Intelligence Quotient

Andreas Burner Chief Innovation Officer, Smartstream underlines the central role that technology does, and will continue to play in banking and finance, highlighting Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning as key elements

How would you best define the role of technology providers to the banking and finance industry?

In our partnerships with major banks and financial service providers, SmartStream acts as the trusted software provider for proven and trusted off-the-shelf products that consist of highly available cloud-native components and cuttingedge technology like AI/ML. When using standard products, a bank ensures that the products are always kept up-todate and provide an uncompromising total cost of ownership (TOC) of wellmaintained software. In a partnership, SmartStream advises the clients with best practices and industry know-how as well as technological advantage.

What is currently driving innovation in regional banking technology?

Innovation is typically driven by problem statements that require solving. There are still many manual workflow steps in today’s banking space, and the infrastructure is often highly fragmented and lacks interoperability. Complex workflows and expensive systems are hard and expensive to maintain. Several innovative and strategic technologies tackle these problems, like cloud technologies, containerization, microservices design, and AI/ML technologies. In SmartStream, we incorporate those technologies into our products to get product updates easily and get support for our client’s daily jobs.

What you believe are the two most impactful innovations in banking and finance in the past five years?

The main innovation drivers at the moment are for sure AI/ML and various cloud technologies. SmartStream’s products handle billions of records worldwide, and of these big-data scenarios, AI/ML provides technology and competitive advantage. With our newest AI component, “SmartStream Affinity”, we outperform any other reconciliation product using observational learning and significantly increase the straightthrough processing. In combination with cloud technologies like data lakes and analytics tools, we provide unique insights to our clients to understand their workflows and products to better and optimize their business.

What innovations will we see being enabled by banking technology in the next five years?

In our innovation lab, we are testing technologies, inventing new components, and make cutting-edge technology useful for everyday work. While testing technologies like AI/ML and DLT, we assess their usefulness for the financial services sector and run prototypes with clients. At the moment, the most promising technology is for sure AI/ML. With our observational learning technology that helps end-users during their daily work, we are only at the beginning of a journey to increase automation of banking products significantly.

Andreas Burner Chief Innovation Officer, Smartstream

Being a business that is key to change and growth in banking and finance, what brings you the most satisfaction?

In the last year, it was very rewarding to see that we could outperform products where everyone thought they have already reached the peak of efficiency with our latest software. New technologies like AI/ML work very well on financial data if used correctly, and it is satisfying to successfully finish a POC and overperforming the expectations of all participants. New technology is vital for banking and finance because it ensures competitiveness and is securely running daily operations without risk. In the upcoming years, we will hear a lot about the successes that new technologies bring to banking and finance.