{"id":101852,"date":"2019-10-15T13:46:25","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T13:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=434851"},"modified":"2019-10-15T13:46:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-15T13:46:25","slug":"technology-is-transforming-the-banking-industry-and-youre-at-the-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/10\/15\/technology-is-transforming-the-banking-industry-and-youre-at-the-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology is transforming the banking industry, and you\u2019re at the center"},"content":{"rendered":"

The drive for transformation
<\/strong>\u201cChange is happening, and there\u2019s a sense of urgency,\u201d says Patrice Amann, Regional Business Lead, Worldwide Financial Services, Microsoft. \u201cThis industry is under huge pressure, with challengers coming in through several angles. There needs to be a balance between the need for speed, agility and meeting customer expectations on one hand, while meeting regulatory requirements on the other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leading finance influencer Chris Skinner echoes this need for change, describing how banks must evolve with their customers in mind, if they wish to remain competitive. \u201cThe law of survival isn\u2019t about being the strongest or the fittest. It\u2019s about being the most adaptable to change \u2013 but are you adapting to the right thing?\u201d<\/p>\n

While banks are undergoing using technology to transform, some, in Skinner\u2019s words, are lead by bankers, while others are lead by bankers that truly understand technology. In essence, introducing technology simply for the sake of it, isn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n

This is echoed by David Scola, Acting Chief Executive \u2013 Americas and UK at SWIFT: \u201cTech is an enabler, not an endpoint. Lots of people enter the space with a hammer, and view everything as a nail. Innovating for the sake of innovation, simply to say you\u2019ve used it, is not a game plan that we follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think of some of the banking apps you use. If you want to check if an expected payment has been deposited into your account, or whether or not money has been taken out, you need to check yourself. \u201cTraditional banking isn\u2019t very good,\u201d Skinner elaborates. \u201cThey provide you with historical transactions, but no useful information.\u201d<\/p>\n

Customer-centric banking means that customers get real-time information such as sending instant notifications for deposits or withdrawals. They also include the location of payments to help detect fraudulent use, as well as offering a statistical breakdown of where your money is spent to help you budget. This is the extra customer-focused features that entice new customers to become loyal ones.<\/p>\n

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Driven by the cloud
<\/strong>The cloud is a vital foundation of this transformation process, and new players in the banking industry are building their services around the cloud from day one. But what about more established, traditional financial institutions?<\/p>\n

\u201cA few years ago, we didn\u2019t see as much of a willingness to adopt the cloud from banks,\u201d Amann states. \u201cWhen we started this journey with the first-movers, discussions with regulators were more complicated, as it was a new space. Microsoft\u2019s cloud services meet all of the required regulations, and as a result, banks are now proactively coming to us, asking for help in unlocking their innovative cloud capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using services such as the Azure cloud not only ensures that banks are compliant with regulations, but it also offers the ability to scale resources up and down, depending on demand, providing a more reliable service to users than a traditional on-premises solution. This is supported by Nigel Walder, COO, ClearBank, who states that \u201cWe couldn\u2019t predict the speed at which our customers would come on board. Thanks to the cloud, it takes us minutes to scale up resources, before scaling down again. This means significant improvements in efficiency, and a reduction in costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Automatic updates which include Microsoft\u2019s stringent privacy protection and cybersecurity services, also allow banks to focus more time on delivering the best service to their customers, without worrying about keeping up to date with regulations and security practices themselves.<\/p>\n

One such example is SWIFT, the industry standard and world leader in secure financial messaging services. The company chose Azure services to ensure that SWIFT Cloud Connect achieves the resilience, security, and compliance demands required in the financial services industry. Microsoft is the first cloud provider working with SWIFT to build public cloud connectivity, and has performed its testing with SWIFT by leveraging the Azure Logic Apps service to process payment transactions \u2013 a process which now takes weeks, instead of months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the impact to the end user clients, the typical banking client, is that they get more transparency into their payments,\u201d says David Scola, Acting Chief Executive, SWIFT. \u201cThey get greater visibility on what\u2019s happening with them, with the fees that they\u2019re being charged and ultimately with the speed at which those payments are being processed, but also ultimately that they\u2019re as safe and secure as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

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