#Seattle #Bank, a single branch boutique bank with $ 650 million in assets, is dumping its #Fiserv #core #banking #system and moving to a new #modern core #from #Finastra, a company formed by the combination of D+H and Misys.
Financial Technology
PREMIUM – #Cannabis businesses, even when they are legal, have difficulty securing bank accounts, and therefore often deal in cash. But as regulators across the world consider legalizing this market, it may be time for #banks to take note of this new customer. Most recently, Canada announced plans in October to legalize the sale, production, […]
Bank Innovation
#Blockchain‘s future in #banking is bright, but right now, the industry is not prepared to take advantage of what the #technology offers, according to a new #McKinsey report on blockchain’s viability across various industries. The report, released last week, describes blockchain&8217;s suitability for financial services in this way: Financial services’ core functions of verifying and transferring […]
Bank Innovation
PREMIUM- P2P payments app, Venmo, has launched its debit #card, Venmo Card, and it is powered by Mastercard. When Venmo first launched its card in #beta last September, it was backed by Visa. After 10 months of trial, the PayPal-owned Venmo notified its users that they can get a Venmo debit card through a link on […]
Bank Innovation
PREMIUM — What do Under Armour and Apple’s Beats by Dre have in common? Talent has been recruited from both companies to kick-start a #bank that’s a non-bank. “We don’t want to call ourselves a ‘bank’; we want to be called Cogni,” said Archie Ravishankar CEO of Cogni. “Cogni meaning cognizance, intelligence, smart and relieving […]
Bank Innovation
Banking is an industry heavily impacted by changing technologies, including #blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI). Sixty-three percent of the banking respondents to the Accenture Technology Vision 2018 survey say their organizations will make investments in AI over the next year, and 85 percent agree deeper #technology integration into our day-to-day lives is shifting relationships between consumers and enterprises to forms of “partnerships.”
The pace of change has been rapid—perhaps faster than we might have anticipated. Back in 2009, the biggest challenge according to our Accenture Global #Risk Management Study was fragmented, inefficient technology not well suited to risk management needs. Steadily, over the years, technology needs have evolved, focusing more on analytics, big data and intelligent automation. But the pace of change seems to have increased exponentially.
The reasons for change are many and with the digitization of the industry, the opportunity for #banks to innovate is everywhere. Where can risk leaders embrace the challenge?
While there is variation, we found that banks are experimenting with—and adopting—newer technologies at a significant pace.
Our 2017 Global Risk Management Study finds banks making positive progress already. Roughly a third of respondents are starting to use artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning (ML—35 percent, 38 percent and 33 percent, respectively). Risk is in the leading group, as at least one in four banks has begun using these technologies for their risk function (31 percent for AI, 25 percent for RPA and 26 percent for ML). Risk professionals are ambitious; interestingly, these same respondents acknowledge they aren’t using these “New Intelligent Technologies” (New IT) to full potential—signaling that their journey to higher levels of efficiency and cognitive insight is just beginning.
What is driving this? There is not one simple overarching reason. The most basic driver is a similar refrain we hear across all organizations—New IT can help relieve cost pressure. Fifty-five percent of our 2017 study respondents believe that applied intelligent technologies can deliver cost efficiency. Looking at specific technologies, we found that 35 percent of respondents believe that capabilities in big data and analytics can help their risk function address cost pressures to a great extent, while 47 percent believe these capabilities can do so to some extent.
However, the demands on banking risk functions are multifaceted, and a single reason for New IT adoption is, frankly insufficient. Risk functions find themselves processing and analyzing increasingly larger, disparate amounts of data at an ever-increasing pace, to understand an always-growing number of risks and correlations. New IT can catalyze the evolution and sophistication of risk models used by banks, which in turn have the potential to increase both the quality and capabilities of the risk organization.
Cloud is one of the leading technologies we examined in our 2017 Global Risk Management Study, despite it being around for well over a decade. Unsurprisingly, among our banking respondents, 82 percent are using cloud in some form.
Digging deeper, however, this high number is a bit deceiving. Only 18 percent of respondents claim cloud proficiency, and many banks have not yet migrated core systems to the cloud. Over a quarter (26 percent) of respondents are only just beginning to use it, and 38 percent admit they aren’t using it to its full potential.
Now, nearly all the newer technologies we will explore in this blog series can or do reside in the cloud. This makes cloud proficiency essential for banks hoping to rapidly boost their risk management technology infrastructure. Leaders may encounter resistance when pushing for cloud—implementing it can take effort, and upfront expenses may seem costly (even though long-term cost savings can be significant), and changes to the IT operating model may be necessary, too.
Among our study respondents, we see good news. Since a strong majority have at least dabbled in cloud, it’s clear that banks see the potential. In addition, nearly 70 percent of study respondents believe that cloud, collaboration and workflow tools, artificial intelligence and machine learning can help their risk functions alleviate cost pressures to some extent. For banks, now may be the time to rethink the where and how of their cloud strategy and plan, from the perspective of both achieving cost efficiency and driving performance insight.
The promise of innovative technologies holds significant allure. And since banks are at different stages of adoption and maturity, and these technologies are not “one size fits all” solutions, can these technologies really deliver on their promise of significant cost and efficiency gains for each bank?
The rise of digital is a challenge that extends beyond New IT. What do banks need to have in place to be able to reap the benefits of these technologies and the disruptive opportunities being created by a digitized industry?
See my next post for a discussion of coordination #challenges.
The post How ready are banks’ risk teams to meet new IT challenges? appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Legendary magician Harry Houdini used to perform spectacular escapes #from handcuffs, straitjackets, ropes and chains, and often combinations of them. One of his most famous and difficult escapes was the 1904 London Daily Mirror Handcuff Challenge, where Houdini managed to escape from a pair of handcuffs that had taken a Birmingham blacksmith five years to perfect.
Many bankers see the traditional application service provider (ASP) #model for managing their #core systems—renting the use of core #banking software centrally hosted and managed by a single vendor—as a set of handcuffs they cannot pick. The ASP model proved useful in the early 2000s in helping #banks lower costs. Yet over the years, the constant adding on of various components (think digital user interfaces or new payment types) atop 30-year-old #technology has created an increasingly complex maze of systems that is now hard to maintain, difficult to integrate, designed for “vanilla” service, slow to change and costly to service. Add to that the frustration of vendor-controlled product releases that can take the #future of banks’ IT innovation out of a CIO’s hands.
If banks are to have a chance of competing for customers’ attention and business against the likes of Amazon, Google, Alibaba, fintechs and others, they must devise a clever escape from the constraints of the ASP model. Digital rivals are built bottom up on IT systems that are open, scalable and flexible, enabling innovative services, high-speed responses and efficient operations. Banks need the same traits to be future #ready—to connect with broader digital ecosystems and deliver hyper-relevant services (financial and non-financial, human- and automation-supported) through multiple and rich channels in real time. Those banks unable to rise to the occasion risk becoming digitally irrelevant and targets for acquisition.
Luckily, the typical ASP model is not escape-proof. While Houdini was an illusionist who used tricks to perform his death-defying feats, banks can take a few well-staged steps to truly #free their core banking systems and become future ready.
It begins with designing the bank’s future-state IT architecture. For the future-ready bank, we envision the ASP model evolving to serve as the engine for Systems of Record, Messaging and Services activity. It will be open, modern, secure and agile enough to allow for seamless integration of applications, API management, Cloud hosting, and plug-and-play of best-of-breed technology. Rather than having the lion’s share of its IT served by a single ASP provider, the bank provider pool becomes more diverse, fluid and adaptable. Then, banks will need to rewire their IT delivery organisation to adopt a multi-speed approach, operating and simultaneously supporting multiple business objectives. They will also need to “hollow out the core” and diversify the providers of IT technology for greater flexibility and innovation. Houdini used keys and cutlery; banks can use processes and technology to free themselves from the handcuffs of the ASP model.
Read our recent report, Breaking Free of the ASP Model, for a closer look at how banks can break free of their ASP model—and how a few banks are already doing it.
The post Free core banking from the ASP model to be future ready appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
EXCLUSIVE — As hacks and other methods of digital fraud rise with the adoption of mobile #payments, companies and consumers continue to search for better ways to authenticate and identity users making payments. For certain markets, adoption could come more quickly than others, Bob Reany, executive vice president, global products and services, identity solutions for …Read More
Bank Innovation
Legendary magician Harry Houdini used to perform spectacular escapes #from handcuffs, straitjackets, ropes and chains, and often combinations of them. One of his most famous and difficult escapes was the 1904 London Daily Mirror Handcuff Challenge, where Houdini managed to escape from a pair of handcuffs that had taken a Birmingham blacksmith five years to perfect.
Many bankers see the traditional application service provider (ASP) #model for managing their #core systems—renting the use of core #banking software centrally hosted and managed by a single vendor—as a set of handcuffs they cannot pick. The ASP model proved useful in the early 2000s in helping #banks lower costs. Yet over the years, the constant adding on of various components (think digital user interfaces or new payment types) atop 30-year-old #technology has created an increasingly complex maze of systems that is now hard to maintain, difficult to integrate, designed for “vanilla” service, slow to change and costly to service. Add to that the frustration of vendor-controlled product releases that can take the #future of banks’ IT innovation out of a CIO’s hands.
If banks are to have a chance of competing for customers’ attention and business against the likes of Amazon, Google, Alibaba, fintechs and others, they must devise a clever escape from the constraints of the ASP model. Digital rivals are built bottom up on IT systems that are open, scalable and flexible, enabling innovative services, high-speed responses and efficient operations. Banks need the same traits to be future #ready—to connect with broader digital ecosystems and deliver hyper-relevant services (financial and non-financial, human- and automation-supported) through multiple and rich channels in real time. Those banks unable to rise to the occasion risk becoming digitally irrelevant and targets for acquisition.
Luckily, the typical ASP model is not escape-proof. While Houdini was an illusionist who used tricks to perform his death-defying feats, banks can take a few well-staged steps to truly #free their core banking systems and become future ready.
It begins with designing the bank’s future-state IT architecture. For the future-ready bank, we envision the ASP model evolving to serve as the engine for Systems of Record, Messaging and Services activity. It will be open, modern, secure and agile enough to allow for seamless integration of applications, API management, Cloud hosting, and plug-and-play of best-of-breed technology. Rather than having the lion’s share of its IT served by a single ASP provider, the bank provider pool becomes more diverse, fluid and adaptable. Then, banks will need to rewire their IT delivery organisation to adopt a multi-speed approach, operating and simultaneously supporting multiple business objectives. They will also need to “hollow out the core” and diversify the providers of IT technology for greater flexibility and innovation. Houdini used keys and cutlery; banks can use processes and technology to free themselves from the handcuffs of the ASP model.
Read our recent report, Breaking Free of the ASP Model, for a closer look at how banks can break free of their ASP model—and how a few banks are already doing it.
The post Free core banking from the ASP model to be future ready appeared first on Accenture Banking Blog.
Millennials are #ready to #share extensive data with #banks, but most banks aren’t prepared to use it.
Financial Technology
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