years, provided that service providers are willing to make the necessary upgrades.

would benefit enormously from that level of automated cyber collaboration,” says Simon Eyre, Chief Information Security Officer of Drawbridge.

Context-aware security is going to be the core idea of fintech security in 10 years.

This aspect of security tech ensures that the infrastructure and networks remain secure with minimal user input. Hybrid

The areas where challenges exist Awareness seems to be an area where cybersecurity in fintech needs crucial improvement. While there are sufficient technologies to protect transactions and networks, making these technologies accessible to banks and other finserve institutions is a different matter altogether.

Moreover, this aspect of the deal requires additional focus and effort in developing countries, where the banking systems still need a push towards modernity.

“For too long cybersecurity solutions have focused on protecting the machines in an organisation, and not the people running the machines and handling huge amounts of data. As a result, data breaches caused by human error are at an all time high,” says Sadler.

More importantly, customers of new-gen finserve technologies require education on identity verification and integrated security in fintech. Therefore, instead of solely focusing on making the best technology, there must be an equal amount of focus on keeping the technologies accessible to the customer base across the globe. fintechmagazine.com

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HOME TRUST

HOME TRUST

Procuring diversity: The benefits of balance WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Sanja Cancar-Todorovic, Enterprise Procurement, Outsourcing & Vendor Management Leader at Home Trust, talks about diversity and why balance is best for productivity

F

ollowing a career that saw her spend 18 years in the male-dominated telecommunications industry, Sanja Cancar-Todorovic is no stranger to a diversity imbalance.

But rather than simply endure the status quo, she is determined to bring about fresh change in her latest role at Home Trust, Canada’s largest independent trust company that offers a wide range of financial services including deposits, residential mortgages, commercial mortgages, and credit cards.

“I head up the Enterprise Procurement Outsourcing and Vendor Management team here at Home Trust,” she explains, when asked to define her current role. “My team is driving enterprise procurement, contact centre outsourcing, and third-party risk management strategies to create value across the organisation while influencing behaviours and processes consistent with our policy, risk appetite, business strategies, best practices, all while mitigating the risks to the organisation.”

Her work in the telecommunications industry has shaped her approach to procurement because 11 out of the 18 years spent in telcos were in strategic sourcing, outsourcing, and vendor management area.

“From my experience, telcos are leaders in innovation, automation, and digitisation of processes, simply because they have to be due to the competitive landscape they operate in, and the fact that they support the infrastructure that IOT is built on.”

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“ I love being in a position where I have a frontrow seat to the new and innovative vendors and their products” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

Cancar-Todorovic says she is grateful for the time she spent in that environment because it taught her ‘everything’ about the importance of the customer experience, reliability, and sustainability of products and services, agile working environment with fast go-to-market mandates in order to remain on that competitive edge.

But, she says, “The most importantly, telco experience instilled in me is that diversity is 124

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the key driver to innovation. And when I say diversity, I'm not talking about DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion) only, but also diversity of thought, diversity of the supply chain, diversity of suppliers through products, services, and offerings.”

Diversity in business Diversity. It fosters creativity and generates the best ideas from our suppliers, partners, customers, and employees at all levels of the organisation, and incorporating them into our business, guarantees business success.”

The only caveat, she believes, is to have a strong corporate culture, that encourages innovation. An agile approach to the implementation of new ideas also encourages people to try new things, in a controlled environment without the fear of failure.

“And if they're not successful, they're able to fail small, fail fast, learn from it and try again, but this time with gained experience”

HOME TRUST

SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

1977

TITLE: E NTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER

Year founded

Finance Services

LOCATION: CANADA With over 20 years of experience in large global organisations, Sanja is a passionate customer experience, strategy & transformation leader, specialising in driving technological innovation, agile digital transformation, corporate culture evolution and cost & quality streamlining via outsourcing, offshoring / nearshoring, global procurement, strategic sourcing, vendor management and third-party risk management.

Industry

700+

Number of Employees

Cancar-Todorovic says. So, in essence, celebrating the failures and successes of any innovative process only breeds more success and more innovation down the line.

In her current role at Home Trust, Sanja leads theenterprise procurement, outsourcing and vendor management function.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Women in procurement Though she feels lucky that her current role allows her to amalgamate all of her 20 years of experience, best practices, and lessons learned, into one role experience, Cancar-Todorovic says she never felt that her performance in the workplace was disadvantaged.

She also takes a pragmatic approach to her environment, seeing it as an opportunity to make headway in a challenging setting.

“I think the trick to that is really not to take things seriously and personally, and really use every interaction as a learning opportunity.

Having a family was never up for debate for Cancar-Todorovic. She wanted to be both a mother and a respected corporate professional. She has certainly achieved that goal, but it hasn’t always been an easy ride.

Ultimately, she acknowledges that working mothers face unique challenges. .

“If you're out of sight, you are out of mind, and

Sanja holds an Executive Master of Business Administration (eMBA) degree, a Master of Management (MM) degree and an Honours Double Major Bachelor of Arts (BA(Hons.)) degree in Law and Political Science.

HOME TRUST

sometimes that translates into delayed career growth. If I could do it all over again, would I change anything? Absolutely not. I think people need to measure their happiness by how fulfilled their life is. And personally, I don't know that I would be able to ever feel fulfilled without having my family.”

She is also adamant that ‘procurement’ in general, needs women because of the unique talents that they bring to the business table.

“I think women have a very strong emotional intelligence, and that is crucial to being a great leader, strong negotiator, and a good business partner.”

Diversity in the industry As part of her mission in procurement to increase diversity levels, Cancar-Todorovic has introduced the Corporate Supplier Diversity Program to Home Trust. The initiative was launched in January 2021 and has been instrumental in successfully forming a number of significant business relationships with certified diverse suppliers, which will be expanded upon.

The current focus is on tier-1 suppliers, and as the company evolves there are plans to shift that focus to include tier-2 suppliers as well.

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“ All roads are pointing to the fact that we might be hit with another pandemic in our lifetime” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

Home Trust is now a corporate sponsor to the Canadian Aboriginal and Minority Supplier Council, which is the organisation that certifies Aboriginal and minority-owned businesses, as well as the corporate sponsor to Women Business Enterprise Canada, which is the organisation that certifies women-owned business.

She explains, “A diverse and inclusive environment facilitates a broader exchange of perspectives and better reflects the true makeup of our society. So, choosing to do business with organisations that share the same values as us, and building a portfolio of viable competitive and diverse suppliers, allows us to make better business decisions while helping to create healthier communities and differentiate ourselves in the hearts and minds of our customers.”

Cancar-Todorovic believes the procurement industry lends itself perfectly to meeting diversity objectives in the workplace as well as in business.

“Over the years I have seen an increase in women coming into this industry, and it makes me happy,” she says. “I'm not surprised by it because this industry is

HOME TRUST

so dynamic. There is no other role in any organisation that gives you visibility across the entire organisation (as opposed to just your business unit), that is impacted by not just what’s happening in the organisation, but what’s happening on a global scale (from a geopolitical standpoint to weather and climate change across the globe), and it truly is never ever boring! It’s a great dynamic industry, and I'm glad to see that a lot more women are seeing the value in joining it and really thriving in it.”

The general sphere of diversity is also changing, she feels. “DEI really became a hot topic in recent months. And while organisations spoke about it in the past, I think the advent of the last 16 to 18 months really put those words into actionable measurable

targets that most organisations are now reporting to their shareholders. So, as the saying goes, “What gets measured gets done,’ which is a good step in the right direction.”

Risk mitigation and management Alongside her passion for diversity, Cancar-Todorovic is also an expert in risk management. The past two years have been challenging for companies globally. For many, “digital transformation was primarily driven by, not the CIO, but COVID. And the pandemic truly accelerated the fourth industrial revolution”.

“A lot of organisations were tiptoeing around the concept of digital transformation until COVID literally just pushed them right into it. It's amazing to see the changes that fintechmagazine.com

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“ It's a perfect storm when you have so many moving parts happening all at the same time” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

have occurred in such a short period of time.

But with massive changes, you now have the exposure to massive risks that, if not mitigated properly, could be catastrophic to the organisation.”

Cancar-Todorovic points to areas such as supply chain, vendor concentration,

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fourth-party risk management, information security, business continuity and says that all of those were points that were ticking-the-box exercises prior to COVID. But as a result of the pandemic, they're now part of the elevated third-party risk management process.

“At Home Trust has partnered with some great vendors that enabld us to automate our sourcing process and ensure a robust third-party vendor management program that ensures a solid due diligence process, not just at the onboarding stage, but throughout the life cycle of the vendor relationships, including continues monitoring of our critical suppliers.”

Attitudes to risk management have changed over the past two years too – and companies have had to find unique ways to respond to that. She explains that while both procurement and risk management might

HOME TRUST

have been seen as bottleneck functions within the organisation, the view has changed dramatically as a result of the pandemic.

“The disruptions we all felt and continue to feel within supply chains, as well as the unprecedented reliance on IT Vendors for the business continuity, elevated the importance of the robust procurement and vendor management strategy.

Home has taken this one step further, and shed the concept of the conventional vendor management practice, to partnership management, where vendors are not just the service or product providers, but are a critical part of our roadmap and continues success.”

Cancar-Todorovic says the traditional measures of success for procurement were always based on savings or value for money.

That outdated concept has now been replaced by the value of ownership. “We focus on strategic partnerships based on mutual

trust and respect, efficient operating models, financial stewardship, risk containment, supplier management, reliability, sustainability, appetite for innovation, and passion for customer experience.”

Strategic partnerships in procurement Partnership roles have been essential in making sure the massive shifts that have occurred over the past two years have been dealt with smoothly. As an organisation Home Trust is in the final stretch of its IGNITE program, a multi-year, digital transformation initiative for the company. In addition to a significant SAP re-platforming, it involves numerous other strategic vendor partners.

IGNITE drives significant improvements in Home’s ability to manage deposits, loans, treasury, and syndications, while allowing us to streamline financial operations, and enhancing our ability to deliver superior customer service.

“Aside from IGNITE, which is an overarching program, we have numerous different initiatives of a transformative nature,” says Cancar-Todorovic. These include digital banking, credit cards, and contact centres, that all demand a strong and strategic sourcing strategy and a robust vendor management program.

“Even within our own procurement team, we have engaged a number of vendors to help us automate our processes, making us more efficient, resilient, and adaptable to business needs. We have partnered with ServiceNow to ensure that we have a robust in-take process and embedded workflows, ensuring adequate controls are put in place in line with our organisational risk appetite.”

Home Trust also partnered with DocuSign, a collaboration that has been instrumental in the sourcing business continuity, especially as the company moved to the work-from-home model in early 2020. fintechmagazine.com

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Procuring diversity: The benefits of balance

“We are further looking to enhance that process by integrating DocuSign with our SharePoint central contract repository that was also launched earlier this year. Panorays is another vendor that we engage with on our third-party risk management transformation, in order to automate our third-party security management for vendor due diligence process, annual vendor attestations and vendor materiality assessments.”

Scanmarket eSourcing tool is another strategic partnership, formed recently to help accelerate Home Trust’s go-to-market strategy by simplifying and speeding up the competitive bidding process that was previously done manually.

Cyber initiatives for Home Trust With digital transformation now in full swing, cybersecurity is now an area of major concern. The footprint upon which criminals can attack has been widened by the work 130

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from home mandates. Strategy is key, says Cancar-Todorovic, and ultimately, the fortification of a company comes down to leadership, training, and a solid plan of action.

“Cybersecurity and information security is one of the most important risks that we continuously look to improve. At Home, we do this by investing in our cyber resources and tools. We provide regular training and testing to all of our employees, and we have the governance processes around the operational risk committee. We always try to stay one step ahead of the threat, and that seems to be a secret sauce to our success thus far.”

Home Trust enabled 98% of its workforce to work from home within two weeks of the pandemic being announced, without experiencing any service disruption.

Cancar-Todorovic says the remote working mandate also shifted attitudes globally towards the security of the home

HOME TRUST

“ More than ever we are now dependent on our IT vendors, and that will just continue to be the case as we move to a more hybrid work-fromhome model” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER, HOME TRUST

environment, and people’s ability to buy and keep their homes. The demand for mortgages and home loans skyrocketed.

“While we were moving to a remote working model, we also had to launch and administer a deferral program to provide temporary financial support to many of our borrowers.”

“It's a perfect storm when you have so many moving parts happening all at the same time. And on top of it all, it was important to update all the processes and documentation required to support mortgage lending and ensure the safeguard of the physical safety of our stakeholders and all the documents that were coming in, like appraisals, inspections, legal documents, and so on.”

But unlike many companies that were caught short by sudden digital shift, Home Trust had already made strides towards digitisation.

“Home has moved to paperless underwriting and funding, which prepared us well to enable our customers to achieve their homeownership goals in a remote workplace. But looking back now, the dependence on the IT vendors has not dropped.

“More than ever we are now dependent on our IT vendors, and that will just continue to be the case as we move to a more hybrid work-from-home model.

Home has been able to keep our culture alive and thriving while continuing to meet our strategic objectives and deliver strong financial performance. This is evident in both our employee engagement scores, as well as the value we are creating for our shareholders.”

Throughout the pandemic Home Trust also made a significant effort to provide people leaders with the new tools and resources, to manage and lead their teams remotely. These included seminars, workshops, guest speakers, and

HOME TRUST

“ Cybersecurity and information security is one of the most important risks that we continuously look to improve” SANJA CANCAR-TODOROVIC

ENTERPRISE PROCUREMENT, OUTSOURCING & VENDOR MANAGEMENT LEADER,HOME TRUST

HOME TRUST

the deployment of new and engaging collaboration tools.

“We also work very closely with the mortgage broker community to serve our customers. And during the pandemic, we made broker engagement, education, and service a priority to ensure that they too could meet the evolving needs of their clients through these unprecedented times”.

“We also provided direct-to-consumer solutions and we have been working to enhance their digital experience and the platform’s functionality so they can interact with us in a medium of their choice, through a variety of omni-channels, whether its voice, in-person or over the phone.”

People value and mortgages The mortgage lending business is a peopledriven business and therefore the knowledge and expertise of Home Trust’s people, its partners, services, and relationships are critical to success in this industry. The company encourages a solution-oriented, entrepreneurial, and hardworking culture embedded in the foundation of a sustainable risk culture.

In 2018, Home Trust introduced a new set of corporate values, which are part of everyday language, and govern every decision its employees make.

“We regularly engage our employees to help make sure that Home is a great place to work by conducting regular employee town halls, surveys, feedback sessions,” says Cancar-Todorovic.

“And we actually use the feedback that we get from those sessions to further improve where we are. So, it really doesn't come as a surprise that recently we had been awarded the Great Place to Work certification, and Home has also been named a Great Place to Work in Ontario.”

The future of procurement While diversity is obviously a key passion, she also believes the industry will have much bigger changes in store over the next five to ten years, and part of that will be its recognition as an essential profession.

“Until recently, procurement as a term in a profession was not really given the recognition it deserved. It was often misused to describe a purchaser or a buyer. In the next five years, I think procurement will solidify its position as the key player and a trusted advisor to the business, recognised for its strategic process of product and service sourcing, market research, planning, negotiations, and thirdparty risk management.”

The pandemic had motivated this period of maturation, she explains, because it revealed how unprepared the supply chain was for major global disruption.

“Many might feel content with the changes that have been put in place so far. And I know it's not a popular opinion or belief, but all roads are pointing to the fact that we might be hit with another pandemic in our lifetime. And as such, this industry cannot get complacent with the transformation that has taken place so far and simply just take a break from this transformative journey that we are on. The way the industry has reinvented itself during COVID should only be the beginning and not the final destination.”

And this time in history is the perfect point to embrace innovation, she adds, because change and dynamism are everywhere. “I love being in a position where I have a front-row seat to the new and innovative vendors and their products and services that really have the ability to change everything that we do.”

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DIGITAL EUROPE AN BANKS With digital banks transforming the marketplace in Europe, we take a look at the top 10 in the sector WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

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he European banking sector is witnessing a growing demand for digital banking services. Compared with incumbent providers, digital banks offer a wider range of flexible, mobile-ready benefits that appeal to user convenience. Globally, the digital banking platform market is also expected to grow at a CAGR of 11.2% during the forecast period (2021 - 2026). The rapidly evolving digital transformation in the banking industry, as well as the demand for smart mobile devices and digital banking services among consumers, are some of the major factors driving growth in the market.

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10 Lunar

Investing With an estimated 300,000 users in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and founded in 2015, Lunar has raised more than $100mn in funding drives. It is a specialist digital bank that is investment focused. Customers are provided with a comprehensive view of their spending, but because Lunar is an investment-focused bank, it is largely marketed as a second bank for those that want a financial hub specifically devoted to investment banking.

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09 Curve

Cashback Curve ranks highest among digital European banking customers seeking maximum cashback services, offering a generous 1% on every purchase, on all cards.

Curve also combines all payment methods into one card, making it easier for customers who only have to recall one PIN. There are two modes of cashback; one for regular purchases and the other for select popular retailers.

Unlike other banks, however, Curve does not offer support for ATM transactions.

TOP 10

“A subsidiary of Orange Bank SA, Anytime provides personal and business accounts for customers”

08 Bnext

Fast sign-ups Officially launched in 2017, Bnext was registered officially as a bank in February 2020 by the Bank of Spain and is headquartered in Madrid. With more than 400,000 customers, it is one of the most prominent players in the Spanish fintech sector. In addition to traditional finances like loans and insurances, Bnext also offers Bitcoin and Ethereum trading options, while opening an account takes seconds. The bank is also famous for its no-hiddenfees policy.

07

Anytime

Human customer service With the mantra, “At Anytime, you do not speak to Robots,” this is one digital bank that has shunned the notorious AI chatbots, placing customer services at the core of its business. A subsidiary of Orange Bank SA, Anytime provides personal and business accounts for customers. The simple sign-up process gives users access to online payments in France and abroad, along with cheque support. The banking platform also offers many financial management features for businesses and SMEs. fintechmagazine.com

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Meet the Top 100 Leaders in FinTech

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Creating Digital Communities

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05 N26

Insurtech benefits

06 Wise

International transfers The London-based fintech company Wise was founded by Estonian businessmen Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in January 2011. Previously known as TransferWise, it became popular as a money transfer platform, and then widened its services to include banking products.

Wise enables users to create a free personal account and enjoy the various benefits. In addition to standard features like global ATM support and local currency support, Wise works with Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Classed as both a fintech and an insurtech operation, Berlin-based N26 provides a free basic current account and a debit card, with an available overdraft, investment products and premium accounts for a monthly fee. Founded by Maximilian Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf in 2013 and fully licensed in 2016, N26 has more than seven million customers across 25 countries, and 280,000 5-starratings in the Apple and Google Play stores.

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04 Holvi

Freelancers Holvi is a European digital bank created for self-employed individuals. It claims to simplify the different aspects of selfemployed accounting. The digital account becomes a platform where freelancers and entrepreneurs can collect earnings, pay expenses, and manage their finances. With a passport or national ID, anyone can start an account at Holvi. It does cost a little, but users get accounting and bookkeeping benefits such as invoicing, a business debit Mastercard and tax filing support services.

“ anyone can start an account at Holvi” 140

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03 Revolut

Budding investors Eager to make its mark on the USA, Revolut has a reputation for innovation among Europe’s digital banks in that it offers conventional and experimental features. It has just secured a broker-dealer license for the US market that will enable its customers to have a wide range of investment and trading options. The Revolut and Revolut Metal cards have also gained traction among the newgeneration banking customers. The fully-metal card gets customers 1% cashback on all transactions.

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Starling Bank Versatility

One of the first digital banks to be launched in the UK in 2014 by Welsh tech entrepreneur and former Allied Irish Banks COO, Anne Boden MBE. Starling Bank focuses on current and business account products. Headquartered in London, Starling Bank is a licensed and regulated bank that provides a contactless debit card as well as the personal and business accounts.

Alongside these, Starling Bank also appeals to families with its joint and children’s accounts. Other services include multi-currency banking and savings options. With a growing customer base that includes 370,000 UK businesses and a 100% digital sign-up process, Starling’s popularity in the marketplace shows no sign of slowing down.

“ A growing customer base that includes 370,000 UK businesses and a 100% digital sign-up process” fintechmagazine.com

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Monzo Flex A better way to pay later

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“ Monzo is one of the most popular and feature-rich digital banks in Europe”

Monzo

Full banking services Founded in 2015 and headquartered in London, Monzo is one of the most popular and feature-rich digital banks in Europe that enables customers to launch a fully-fledged UK bank account from the comfort of their smartphones. Users can choose between a wide variety of accounts, including free and premium ones.

Multi-account management, credit cards, and stable savings are a reason why Monzo stays on top of the list.

Customers also have access to loans, overdrafts, and security options.

A personal account on Monzo also supports modern transactions, including shared tabs, utility and bill management, and versatile savings options. Monzo also offers a physical debit payment card that has proven popular with customers.

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VYSTAR

Lending Built on Innovation WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

COMPANY NAME

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VYSTAR

‘Technology-focused with the heart of a credit union’ - VyStar Credit Union drives loyalty among its members who rely on them for affordable lending

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“ Technology-focused, with the heart of a credit union” JENNIFER LOPEZ KOUCHIS SVP, REAL ESTATE LENDING VYSTAR CREDIT UNION

T

echnology-focused with the heart of a credit union” is how Jennifer Lopez Kouchis, SVP, Real Estate Lending at VyStar Credit Union, describes the US-based credit union, which boasts a rich military legacy and a strong commitment to serving members from all backgrounds with innovative products and services.

VyStar is embracing the drive for innovative technology to enhance the member experience when it comes to real estate lending and is also helping innovative fintech start-ups for its members.

As the largest mortgage lender in Northeast Florida, VyStar has a growing field of membership that is open to a wide range of Florida and Georgia residents, as well as past and present military members and their families all over the world. It is a notfor-profit, financial cooperative owned by its members and governed by a volunteer Board of Directors and has more than more than $US12b in assets.

The focus of VyStar is to combine the best benefits of credit unions – personalised service, low fees, great rates and best-in-class products – with a commitment to giving back to the communities it serves. This makes finding affordable, quality financial products and services a realityfor their members. fintechmagazine.com

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VyStar Credit Union: Do Good. Bank Better.

For the past two years, VyStar Credit Union has been investing millions of dollars in cuttingedge fintech organisations, both on its own and more recently as part of a consortium of credit unions which has allowed the organisation to roll out technology that will benefit its members.

VyStar's individual tech-based startup fund started at US$10m in September 2019 and has grown to about $50m, said Joel Swanson, VyStar’s Chief Member Experience Officer. The credit union is part of the Curql Collective, a coalition of almost 50 credit unions across the country that raised more than US$70 million from its first round of funds and is on course to raise more than US$200 million.

VyStar believes the cornerstone of success for financial services organisations is rooted in their ability to remain innovative. That ensures the organisation maintains a competitive edge, remains attractive for members and prospective members and keeps ahead of the pace with market expectations. VyStar 150

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sees investments in fintech companies as opportunities to move the organisation forward in support of its members.

How VyStar Credit Union is built on a military heritage VyStar was founded in 1952 as Jax Navy Federal Credit Union at Naval Air Station Jacksonville. The goal was to serve the financial needs of military service members, civil service employees, and their families.

Since then they have adapted to changes in the banking industry, from adopting their first computerised accounting system in 1966 to opening their first ATM in 1982.

In 2002, they changed the name to VyStar Credit Union and expanded their field of membership to non-military members.

Today, the credit union has grown to become one of the largest credit unions in the US, serving more than 780,000 members. VyStar is a member-owned and member-managed financial cooperative.

VYSTAR

Jennifer Lopez Kouchis TITLE: SVP, REAL ESTATE LENDING INDUSTRY: BANKING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: JACKSONVILLE Jennifer Lopez Kouchis currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Real Estate Lending at VyStar Credit Union in Jacksonville, Florida. She has over 19 years of service across all facets of the mortgage industry, including more than 14 years of leadership experience. She believes in servant leadership and is dedicated to the credit union movement with a focus on creating innovative solutions.

Working conscientiously to expand consumers access to affordable mortgage loans, with the goal of helping communities realize the dream of homeownership.

Jennifer currently serves on TransUnion’s Mortgage Advisory board to better serve the home lending industry and the board of Rethreaded, whose mission is to renew hope, reignite dreams and release potential for survivors of human trafficking.

Jennifer is the Executive Sponsor of Women at VyStar Empowered, championing an environment in which women are valued, promoted, and able to achieve their full potential. As a leader within the business community, Jennifer was selected by Jacksonville Business Journal as a 40 Under 40 honoree. She received her Certified Mortgage Banker CMB® Designation in 2021.

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Black Knight (NYSE:BKI) is a leading provider of integrated software, data and analytics solutions that facilitate and automate many of the business processes across the homeownership life cycle.

Black Knight is committed to being a premier business partner that clients rely on to achieve their strategic goals, realize greater success and better serve their customers through its delivery of best-in-class software, services and insights with a relentless commitment to excellence, innovation, integrity and leadership.

Transforming the Mortgage Industry Black Knight is helping Vystar Credit Union enhance its operations with integrated digital capabilities to deliver a premier member experience.

Black Knight is a leading provider of technology, data and analytics to the mortgage and real estate industries. Vystar Credit Union will use Black Knight’s integrated digital capabilities to enhance its operations and improve the member experience.

“We’re pleased that Vystar will be leveraging our technology systems and digital solutions to optimize its processes and enhance member satisfaction, which will enable the company to compete more effectively,” said Shelley Leonard, chief product and digital officer for Black Knight.

Black Knight’s solutions include the Empower® loan origination system and the MSP® servicing system. Both technologies support first mortgages and home equity products on a single platform.

“Black Knight supports the entire mortgage ecosystem - from the time a borrower finds a home, through their years of homeownership,”

said Leonard. “Additionally, our technology is helping VyStar Credit Union’s back-office team operate more efficiently by automating processes so they can originate more loans.”

By using Black Knight’s end-to-end capabilities from originations through servicing, VyStar Credit Union, as well as its members, will benefit from a seamless, automated mortgage loan experience.

Additionally, Black Knight’s Loss MitigationSM solution will deliver the decisioning capabilities that Vystar Credit Union will use to provide greater visibility into which loan eligibility requirements work best for its members.

Better Experience for Members Black Knight’s integrated digital capabilities are also enhancing interactions between VyStar Credit Union’s loan officers and members. “Our solutions enable both members and loan officers to complete the loan application steps remotely, which helps reduce loan processing time and costs,” said Leonard.

To complement servicing, VyStar Credit Union will offer Servicing DigitalSM to its members, which is a consumer-facing solution that delivers personalized loan information on a mobile device.

“Our goal is to create a seamless, end-to-end digital experience for Vystar Credit Union members,” said Leonard.

Learn More

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VYSTAR

MILITARY HEROES MORTGAGE PROGRAM

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We’re here f Military Heroes M

“We feel it is important to reflect the communities we serve. That means having a staff that understands them and offering products and services that work for them and as our membership evolves it is important that we evolve with them and their expectations,” said Kouchis speaking from their headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida.

Digital transformation Digital transformation has helped VyStar focus on speed, personalisation, and convenience for its members. “Digital transformation allows us to streamline processes and gain efficiencies by obtaining documentation and more data immediately 154

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up-front, bringing convenience and simplification to the process by leveraging technology throughout the mortgage journey,” said Kouchis.

“In turn we were able to gain speed, render quicker decisions and close mortgage loans faster to keep up with demand and market expectations. Members are receiving underwritten approvals much faster, eliminating frustration with unnecessary fallout and delays late in the process.

“Creating efficiency ultimately allows us more time to focus on what we do best, which is taking care of our members. I also believe it broadens our audience, our members and future members range across every generation.”

VYSTAR

Heroes an Count On Us.

for you with our Mortgage Program.

“ Our legacy is rooted within our military and civil service families, and we continue to create innovative products and services in support of them” JENNIFER LOPEZ KOUCHIS SVP, REAL ESTATE LENDING VYSTAR CREDIT UNION

Member First workflow Kouchis outlined how VyStar created a customised journey within their Loan Origination System (LOS) and how they moved to an up-front underwriting process. “Our Member First workflow has transformed our mortgage process at VyStar, by creating a better experience not only for our members, but our employees too. We have been able to eliminate unnecessary touchpoints by our team and have created a linear process which in-turn creates speed.

“With the new workflow we have created milestones within our LOS technology, with easy-to-use checklists embedded into the system as well as automation where feasible to ensure files are submitted with the necessary information and documentation to render a timely decision. Another piece to making this workflow successful is the specified timing gates which requires a OneTeam focus in supporting our members through their journey.

“As a result, our team's quality has increased by over 30%, pull-through percentages have increased by almost 10% and our turn-times have declined which has resulted in positive responses across our membership as well as the Realtor community. ur members receive” instead of “our members are receiving. This supports our focus” instead of “This continues to support our focus of finding innovative ways to serve our members.”

Commenting on what gives VyStar Credit Union its competitive edge, Kouchis said: “First and foremost, our people.

We have some amazing talent across the organisation who are committed to providing a first-class experience to our membership. Next, we are committed to creating one-of-a-kind products and services, finding innovative solutions that fintechmagazine.com

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deliver value to ensure we provide our members and future members with an unbelievable experience.

Agility to help members during the pandemic When the pandemic hit in March 2020, VyStar was agile and pivoted at a moment’s notice to offer more than US$121m in mortgage forbearance to their members.

“The COVID-19 pandemic created a boom for new home purchase loans (those finding they need more space or a place of their own) and home refinancing as the media touted the lowest rates ever. With this, we had to pivot and look internally on ways to support this supply and demand, especially with the 156

November 2021

competition or new- digital lenders, all while maintaining an exemplary member experience.

“Our team achieved incredible success and supported our members when they needed us most during the pandemic.

That included offering US$121mn in mortgage forbearance to our members so they could focus on what is really important, which is supporting their families,” commented Kouchis.

“Specific to technology, it was the need to implement more innovative solutions and process improvement within our Real Estate Lending team. Looking for technologies that can exchange the loan information, seamlessly and securely, while creating a better experience.

POWER OF PARTNERSHIP WITH BLACK KNIGHT

VYSTAR

Jennifer Lopez Kouchis, SVP, Real Estate Lending at VyStar Credit Union explains the importance of their partnership with Black Knight, a provider of integrated software, data and analytics to the mortgage industry and why she believes this will be transformational.

“We are excited to be partnering with Black Knight, an industry leader who is local to Jacksonville, Florida. It's great to have such a dynamic partner who understands what it means to be rooted in the community,” commented Kouchis.

Why was Black Knight selected as the Mortgage System Platform and LOS solution by VyStar?

“Black Knight has the mortgage industry’s only end-to-end, fully integrated, enterprise solution that is designed to digitise the entire mortgage life cycle. Adding Empower to MSP provides for straight through processing. Automating the process accelerates the loan cycle, boosts productivity, creates scales of economy and prepares for shifts in demand to better serve our members. The enhanced servicing with Empower from retention, cross sell, assumptions - makes our servicing platform a growth engine.”

Technology is now about the ecosystem, please could you explain more about how the Black Knight Financial Services partnership will help VyStar?

“At the heart, a mortgage lending ecosystem is technology. This allows us to evolve, streamline the process and respond to the ever-changing environment, while

improving service levels. A few items that drew us to Black Knight include the UnderOne-Roof integrations which allows us to reduce cost and respond to change, as well as the True Self-Service experience. We feel the Black Knight technology will be transformational and members can expect an enhanced single experience that can be accessed wherever they are and whenever they want, with a focus on exceeding member expectations.”

How will Black Knight support VyStar’s expansion efforts within Real Estate Lending?

“They are a full-service origination and servicing solution which will allow VyStar to expand and support “local to global growth efforts”. We feel by leveraging both the MSP and LOS will allow us the opportunity to expand quickly to support our growing membership.”

How will the VyStar and Black Knight partnership impact the member experience?

“We will be able to serve our membership in an innovative and new way by anticipating when it may be in our members best interest.

For example taking advantage of lower rates or equity in their home. We want to change the landscape and be there for our members through every stage of life by providing our members valuable and insightful information up-front. This is when we can truly provide Best in Class service and support, leveraging the info we have and by removing roadblocks and redundant requests, all while accelerating the loan process.”

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“The power of resilience and the ability to change course at a moment’s notice was vital during the pandemic. This year has been incredibly challenging, but also a year to be truly grateful for. It was all about people helping people.”

VyStar acted to support changes in demand triggered from COVID-19 by increasing their teams who put in the additional hours to serve their members. Staff worked extra hours to submit applications as part of the Paycheck Protection Program, adjusted branch operations to accommodate members.

“We really had to look internally for ways to streamline our process and create efficiencies (quick hits first) with system enhancements, automation and then worked our way to major process improvement with the most notable change for us being within our workflow, which we refer to as Member First. We also sought out technology that could add value within our journey such as E-Close through our Hybrid and Full Remote Online notarisation (RON).”

Military Heroes Program VyStar is honoring its military roots with the launch of their Military Heroes Program which will include several features such as a grant program offering up to $10k, 100% financing with no PMI, and access to a VyHero Mortgage Support Team, to name a few.

“Our legacy is rooted within our military and civil service families, and we continue to create innovative products and services in support of them. Specifically, within Real Estate Lending, we are launching a Military Heroes Program, which we are extremely excited about. We took a unique approach to building this product by surveying our military families and those with affiliations to find out what they wanted to see and would benefit from most through this program,” said Kouchis.

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“Most of our team are military certified specialists which means that we take it seriously. We want to understand the challenges their families go through and help them in innovative ways to access the mortgage financing they need.”

“In addition, the Heroes helping Heroes initiative will involve a charitable component that supports VyStar’s commitment to being a strong community leader in addition to a trusted financial institution. “It has been a great and humbling experience to build this in tandem with our heroes for our heroes,” commented Kouchis.

VYSTAR

“Our team achieved incredible success and supported our members when they needed us most during the pandemic. That included offering US$121m in mortgage forbearance to our members so they could focus on what is really important, which is supporting their families” JENNIFER LOPEZ KOUCHIS SVP, REAL ESTATE LENDING VYSTAR CREDIT UNION

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“Members are receiving underwritten approvals much faster, eliminating frustration with unnecessary fallout and delays late in the process” JENNIFER LOPEZ KOUCHIS SVP, REAL ESTATE LENDING VYSTAR CREDIT UNION

Future strategy for VyStar Credit Union Kouchis highlighted what we can expect from VyStar Credit Union going forward in terms of technology and strategy. “I believe you will continue to see some exciting innovation from VyStar as we are technology-focused with the heart of a credit union. We understand the value that technology brings when it comes to member experience as well as growth and serving our members and future members.”

Focusing on how homeownership is going to evolve over the next few years following the fallout of the pandemic, Kouchis said: “Inventory is a hot topic today, so we may see more innovation around the building process.

“Personally, I am hoping that as some markets experience rising home values, programs will continue to flourish in support of affordable home ownership. I think this is critical to our communities. You will continue to hear exciting news from VyStar as it relates to leveraging technology and fintech partnerships. VyStar has the resources and capabilities of the banks, the innovative spirit of modern fintech's and the heart of a credit union.”

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EVENT REVIEW

The Ultimate FINTECH & InsurTech

LIVE EVENT FinTech & InsurTech Live, the industry’s ultimate event, launched last month alongside it's celebration of the Top 100 Leaders in the FinTech and InsurTech industry WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

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he FinTech & InsurTech Live event in London brought together an outstanding lineup of speakers.

Senior decision-makers from the industry discussed cutting-edge developments in the fields of finance and insurance. Below is a summary of insights from the event.

Day One The first day started with an introduction from the moderator Scott Birch, Editorial Director at BizClik Media Group. Then brothers Gabino and Stephen Roche, founders of Saphyre, took the stage to share inspirational stories from the fintech industry and discuss the benefits of using AI to structure data. Gabino also shared his views on the regulatory landscape,

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“ Finance is overly regulated, and regulators are motivated by creating more rules.

Some of those rules are outdated, or they mean well but cause unintended consequences” GABINO AND STEPHEN ROCHE, FOUNDERS OF SAPHYRE

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"Finance is overly regulated, and regulators are motivated by creating more rules. Some of those rules are outdated, or they mean well but cause unintended consequences."

The conversation shifted to the power of integrated communications when Sohail Raja, Chief Digital of Societe Generale, gave her talk. Stephen Dury, Vice President of Capgemini, followed with a new perspective on banking. Then Luke Manning, Head of Sustainability at the London Stock Exchange, shared insights into the direct impacts of climate change.

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the risks and present-day applications of artificial intelligence. "AI raises other ethical challenges. Risk profiling may become ethically questionable and result in financial exclusion for some people."

Parul Kaul Green, Chief of Staff at AXA, started the following talk by describing how advancements in digitalisation could improve insurance-related services.

Following the morning's networking session, Scott Abrahams, Senior Vice President of Mastercard, shared his views on the future of payments. After that, John Duigenan, Global CTO for Banking and Financial Markets at IBM, talked about why big data is crucial for creating universal connectedness.

Key trends in sustainability The first panel covered the significance of integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals into business, followed by a second panel about diversity. The next speaker, Madeline Bailey, Co-Head of Technology Consulting at Norton Rose Fulbright, continued the same theme by addressing the human side of change innovation.

Kate Rosenshine, Global Technology Lead at Microsoft, followed with a talk on the importance of breaking barriers for women.

The day concluded with a panel continuing the topic of women and diversity in tech.

On this topic, Kate added, "It's a lot more challenging on the brain to get along with people that have a different communication style, background, or skill set, but in the end, that collaboration brings better results."

Day Two The second day began with a presentation

by Tangy Morgan, Senior Advisor to the Bank of England. She shared insights on

Improving customer experience The conversation moved to cover the rise of fintech when Gareth Wilson, Vice President of Banking and Capital Markets at Capgemini, delivered his session. "Avoid the temptation to copy. Work and drive your own niche."

Following the lunch break, a panel discussed the need for insurers to improve customer experience and trust. Then Alistair Fraser, CEO of Marsh, spoke on the future of leadership. The audience also heard fintechmagazine.com

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from Mark Mamone, Group CIO of GBG, who shared insights into using identity management to build trust. Day two closed with an all-rounded panel discussion on financial services.

Day Three The final day was an online-only event, which started with a presentation on sustainable development by Javette Hines, Global Head of Supply Chain Management at Citi.

The morning continued with a presentation on cultivating inventive ideas by Ben Maxim, Vice President of Digital Strategy and Innovation at MSU Federal Credit Union. Mike Massaro, CEO of Flywire, followed with a talk on scaling up and his company’s IPO. He also emphasised the need to "tell the story to a new set of investors."

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“ I want to take that diversity further than just gender and go to the heart of what I believe is really missing from the financial services space” SHAN MILLIE

BRIGHT BLUE HARE

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“ We must always be on top of the fact that fintechs bring challenge, innovation, and creativity to some of the biggest problems faced by the sector” STEPHEN DURY CAPGEMINI

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“ AI raises other ethical challenges.

Risk profiling may become ethically questionable and result in financial exclusion for some people” TANGY MORGAN

SENIOR ADVISOR, BANK OF ENGLAND

Going high-tech The next webinar was about turbocharging innovation by Likhit Wagle, General Manager at IBM. Day three concluded by outlining the importance of using a modern cloud data stack for business intelligence with Steven Mayotte, CIO of Payomatic.

The most common theme throughout the event was the need to accelerate technological change. However, the speakers also emphasised the need to modernise regulations. All in all, the FinTech & InsureTech Live event was a great opportunity for people to network and learn about the technologies shaping the future of the industry.

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Insurance by Design: Amwins innovation moves industry forward

WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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Tom Parsons, Head of Digital at Amwins, tells us how insurance is being reimagined by technology

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t’s been a transformative past two years for the insurance industry globally, with the pandemic kicking digital transformation into overdrive and forcing legacy system operatives to up their game.

Insurance is now at the cutting-edge of innovation and traditional processes are firmly on their way out, says Tom Parsons, Head of Digital at Amwins.

With a global footprint across more than 150 countries, Amwins is the largest independent wholesale distributor of specialty insurance products in the United States and one of the largest and most successful Lloyd’s broking operations in the speciality market sector. Based in Charlotte, N.C., Amwins handles premium placements in excess of $26bn and has a reputation for delivering specialised placement solutions through its deep resources and experience across five main business verticals: Brokerage; Small Accounts; Underwriting; Global Risks; and Group Benefits.

To be part of such an organisation, requires a specific skillset as well as a passion for technology and progress.

Parsons began focusing on insurance as a career during graduate school and has never been more excited by the changes in technology and innovation as he is today.

“Most people in this industry say they fell into an insurance career,” he says. “Perhaps my story was a little more deliberate. At the time, I was following the crowd - - going through rounds of interviews with various fintechmagazine.com

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investment banks. It seemed like it was what everyone was doing, so I didn’t think about it much.”

As chance would have it, a stroll through the university careers centre cemented the decision, as Parsons stumbled upon the Lloyd’s of London market. From that moment, the suited, opulent environment of executive level insurance hooked his interest. “A few interviews later and I was struck by the differences with banking,” enthuses Parsons. “Not only did Lloyd’s seem full of larger-than-life characters, but it was also full of an incredible variety and complexity of insurance risks. I was instantly hooked and there was no looking back.”

Amwins digital strategy Today, Parsons is a long way from the hallowed halls of Lloyd’s of London. In fact, he has been based in the U.S. for the past 178

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four years - unable to travel in the past two due to the pandemic restrictions. But it is here that he has found himself at the heart of insurance innovation, managing the internal and external digital strategies for Amwins.

He explains, “My current position has two

“ As part of developing Amwins’ digital strategy, we interviewed hundreds of our retail agent partners so we could listen deeply to their needs” TOM PARSONS

HEAD OF DIGITAL, AMWINS

AMWINS

TOM PARSONS TITLE: HEAD OF DIGITAL

2000

INDUSTRY: INSURANCE

Year founded

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

6,200+

As head of digital strategy for Amwins, Tom develops and implements digital offerings for retail clients. With 15 years of experience in the industry, Parson’s roles have ranged from building, managing and training teams to designing complex captive structures to meet clients’ coverage needs. Prior to joining Amwins, Parsons was president of WNC Insurance Services’ specialty division where he built an end-to-end online platform to distribute surplus lines insurance products. Before that, Parsons served as a departmental portfolio manager of Tokio Marine Kiln, leading the implementation of a Solvency II financial model and raising over $1B in collateralised reinsurance.

main focuses. Internally we are focused on building and maintaining the Amwins digital strategy and ensuring we are executing this strategy effectively.

“The more external focus is working with the Amwins Ventures Fund which gives us the opportunity to look closely at and invest in technology companies that have the potential to enable and enhance how we solve retail agent problems and become easier to do business with.”

Parsons has an impressive background, having spent time in a number of roles that have prepared him for his current position, which have included working with regulators to get approval for a complex new Solvency II financial model, raising over $1bn of Insurance-Linked Security (ILS) capital from institutional investors and designing and building a new retail agent-facing portal, among others.

“I have had the unique opportunity to closely observe the problems and needs of individual participants through the insurance value chain from the retail agent, to MGA, to MGU, to the carrier, to the regulator, to the reinsurer, to the institutional investor,” he says. “I think experiencing these different perspectives helps me prioritise and focus on the aspects that matter most within my role.”

Technology enablers The Amwins approach to progress is a

EXECUTIVE BIO

Employees worldwide

AMWINS

$26bn

Annual premium placements

22,550 Underwriter relationships

25,000 Retail agency relationships

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dynamic one, with well applied technology seen as an enabler rather than a disruptor of the insurance value chain.

“As such, it was natural that as part of developing Amwins’ digital strategy we interviewed hundreds of our retail agent partners so we could listen deeply to their needs,” says Parsons. “This was an extremely insightful experience, spending hours listening to and focusing on our retail agents, and it highlighted and confirmed many rich insights into what makes a best digital experience.”

The experience, he explains, led Amwins to categorise some of the main attributes of a best agent digital experience. These factors include straight through processing,

“Amwins has a combination of a strong entrepreneurial mindset, a focus on meritocracy over hierarchy, and a 150-year vision that creates a motivating and supportive work environment” TOM PARSONS

HEAD OF DIGITAL, AMWINS

which where possible allows agents to move work off their desk by providing instant rate, quote, bind, and issue capabilities.

Market access is another attribute that provides flexibility and availability with good coverage options and competitive pricing.

Other attributes include self-service, which enables instant processing of mid-term adjustments and renewals, management of payment options, and fintechmagazine.com

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AMWINS INITIATIVES FOR FUTUREPROOFING INSURANCE Data Science Claims Insights: Amwins has been collecting rich claims data for many years and is starting to better unlock the rich information contained within this data through evolutionary algorithmic techniques to discover the best model performance for a given combination of predictive rating variables.

DID YOU KNOW...

There are a number of exciting initiatives Amwins is working on which to materially improve the experience of our retail agents.

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Personal Lines: Amwins is creating a seamless experience between the digital (straight through processed) and human (manually underwritten) solutions currently offered.

The company is focused on creating a seamless hybrid experience for the agent that perfectly balances digital and human interaction. The solution will be able to offer instant rate, quote and issue, and where the risk needs specialist underwriting or brokerage services, via a specialist team of underwriters and brokers.

Professional Lines: Building deep integrations with its carrier partners enables Amwins’ retail agents to price and coverage discover instantly on their desktop. This is particularly valuable with cyber liability where carrier appetite rapidly changes.

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Data Extraction: An understandable frustration for many retail agents is the unnecessary keystrokes required for a submission.

Amwins is working on a number of workflow agnostic solutions which will minimise keystrokes by allowing agents to upload documentation as part of the submission process.

Natural Language Processing (NLP): Amwins has recently partnered with a company that scrapes publicly available information and uses NLP to predict company industry classifications, all within a sub-second data call. Not only can classifying a business into an industry be painful for retail agents, it can also lead to misclassification impacting both rate and available coverage.

Third-Party Data: Amwins has consumed third-party data for many years across its commercial and personal lines portfolios. This includes both property characteristics and hazard information. The company is constantly evaluating new data providers as they look to add convenience to their retail agents and value to their underwriting.

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“ The company is focused on creating a seamless hybrid experience for the agent that perfectly balances digital and human interaction” TOM PARSONS

HEAD OF DIGITAL, AMWINS

access to documents, as well as supporting integration with Agency Managements Systems, allowing ‘upload’ and ‘download’ of information. Interactive Experience is also a primary consideration, and Amwins has created multi-channel communication experiences, but importantly always allowing

access to a human when desired.

“We see three main enablers in helping us to fulfil these best agent experience attributes. It is important to consider all three together, rather than independently,” says Parsons, and outlines the following: People as a priority As well as placing technology at the forefront of its strategy, Amwins has a reputation for taking care of its employees, nurturing talent, and encouraging creativity. This, coupled with its dynamic attitude to innovation, is a winning combination, says Parsons.

“Amwins is a place like no other, it truly hires the best people and enables them to do exceptional work,” he says. “I enjoy coming to work each day working

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with outstanding people who are deeply passionate about what they do.

“The combination of a strong entrepreneurial mindset, a focus on meritocracy over hierarchy, and a 150-year vision creates a motivating and supportive work environment that brings the best out of everyone.”

This philosophy has been well born out over the pandemic, as the working processes within Amwins have shifted seamlessly to make way for a remote workforce so that the company has been able to fully serve its customers.

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manner, whereas now that's become the standard. I think that kind of communication or that new acceptance of how to communicate with each other is changing.”

Parsons believes insureds now have higher expectations around communicating with corporate entities - although during the pandemic this has not been without its challenges. “Our clients have had to close down their storefronts. So, we're seeing that they're interacting with their customers in a more digital fashion and in turn, we need to then create similar digital experiences for our clients. These trends began before COVID, but has COVID increased the speed at which these trends are occurring? I think yes.”

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New innovations and trends It’s not only the customer-facing side of insurance that is seeing marked trends emerging -- P&C and underwriting are also at a transition stage. Parsons says the insurance industry is broad and diverse in its makeup, with underwriters quantifying risk for the purposes of calculating premium on a wide variety of risks daily.

From complex parametric triggers to more ‘traditional’ property risks, underwriters calculate the premium required for risk to be transferred. “However, as broad and diverse the insurance industry is, there are a number of general trends we see taking place,” he points out, including: Increased focus on structuring and

“ The combination of more costeffective data storage and processing technology with advances in machine learning and deep learning techniques is opening new areas of development” TOM PARSONS

HEAD OF DIGITAL, AMWINS

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acquiring more data (both first party and third party) Building more advanced capabilities to analyse data to form deeper insights on risk selection, pricing, and portfolio building.

INSURANCE INNOVATION ENABLERS

DID YOU KNOW...

Technology: The technology available today can enable businesses in ways almost unthinkable 10 or 20 years ago.

Effective and empathetic application of technology can transform the most painful retail agent experience into one that is pleasant, or at least more acceptable – this is insurance after all!

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Data: Accessing and using more data can reduce the amount of data we need to collect from our retail agents, reducing painful keystrokes, but data can also enable better risk quantification so our retail agents can offer their insureds the most competitive price possible.

People: Constantly challenging the status quo of insurance process and ensuring the retail agent’s experience is being prioritised, is very important. To achieve this, we need to ensure we are always hiring and retaining the best people.

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Great customer experiences Technology is essential to the role, enabling underwriters to perform more effectively, with greater accuracy. In fact, “The combination of more cost-effective data storage and processing technology with advances in machine learning and deep learning techniques is opening new areas of development which were not available a number of years ago,” he says.

Parsons points out that the application of such developments is wide-ranging, from enabling real-time use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to determine business industry classification, image recognition to determine the shape and standard of a property’s roof and building sophisticated predictive models to uncover new risk quantification insights.

Well-applied technology solutions, he says, can potentially enhance and enable every aspect of the insurance industry.

Amwins future strategies Currently, making any kind of prediction on where the insurance industry might be in a decade is fraught with complications.

This is down to the destabilising times we are living in, as well as the difficulties in accurately assessing technology adoption in the marketplace.

However, it is reasonable to expect current trends to continue. Effective implementation of technology by innovators and early adopters will slowly force technology laggards to catch up or exit, says Parsons.

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“We are seeing increasing pockets for homogenous risk being underwritten in a fully algorithmic straight through processed manner with digital experiences, and we expect this to increase through the industry.

“Microservices, Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) are making these trends of bigger data, deeper insights, and digital experiences easier to access, which will likely speed their proliferation.”

Winning formula Ultimately, these achievements can only be realised through superior teamwork and an incredible amount of talent, acknowledges Parsons. He says that while this past 18 months has been challenging, it has also been inspiring in terms of what his team has been able to accomplish.

“This year, we have been able to rapidly experiment in building an interactive price and coverage discovery platform for our

retail agents, offering some differentiating capabilities we don’t see with other platforms.

I’m proud of what we achieved in a short time frame. It’s a testament to the impressive development team we have invested in and I’m excited to see what they build next!”

On a more personal level, Parsons takes an almost reverent approach to the pace at which technology is enabling things to happen in insurtech. “The insurance industry is adopting technology at an ever-faster rate. I am excited to see how advances in machine learning, natural language processing, speech recognition, and image recognition will create a paradigm shift in how insurance is placed and serviced.”

He adds, “With these rapid advances in technology, the limiting factor for industry advancement increasingly becomes our own imagination!”

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FROM INSURANCE TO RESILIENCE WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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Dominique Roudaut, chief strategy, partnership and innovation officer of Hannover Re, explains the reinsurer’s role as an ecosystem orchestrator

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n 2019, Hannover Re launched their Asian frequent engagement. The traditional Growth Initiative. The company’s objective insurance model where insureds pay a was to expand its footprint in Asia with an premium once a year and eventually get the innovative approach, including expanding benefit of it the day a claim occurs has proved in Personal Lines. The motivation behind short, simply because it fails to engage with the move was client-centric, targeting endthe customer. users through expanding on With client-centricity existing partnerships with presenting as a core value “WE CAN ALSO insurance companies. of the company, embracing ASSIST INSURERS It resulted in Hannover change became essential in WITH ASSESSING Re Personal Lines launching future proofing Hannover AND SETTLING 20 product innovations over Re’s plans.

CLAIMS WITHIN the past 10 months with as “We want our insureds MINUTES WITH A many partners. to get something out of DIGITAL FNOL USING insurance every day with Dominique Roudaut, chief THE SMARTPHONE partnership and innovation prevention services and officer of Hannover Re relevant information, CAMERA OF AN Malaysian Branch, covering educating and empowering INSURED” Asia excluding China and them to change their AnZ, explains, “Hannover Re behaviour”, Roudaut says.

DOMINIQUE ROUDAUT clearly distinguishes its effort The insurance company CHIEF STRATEGY, PARTNERSHIP, AND INNOVATION OFFICER, between enhancing insurer’s has designed its engagement HANNOVER RE services for end-users, in a way deemed valuable solutions for insurance company portfolios, and relevant enough to not need additional and strategy enablement for distribution”. rewards and incentives. However, in some “We provide resilience for end-users; markets there have been tweaks to the format customer-centricity, efficiency, and to provide this appreciated value, nudging relevance for insurers, as well as pointed further behavioural change. solutions for distributors, to better enable In the process, Hannover Re has aspects of their strategy.” evolved from a pure-play reinsurer into an ecosystem orchestrator and integrator. In End user-centric services the process we have evaluated over 700 According to Roudaut, Hannover Re’s services insurtechs and have engaged over 30% of for end-users are geared towards generating these potential partners around specific use fintechmagazine.com

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cases for each ecosystem focused on:

“HANNOVER RE’S ECOSYSTEM PARTNER CAN ALSO CONTACT ANY SOCIAL MEDIA TO TAKE DOWN AN OFFENSIVE POST”

another 400 passengers because a flight has been canceled”.

• Lifestyle “The Hannover Re • Travel team recognised the • Health and wellbeing experience of flight • Consumption disruption could be • Mobility improved for passengers.

Instead of queuing, our Personalised services customers get notified of that address real needs any disruptions by SMS Training and supporting within two minutes of employees have played a the event. And receive DOMINIQUE ROUDAUT major part in the shift too. a call within 15 minutes CHIEF STRATEGY, PARTNERSHIP, AND INNOVATION OFFICER, Hannover Re prioritises from our team, getting HANNOVER RE training their teams in them lounge access, seat Design Thinking, which, says Roudaut, has availability on the next flight, or overnight stay allowed the company to better address the at the airport hotel. cultural shift required by its user-centric “There is no paperwork to wade through for approach. claims and the disruptions are automatically He explains, “Travel is a good example. As dealt with from that moment on. We have travelers, we have all experienced having to a similarly inspired solution for luggage, queue at an airline desk for two hours with enhancing further the resilience we aim for.”

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The goal is to tailor insurance to fit into the insured lifestyle – rather than an insured having to change its agenda around insurance and life events.

As an ecosystem orchestrator, Hannover Re, identifies, compares, and selects relevant potential partners with our insurance company clients and chooses the preferred ones with whom it can synergise and co-design a solution to the problem identified, as defined by end-users.

TITLE: CHIEF STRATEGY, PARTNERSHIP, AND INNOVATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: REINSURANCE LOCATION: LONDON C suite at the crux of customer centricity, insurance innovation and digital distribution with 20 years of P&L leadership, strategic, innovation, transformation, digital, ecosystem, product and underwriting experience at a country, regional and global level.

From vision to execution transformation of culture, processes and organisation across multiple countries to be more efficient (transformation) and relevant (innovation) in order to achieve P&L targets. Lead relationships and client negotiations for large, sensitive and complex deals. Influence stakeholders at every level in a matrix environment.

Customer experience advocate and customer centric insight (anthropologist, design thinker, disruptive strategist) leading to contextually design awarded and patented insurance products and services delivered through a relevant customer journey and experience.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Cyber crisis prevention and assistance In the current climate, cyber-attacks are devastating and user priorities are usually prevention, crisis assistance, and then insurance. Hannover Re provides prevention services together with its select ecosystem partner via an application that checks the vulnerability of customer mobile phones or computers.

The solution comes complete with a dashboard to monitor the security score in real-time. Every vulnerability comes with an action plan to address it and improve the resilience score.

Roudaut says ease of use is paramount in encouraging adoption if the action plan is too cumbersome for a user to implement, Hannover Re has a hotline that remotely addresses what needs to be done on a customer’s device to improve their resilience to cyber risks. If a claim then occurs, the service provides swift and streamlined crisis management.

“Hannover Re’s ecosystem partner can also contact any social media to take down an offensive post. This is often far more urgent than paying a lump sum for psychological assistance, which is also covered under the insurance.

“The cyber solution product can also connect with social media platforms to

DOMINIQUE ROUDAUT

Digital strategy vision and implementation, notably in frontier markets, encompassing ethnographic insight leading to design products & services, customer journey, UI/UX, building an ecosystem with digital partners, along with underwriting and insurance operations expertise for front and back office and navigating the regulatory field.

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to inform, educate, empower and prevent,” says Roudaut.

re-enact a hacked account, instead of the insured having to re-create one from scratch.”

Thanks to data collected through the prevention service, Hannover Re can even re-create the telematics of cyber. This ensures the products also have a fair market price to all insured because each policy can be based on an individual risk profile.

“The solution enables us to engage specifically with some personas and market segments with specific communication relevant to them and their cyber exposure

“ WE DO NOT POSITION OUR SOLUTIONS AS A SOURCE OF ANCILLARY REVENUE. RATHER, THEY ARE CORE TO FULFILLING THE STRATEGY OF A DIRECT DISTRIBUTOR” DOMINIQUE ROUDAUT

CHIEF STRATEGY, PARTNERSHIP, AND INNOVATION OFFICER, HANNOVER RE

A scientific approach to healthcare services Medical research indicates that those with the best prognosis are the ones with the best support system.

Hannover Re deliberately sought out an ecosystem partner that could recreate such a support system with an app and coach service as part of their Critical Illness insurance cover.

The cancer support system helps insured to document how they feel, write a journal, track their symptoms, and receive educational content on their condition and treatment to better alleviate its consequences. These include tips on sleep or nutrition.

The app provides them with a connected community of real people who are going through similar experiences. The support system also offers unlimited access via video, chat, SMS, voice call to a certified health coach who can accompany the insured further.

Providing patients with support during their illness and treatment regimen is also essential, says Roudaut. “These solutions help the insured become active in their treatment journeys because they are empowered with the right support and information instead of being corralled on the conveyor belt of white blouses.”

He continues, “The same thought process led Hannover Re to also deploy early detection and cognitive training as a way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease available via an app and to deploy mental health coaching designed to create a new positive habit within a 16-week programme based on what the insured wants to improve also app and coach driven.”

Global leader in internet disruption solutions Stability of service since the global digital transformation has become essential for fintechmagazine.com

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companies worldwide. Hannover Re recently launched an unprecedented solution with their ecosystem partner Riskwolf to insure internet outages via an index, 1st for consumers.

A growing number of countries have enshrined access to high-speed internet as a fundamental right. “Outages are well documented and nothing is currently being done about it,” says Roudaut. He points out that while insurance can’t fix a network failure, end users can at least receive an indemnity for it. “Together with Riskwolf, Hannover Re is working towards further outage insurance iterations for the digital economy and SMEs.” The goal is to deliver solutions to direct distributors that help them fulfill their strategy, be it market differentiation, retention, growing some market segment, building trust with their merchants and clients, or becoming more environmentally friendly.

“We do not position our solutions as a source of ancillary revenue. Rather, they are core to fulfilling the strategy of our clients , those who are the product distributor.”

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User centricity also requires IT capabilities in order to deliver the entire insurance journey on a mobile phone. Roudaut explains that Hannover Re clients are not only insurance companies. They are also to assist the direct distribution clients such as MNO, MMO, Banks, retailers, and eCommerce companies who work with our insurance clients. He says, “Ecosystem partnerships effectively digitises the entire insurance journey through a mobile phone, a feature appreciated by our MNO and SME clients notably.”

Insurer centric solutions: Motor insurance Hannover Re offers a Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard to insurance companies to monitor and pilot their portfolio performance.

This provides a user-friendly interface between the customer and service provider.

According to Roudaut, the more details the customer can share with us, the better our insights are. The business visualisation tool enables insurance clients to better assess performance on top-line (distribution, market segment, geography, personas, demographics, age, make, model, etc.) and bottom line (granular LR and CR on every possible micro-segment).

The next stage is the analysis of the portfolios – for trends and performance metrics. Microsegmentation for propensity and sensitivity analysis can be deployed for more accurate price points per personas, distribution segments, demographics. The aim is to increase margin and market share where it is possible and where it makes sense. “Our approach has yielded a minimum of a two percentage point improvement of the client’s combined ratio and a double-digit increase in conversion rates and top-line growth.”

The third essential ingredient is innovation.

Roudaut points out that the process is key.

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case for end-users. The Job to Get Done is not insurance but how to get from A to B in a safe and engaging manner,” he says.

“As ecosystem orchestrators, we have scouted, compared, and selected the best telematics, engagement, claims, smart city, mobility as a service company, and environmental impact measure and offset to integrate into our offering.”

As such Hannover Re strives to offer insurance partners a turnkey pay-as-youdrive solution that is precise enough to be relevant, engaging enough to drive consumer behaviour. The Hannover Re solution favours neither the car nor the driver. Rather, it is mobility-centric.

Sustainability and green providers Sustainability is high on Hannover Re’s

agenda. The company’s mobility solution empowers customers to define their journey by combining public and private modes of transportation. It helps end-users, insurers, and the planet Roudaut adds, “We also launched a solution enabling users to measure and offset any purchase made online through an eCommerce platform. It tends to increase conversion rates while internalising the cost of production, packaging, and shipping on the environment.”

Optimisation for sales and claims Hannover Re’s innovations have been pivoted towards sales and claims optimisation to better improve customer centricity while alleviating pressure on the Loss Ratio and streamline insurance back-office operations. fintechmagazine.com

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“WE PROVIDE RESILIENCE FOR END-USERS; CUSTOMERCENTRICITY, EFFICIENCY, AND RELEVANCE FOR INSURERS, AS WELL AS POINTED SOLUTIONS FOR DISTRIBUTORS, TO BETTER ENABLE ASPECTS OF THEIR STRATEGY” DOMINIQUE ROUDAUT

CHIEF STRATEGY, PARTNERSHIP, AND INNOVATION OFFICER, HANNOVER RE

The company’s solutions for claims revolve around fraud and First Notice of Loss with different partners for every ambition and every budget.

An innovative way to assess fraud and adjudicate claims is a triage mechanism for high volume low value claims powered

by Clearspeed recycling and improving on a technology – notably used by defense forces in war zones to for instance hire local resources and better distinguish between an earnest translator and a potential suicide bomber. This solution improves user centricity by adjudicating volume claims quickly while still protecting the balance sheet zooming on red flag cases.

“We can also assist insurers with assessing and settling claims within minutes with a digital FNOL using the smartphone camera of an insured,” says Roudaut.

Hannover Re’s approach to innovation combines: • Reinsurance • Reassurance, where Hannover Re accompany (reassure) our insurance clients with their customer-centric, change management, and innovation journey • Ethnographic insight and data analytics • Ecosystem orchestration, integration, and facilitation for deployment Ultimately, putting the customer at the heart of the process and taking a holistic approach to business, is paying off for Hannover Re. From providing swift and essential support services to paying attention to sustainable solutions, the company is future-proofing against the changes sweeping the industry globally.

Roudaut adds, “We deliver resilience, not merely insurance. We craft experiences from A to Z.”

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BANKING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE IS ALL

ABOUT COLLABORATION -

AND THE

WRITTEN BY: SIMON HOWSON-GREEN

CLOUD PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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TEMENOS

Jean-Paul Mergeai of the banking software company, Temenos explains how its open cloud banking platform is levelling the playing field and creating room for the disruptor upstarts as well as the incumbent banks to digitally transform and innovate.

J

ean-Paul Mergeai and his team at the banking software business, Temenos are on a mission to re-invent the industry for the digital age. He says change is not only inevitable - it is vital.

According to JP - as he’s known at Temenos and across the industry - banking is reaching a crunch point. “I think the banking industry - all the banks - have this once in a generation opportunity to digitally transform,’ he says… and they squander it at their peril.”

JP’s official title is President of International Sales at Temenos with a brief to look after growth across most of the planet including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific region.

He says the more well-established banks are in no place to be complacent. Why? Because they are riddled with legacy systems, chunks of aged software all ‘glued’ together and in danger of coming apart at the seams.

He likens - as do many at Temenos - the old ways of banking and the challenges they bring with them to a busy but somewhat disorganised and steamy restaurant kitchen.

‘Banks’ legacy systems are like layers of spaghetti on top of lasagne. This complexity is actually holding them back, they cannot continue like that. Imagine that most of these banking systems were built in the sixties and are very expensive to maintain.

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Temenos is banking on the digital future in the cloud

‘So, at present, about 70% of most banks’ I.T. budgets are dedicated to maintaining their legacy systems. In other words, that’s money spent on keeping old systems running rather than innovating and providing a better experience for their customers.’

JP says this cumbersome approach means these banks struggle to compete with new entrants into the banking space such as FinTech. They are simply unable to launch and manage new products fast enough.

However, JP argues that the bigger, established banks remain extremely well placed to win in the long term as they have consumer trust on their side and the volume of customers.

JP says the key to success is being willing to embrace the challenge of ‘digital transformation’ where banks are harnessing new technologies to develop far more agile, straight through, automated processes to make significant efficiency gains and provide an enhanced experience to their customers.

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‘This next generation of core banking platforms - built for the cloud - can deliver complex functionalities 20 times faster and significantly reduce cost of operations to about 10% of legacy systems.’

According to JP investing in digitalisation AI and cloud technology is a no-brainer for the banking businesses who want to survive and those who want to get into the market. ‘They will all need cloud and artificial intelligence technology to succeed,’ he says.

ROOM FOR ALL So, if a battle has commenced and the challenger upstart start-ups, with their nimble agility and brand spanking new software can take the high ground, where does that leave the more cumbersome ‘dinosaurs’? Are they the doomed old guard? Are they finished? Or are they even close to extinction?

TEMENOS

Temenos believes there is room for all in the new banking landscape. This is good for Temenos as it supplies banking solutions to customers of all shapes, sizes, banks, including established tier-1 players, challengers, and fintechs.

‘I really think the challenger banks can be profitable,’ says JP. ‘They will be profitable if they have a sound business model, and they are differentiating their offering. If they are trying to do the same as brick-and-mortar banks or traditional banks, then they're not going to succeed. By using modern technology, they can scale massively and achieve hyper-efficient business models. This is also about understanding how they are going to attract loyal customers, retain them and grow.’

JP says the upside of this is a win-win for the banks and those they serve because banks can pass the benefits of their savings to customers.

He estimates in the new banking landscape the cost of servicing customers is a quarter of that it would be in the old traditional banking world.

This is what he sees as the real competitive advantage brought about by embracing AI and the cloud and all the benefits of digitalisation.

JEAN-PAUL MERGEAI

PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES, TEMENOS

TITLE: PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE Dynamic leader with a proven track record of translating business objectives into bottom-line results at international level.

Consistently delivered growth and value by managing sales, marketing and professional services in a wide range of sophisticated financial services and software solutions.

Experienced in prospecting, closing business and managing key accounts in Europe, the Americas and the Middle-East. Skilled at developing and maintaining successful long lasting business relationships with C-Level Execuitves as well as at Trading, Operations, Information Technology and Legal stakeholders.

Diversified team builder with a consultative style and strong interpersonal skills.

Accomplished multi-lingual communicator with superior writing and oral skills.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“70 PERCENT OF MOST BANKS’ I.T. BUDGETS ARE DEDICATED TO MAINTAINING THEIR LEGACY SYSTEMS RATHER THAN ON INNOVATING AND PROVIDING A BETTER EXPERIENCE FOR THEIR CUSTOMERS”

JEAN-PAUL MERGEAI

TEMENOS

Digitally transform banking on your terms with a smarter cloud

Only Google Cloud gives you the flexibility to modernize and securely run your Temenos applications at scale anywhere - in your data centers, in the cloud or across multiple public clouds - all with simple, unified management.

Learn more

TEMENOS

‘Temenos serves more than seventy challenger banks all over the world: in North America and Latin America in Australia in Asia and Europe.

“The traditional banks are looking very actively at transformation and are using our technology to do so, and then the challenger banks and the digital banks have really sent a massive wake-up call to the banking industry, and I think it's for the greater good.”

JP cites the work Temenos is doing with challenger banks such as Alpian and FlowBank, two new Swiss-based services, and Virgin Money in Australia and he focuses on the Italian bank, Flowe to highlight how Temenos can provide solutions across the board.

“THE TEMENOS BANKING CLOUD PROVIDES OUR CUSTOMERS WITH INSTANT ACCESS TO COMPLETE BANKING SERVICES, A ‘SANDBOX’ TO DEVELOP AND TEST NEW APPLICATIONS AND AN ECOSYSTEM OF PRE-INTEGRATED FINTECH SOLUTIONS” JEAN-PAUL MERGEAI

PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES, TEMENOS fintechmagazine.com

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TEMENOS

Flowe is the ‘greenfield’ digital bank based in Milan.

“They have built an incredible business model aimed at reaching the younger demographic so they're reaching out to younger people with a sustainable ecofriendly cluster of banking services.”

Temenos helped Flowe go live in just five months - right in the middle of the pandemic. “We have really managed to deliver this project in the most challenging of circumstances,” says JP. “Our input allowed them to scale extremely fast with our SaaS (Software as a Service) technology.” In its first six months of operations, Flowe attracted more than 600,000 customers and it's growing at twice the rate of its nearest competitors, this is a really, really, amazing success.

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“CUSTOMERS ARE SOPHISTICATED…THEY ARE DEMANDING MORE APPROPRIATE AND MORE PERSONALIZED SERVICES FROM THEIR BANK. THEY MAY NOT KNOW THE CONCEPT OF CUSTOMER CENTRICITY, BUT THIS IS, IN ESSENCE, WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT” JEAN-PAUL MERGEAI

PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES, TEMENOS

TEMENOS

1993

Year founded

Banking Software

The first time Temenos put a banking customer on the cloud was in 2011. Since then, the company says it’s invested more than $1bn in research and development and collected feedback and information from around 700 clients who have used their SaaS offering. This gathering of data ranges from the Tier 1 banks to those seventy disruptor banks.

Industry

7,500 Number of employees

$981m 2019 revenue

JP sees one of the main drivers in this industry, which is making success possible - especially for the challenger banks is the way they can embrace the cloud and most importantly adopt software as a service.

“Most of the banks we talk to expect to make greater use of cloud technology going forward and literally every request for proposal and request for information we answer includes a big section on operating in the cloud.

“The pandemic that we've been experiencing has very, very visibly and forcibly demonstrated the power of the cloud and software as a service to better and more rapidly support people, businesses, and the economy as a whole.

For us it’s not new, we’ve built up over ten years of cloud leadership.”

HOWDIE PARTNER JP is keen to stress that although Temenos is cloud-agnostic, and its applications will run on a wide range of platforms he is also a huge advocate of partnerships.

‘Strategic relationships are essential in our industry. Take, for example, our partnership with Google Cloud. Banks have the choice of running their Temenos applications, whether it's Infinity or Transact or the Temenos Payments on Google Cloud. The focus of our work with Google Cloud is to deliver our mission-critical software across hybrid and multi-cloud environments and help financial services organizations create profitable business models, and improve and differentiate their customer experiences.’

“Our full suite of banking software and applications is available on Google Cloud, and together we help banks go to market faster, drive scalability, operational efficiency, time-to-market, and innovation.

‘But we have a cloud-agnostic approach, which allows us to run on all the major cloud providers and this enables banks to pursue a multi-cloud strategy. It’s all about flexibility but it's also all about choice when it comes to digital transformation so banks can modernize at their own pace maybe leveraging our Transact product on Google Cloud but then running our other applications through multi-cloud deployments.’ fintechmagazine.com

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NUMBER OF CHALLENGER BANKS EXPECTED TO ENTER THE MARKET IN 2020/21 (According to this report the global Neo and challenger bank industry was valued at $20.4 billion in 2019, and the market size is projected to reach $471.0 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 48.1% from 2020 to 2027)

THE TEMENOS BANKING CLOUD Jean-Paul Mergeai says he is now busier than ever before with the next generation of Temenos SaaS. This is the Temenos Banking Cloud which is powered by an Explainable AI-engine and enables banks to ‘fast track’ themselves into cloud banking. JP explains: ‘The Temenos Banking Cloud consists of three elements. First, a self-service portal in which you can compose your core banking system based on modular cloud-native building blocks.

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Second, a sandbox environment, where you can develop and test new applications based on the APIs exposed by these building blocks, and third a marketplace of pre-integrated fintech solutions.’

With The Temenos Banking Cloud, banks now have the power to selfprovision always-on banking services and scale instantly and securely while dramatically reducing the cost of operations.

TEMENOS

“MOST OF THE BANKS WE TALK TO EXPECT TO MAKE GREATER USE OF CLOUD TECHNOLOGY GOING FORWARD AND LITERALLY EVERY REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL AND REQUEST FOR INFORMATION WE ANSWER INCLUDES A BIG SECTION ON OPERATING IN THE CLOUD” JEAN-PAUL MERGEAI

PRESIDENT INTERNATIONAL SALES, TEMENOS fintechmagazine.com

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Essentially, the Temenos Banking Cloud empower banks to digitally transform and massively scale faster than ever.

JP goes further. It’s not just about accelerating the delivery of value and the speed of access to comprehensive banking services. ‘We also feel very strongly that we are making digital banking more human and more accessible for a wider range of customers.

‘Temenos software can create even more opportunities for its clients to differentiate and fine tune their offering to potential and existing customers.’

So, what does Jean Paul Mergeai think the modern-day banking customer wants from his or her bank?

‘Customers are sophisticated,’ he says.

They are demanding more appropriate and more personalized services from their bank. They may not know the concept of customer-centricity, but this is, in essence, what customers want.

In theory - and in practice - the more information a bank can gather about its customers the better it can serve them.

‘At the very core of customer-centricity there are large amounts of data that banks hold about their customers; every transaction that they ever did, every investment they ever made, every type of merchant they did business with, and all the various types of vendor goods they have consumed.

‘But processing all these points of data would be impossible without big data analytics and artificial intelligence gathering everything in the background.

‘Customers want their banks to simplify their financial lives. They expect banks to understand their life circumstances so they can better help them.’

Four-fifths of banking executives - according to a recent Economist report - believe that the use of AI will be the differentiating factor between winning and losing. This can never be over-stressed says JP. ‘AI gives the ability to banks to crunch more data faster naturally in real-time and learn more about customer behaviour.

There is no real true personalization without it. And that ability to have that personal relationship with the customer is the future.’

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WANT TO GET AHEAD IN THE PAYMENTS SPACE RACE? Legacy, disconnected systems no longer cut it in the highly competitive payments market.

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Let’s Power Next at fisglobal.com. Connect with us at getinfo@fisglobal.com. ©2021 FIS FIS and the FIS logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of FIS or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other parties’ marks are the property of their respective owners. 1432362