The banking industry cycle has turned towards austerity for 2019 as indicated by recent events, including: Labor cost cutting: State Street announced 1.5k executive layoffs, and Santander will close 20% of its bank branches in the U.K. Both are part of long-term trends incurred by automation and the shift to omni-channel delivery   M&A activity: Cost pressure is driv[...]

  The challenge of rising healthcare costs in the U.S. has been obvious for decades. Or has it? Various interventions have been attempted, but health costs as a percentage of GDP are forecast to continue to climb. National U.S. healthcare expenditure as a percentage of GDP has risen from 17.2% in 2011 to 17.9% in 2017. In February 2018, the U.S. CMS Office of the Actuary estimated t[...]

The primary purpose of Wipro'ss Digital & Big Bets Analyst Relations day in Boston at the end of November was to outline its digital and automation strategy, including presenting some startup partners Wipro is working with (and has invested in through Wipro Ventures) to help drive forward this strategy. Wipro believes its key technology bets will enable it to help clients reinvent thei[...]

  In 2016, Atos was awarded a 13-year life & pensions BPO contract by Aegon, taking over from the incumbent Serco and involving the transfer of ~300 people in a center in Lytham St Annes. The services provided by Atos within this contract include managing end-to-end operations, from initial underwriting through to claims processing, for Aegon's individual protection offering[...]

The recent NIIT Tech (NIIT Technologies Ltd.) analyst conference was an opportunity for the current administration, most of whose executives have been at the company less than 18 months, to discuss their strong business success. FY19 (ending March 31, 2019) has so far added 19 new clients. The BFS industry sector added four large clients. NIIT Tech has accelerated its growth under CEO Sudhi[...]

I recently attended the Infosys Confluence event in California to look at the vendor’s activities in banking & financial services (BFS). Here are the key takeaways. Under its current CEO, Infosys has taken a new software-agnostic approach to digital business, which is yielding results. Infosys has proprietary platforms, including Finacle, for core banking and NIA for AI. However, [...]

This is the latest in a recent series of blogs on open banking, which is likely to become the biggest driver of change in the banking industry since double-entry bookkeeping swept the industry in Genoa during the 1300s. I recently talked with Virtusa’s xLabs, a digital innovation hub within Virtusa, about their approach to open banking and what their roadmap is for the future. Open In[...]

  I recently attended the TCS Business 4.0 conference in Boston to understand TCS’ latest developments in the BFSI sector. Here are the key takeaways. BFSI represented 32.5% of TCS’ Q2 2018 revenues and generated $7.7bn in revenue over the latest twelve months. TCS reports 20% of BFSI revenues are derived from its digital offerings, with BFSI clients adopting digital tec[...]

  Since the financial crisis, regulators have been tightening the KYC processes banks are required to undertake. Enhanced KYC requirements have been applied across many regulations, including MiFID, PSD2, and ultimate beneficial ownership requirements (U.S. CDD Rule). And, as compliance requirements have increased, banks have spent increasing amounts of time and resources on addressing[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended Mphasis’ analyst summit in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Key takeaways are that the company is now focusing on digital and cognitive services applied to legacy systems, and on geographic expansion, specifically in North America and continental Europe. Mphasis is leveraging its industry experience, including BFSI, which accounts for ~75% of revenues, to[...]

  I recently attended the Avaloq Community Conference in Zurich, where the key themes were cloud delivery, operations ecosystem, open banking platforms, and combined ITS/BPS engagements. Here I take a quick look at Avaloq’s strategy in each of these areas. Cloud delivery Avaloq recently announced a partnership with IBM for a global private cloud delivery capability for cust[...]

  I recently attended the Capgemini Financial Services Industry Conference in London, also meeting up with several banks to learn more about where they are spending their digital services money, what they are looking for from digital projects, and where the market is headed. Bank demand for digital services has grown and matured over the past few years. In 2015 and 2016, IT services[...]

  The banking industry is undergoing significant legal and operational transformation, including the move towards open banking, a regulatory requirement whereby banks open their platforms to third-parties for them to transact business with the banks’ customers and suppliers. Here I look at how Infosys, with its Finacle suite of solutions, is working with banks to support the tran[...]

  Shared Services Centers (SSCs) have made progress in the initial application of RPA, gained some experience in its application, and are typically now looking to scale their use of RPA widely across their operations. However, although organizations have often undertaken some level of standardization and simplification of their processes to facilitate RPA adoption, one stumbling block [...]

  Loan originations are a key part of the digital revolution taking place in the banking industry, and banks have two key goals when they replace their legacy loan origination systems (LOS): Enabling omnichannel delivery of LOS services Reducing time to fulfillment (turnaround time). Long-established banks are adopting digital solutions to achieve these goals with the expe[...]

  I am currently working on a global market assessment of digital banking services, and my interviews with banks and service providers alike are showing that technology implementation is less of a concern than how digital services will change the way customers and banks interact. As customer/bank interactions change, the industry’s competitive forces will change, and this will ev[...]

  Open banking is the concept that banks will open their platforms to third-parties for them to transact business with the banks’ customers and suppliers, and is required by regulations which are coming into force. Many advocates believe that this will spur innovation in financial services and create new business models. Here I look at the open banking landscape and at initial ef[...]

  In this article, I look at Mphasis’ Blockchain initiatives and at the segments they are focusing on for further development with their financial services clients. Mphasis began its Blockchain initiatives in 2016, initiating internal experiments and POCs to understand the technology and how it can be applied to business challenges. Mphasis is working with a global financial s[...]

  NelsonHall recently hosted a webinar in which U.K.’s National Savings and Investments (NS&I) discussed how it has transformed its customer experience and operations delivery, and in so doing increased the value of assets managed by 245% and annual contact volumes by 660% while reducing delivery staff by 76% and cost of operations, calculated on a per assets under management[...]

In this blog, I look at Capgemini’s Blockchain initiatives and what segments they are focusing on for further development with their financial services clients. Initially, Blockchain engagements were focused on:  Using POCs to develop an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of distributed ledger technology (DLT) Developing business use cases, trying POCs to d[...]