DATA SECURITY BANKING TECHNOLOGY
Beyond Boundaries Miljan Stamenkovic General Manager, MENA at Mambu describes how banking technology, driven by factors including customer behaviour and central bank policies, is bringing about a whole new financial services landscape
H
ow would you best define the role of technology providers to the banking and finance industry?
Technology providers are playing a critical role in the evolution of the banking and finance industry. Financial services leaders recognize how technology transformation leads to significant competitive advantage. Adopting new banking technology is, therefore, critical for financial services organizations to stay relevant, thrive and to ensure they maintain and expand their market position.
What is currently driving innovation in regional banking technology? Customer expectations and behaviour remain a driving force when it comes to innovating within banking technology. But the ability to enable change has reached a new level of importance around the world, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For years, the banking sector has been a digital laggard compared with other industries. Along with growing competition from digital-first banks, the pandemic has had the biggest impact on banks’ digital transformation strategy and accelerated the push from legacy systems to cloud. New digital challenger banks have been instrumental in taking the latest technology and creating a unique, digitalfirst approach to banking that fits into society’s increasingly digital lifestyle. To remain competitive, banks need to go to
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market rapidly, and be able to scale quickly and easily while also offering absolute stability, or customers will look elsewhere. Cloud banking platforms like Mambu take a new approach – banks can innovate like never before by driving the creation of financial offerings, opening up new markets and revenue streams and delivering more profitable models.
What do you believe are the two most impactful innovations in banking and finance in the past five years? Central Bank policies play a pivotal role in advancing the innovation and financial agenda of the region, particularly in relation to a cloud-native technology and an API-first micro-services based architecture, among others. Due to the support of Central Bank policies and innovation, it is estimated that there are more than 300 (and counting) new digital challengers in banking around the world. Regardless of origin, one of the things these new banks have in common is that they are unencumbered by legacy technology and are able to build their offerings using modern technology and API-first delivery models.
What innovations will we see being enabled by banking technology in the next five years? Within banking, customers continue to demand best-of-breed services and evolving technologies continue to
Banking and Finance news in the MEA market
Miljan Stamenkovic General Manager, MENA at Mambu support that demand. This will continue to develop as a result of Central Bank policies and this evolution will drive API-first open-banking services, along with the financial services ecosystem around it. Client segments within retail, SME and corporate banking will maintain unique requirements, which will be serviced through state-of-the-art fintech solution providers connected within the ecosystem by API-driven micro services.
Being a business that is key to change and growth in banking and finance, what brings you the most satisfaction? What has changed in recent years is that there are no boundaries in looking at how to rethink a business model. Today you can employ cloud-based solutions and API-driven architectures to create an open banking ecosystem to drive your business. I truly believe in and enjoy working on agile projects. This is where you are constantly thinking of your time to market, or even more importantly time to value. And the best thing is - there is usually almost no burden of legacy technology to slow you down. Today, as a business, we can get the taste of what it is like to create the next generation of financial services. More importantly, we as consumers also get to enjoy all the benefits of this change in the industry.
