Most Blockchain use cases have focused on reducing the need for (and cost of) infrastructure. And in Virtusa’s case, the vendor has focused on engagements where it can combine Blockchain technology with other emerging technologies such as QR codes, IoT, and encryption algorithms to deliver enhanced security and cost savings for environments lacking adequate supporting infrastructure. Her[...]

Many Blockchain services vendors have observed that up to 75% of proofs of concept for Blockchain fail to meet their goals. Analysis of drivers for such widespread failure indicates that the initial use case was flawed because it was constructed to justify experimentation rather than solve business challenges. However, TCS has focused its Blockchain efforts on developing uses cases that can dr[...]

  I recently attended the Avaloq client conference in Zurich. The conference was well attended, with ~400 attendees. Avaloq is on a roll, adding clients across offerings and markets for the past several years. Here I outline how they are doing it and what their next steps are. Background Avaloq is a privately held vendor of technology-based solutions and services to the financial[...]

  As discussed in my blog of April 12, 2017, the mortgage processing industry in the U.S. is challenged to remain profitable because, from 2012 to 2016, loans outstanding grew 1.8% per year, while processing costs grew at 7.3% per year. This is leading to industry consolidation and operational restructuring. A recent example of a BPS vendor consolidating in order to drive greater effic[...]

This is the second in a series of blogs on current activities, use cases, POCs, and pilots with Blockchain in the financial services industry. In this one, I look at some of what Wipro is doing to support banks and financial services companies in deploying Blockchain solutions. Blockchain technology & services Wipro has been active for the past three years in offering Blockchain cons[...]

This is the first in an occasional series of blog articles over the next year on Blockchain initiatives related to the financial services industry. Blockchain is an emerging technology for which there are no current operational deployments, with initiatives still primarily at the consulting and design stage. Pilots have been deployed, but are relatively rare despite the rapid growth in experim[...]

  NelsonHall attended the WNS analyst conference in New York last week for a business update and to hear about their current initiatives. Here I take a quick look at WNS’ banking industry business specifically, and at how it is focused on applying FinTech to BPS delivery to support large productivity gains for its U.S. regional banking clients. Market conditions are driving c[...]

  The mortgage and loan servicing industry is beginning a period of rapid change in the way business process services are delivered. Over the past few years, mortgage portfolios have not grown rapidly. For example, in the U.S., the largest residential mortgage market in the world, loans have grown only 7.3% from year-end 2012 to year-end 2016, a CAAGR of 1.8%. Some lines of loans have [...]

  Atos’ recent analyst event in Boston provided insight into its roadmap for 2017-2019. This note focuses specifically on its digital roadmap for the banking and financial services sector. While financial services is Atos' smallest industry segment (17% of 2016 revenues), it was Atos' fastest growing vertical in Q4 2016, delivering 10.6% organic growth v[...]

  Based on NelsonHall research conducted during late 2016, I have identified three key predictions for business process services (BPS) and IT services (ITS) in the Banking sector in 2017.   1. Compliance initiatives move from industry headwind to tailwind The first prediction is that compliance operations change initiatives will decline, and the resources released from th[...]

  Most FinTech engagements to date, with the exception of Blockchain, have been focused on consumer banking, a business characterized by high volume, high standardization, and low value transactions. By contrast, commercial banking is characterized by low volume, high customization, and high value transactions. And from an operational perspective, commercial banking uses higher value e[...]

  At HCL’s recent adviser and analyst event, #HCLBigLeap, I spoke with their banking industry executives about HCL’s strategy and activities designed to drive application maintenance and modernization services, and specifically about the key ISV partnerships that are enabling this. Background HCL was founded in 1976, and had a strong focus on manufacturing during its [...]

  Over the last five years, banks have been focusing their operational investments and executive mindshare on compliance, and in this time the cost of compliance activities has increased ten-fold. Also, in the last three years, the focus for compliance has been on customer profile activities that utilize reference data – e.g. Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML),[...]

NelsonHall attended the IBM Forum for Financial Services event in New York this past week, which focused on how bank customers are using IBM’s cognitive offerings. IBM has been investing heavily in services and technologies to enable deeper insight into financial institutions’ customers, starting 18 months ago with the development of Watson-based analytic assets. IBM’s the[...]

I attended Cognizant’s biannual analyst event in New York recently and spoke with their head of blockchain consulting. Cognizant has been investing heavily in services and technologies to enable the digital enterprise, including the blockchain technology stack. Eighteen months ago, Cognizant began developing blockchain assets based on various open source frameworks, and today they have o[...]

The media, and vendor marketing departments, have described RPA as a compelling technology for enterprises, based on its perceived ability to reduce operational cost. However, our review of case studies and BPS vendor offerings reveals a more complex set of drivers at work. Here I take a brief look at examples of the application of RPA in the banking sector. The banking industry has been ch[...]

  Here I take a look at how platform-based business process services (BPS) is yielding benefits for retail banks – specifically, delivering manual processes with greater efficiency, increasing automation, and delivering transaction products at scale. Delivering manual processes with greater efficiency Retail banking (RB) BPS is a large-scale, mature business with high adop[...]

At its recent Confluence client and stakeholder event, Infosys outlined its overall business strategy, based on the belief that BPO as it is delivered currently will be replaced by business process as a service (BPaaS) delivered on virtual stacks within a few years. Here I take a quick look at the Infosys vision and its application within financial services. Infosys described the transition to [...]

In the retail banking BPS market assessment I am currently undertaking, several key trends are emerging regarding which processes are being outsourced and why. Banks do not outsource all processes at once, and selecting the highest priority processes to outsource can be reduced to an analysis of two key dimensions: Margin: where profit margins are highest, usually with new processes or produ[...]

Financial institutions are seeking to deepen their operational capital in order to drive down cost of operations, increasing fixed cost and reducing variable cost (non-linear cost reduction). Here we look at two examples of how institutions are achieving this by partnering with third party operations vendors. Capital Markets Client with Broadridge In this example, Broadridge is providing a p[...]