Anaptyss recently organized a webinar on the highly anticipated topic “A Pragmatic Approach to the Digitally Transforming Banking and Financial Services Operations.” The live session hosted some of the most respected industry experts on its panel, offering penetrating insights into intricate facets of digital transformation in the context of financial services.
It explored several in-depth, thought-provoking perspectives on the foundational questions that underpin digital transformation in today’s context, particularly stressing the themes of “pragmatism” and “operations”. This blog shares some of the main takeaways and highlights from the webinar.
The Essence of Digital Transformation – A Pragmatic Outlook
A germinal thought at the onset was about probing the fundamental meaning of digital transformation, which boiled down to a succinct definition –
Digital transformation is essentially about being in a state of perpetual agility than finishing a technology project. It is about constant change and evolution to serve the customers’ needs.
Further, it is not possible to generalize digital transformation for financial services considering that it is a confluence of banking, mortgage, fintech, cards, deposits, commercial loans, and other deeply intertwined areas such as services, products, experience, etc.
And therefore, a pragmatic approach should explore the meaning of transformation in the context of specific application areas and business outcomes. It ought to help business leaders realize the value of digital transformation.
Insights from ERM, Mortgage, Compliance, & More
This section enumerates the insights drawn from prominent BFS verticals and functional areas such as Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), mortgage, and compliance. The webinar, led by a series of specific, thematically related topics, explored the meaning of digital transformation in specific business/functional settings.
Here’s a list of some of the topics with takeaways based on the insights shared by the panelists.
1. The best areas for digital transformation across the ERM landscape Takeaways:
- The risk program must be designed to fit the bank and not vice versa.
- The program design should consider the bank’s risk profile and complexity.
- The risk staff should design appropriate oversight, and stress testing should be done by all banks.
- The optimum fit for the customer to digitize starts with credit, small business lending, deposits, fair lending, Fintech, and so forth.
- Risk is an “overhead” so the focus needs to be on minimizing the overhead impact with technology.
- None of the GRC tools in the market is optimum, and vast improvements can be done with digitization
2. Meaning of digital transformation in the mortgage lending space amid the escalating interest rates and slowing demand Takeaways:
- Digital transformation’s core objective is to shorten the amount of time for approvals
- The pandemic had already necessitated the end-to-end processes to become agile and responsive
- Most consumers have adopted the digital processes and expect a great experience
- Third-party relationships and collaborative capabilities were stress tested during the pandemic
- Now is the time to refine the digital concepts to improve the customer journey
- Irrespective of the volume or demand, delivering remarkable customer experiences is the purpose of transformation
3. The perspective of a Chief BSA/AML officer in transforming their group’s ability to deliver world-class compliance Takeaways:
- Digital transformation boils down to efficiency and effectiveness for anti-money laundering efforts
- It can allow better automated processes, more robust transaction monitoring, and higher alert-to-SAR hit rates by leveraging big data and advanced analytics
- It offers the advantage of more resources that must be leveraged to address financial crime issues and enable superior customer experiences
- Allows to provide more accurate reports and information for law enforcement and protect the communities being served
- Digital transformation is the common denominator that can help attract more customers and engage and retain them by reducing friction across the journey stages and touchpoints.
Translating Vision into Execution – Bridging the Gap
A critical point of failure for digital transformation is the translation of the vision and direction into execution. In this regard, the webinar shared insights into the vital factors for the successful execution of transformation projects.
Firstly, banks and financial institutions need to plan realistically in terms of the scope of work and timelines which are achievable and result in the expected outcomes. Generally, organizations tend to be over-ambitious, attempting to do more upfront while unable to execute effectively. They need to consider that the execution capacity and capability for transformation projects are based on the existing staff and resources who also need to operate the routine operations in tandem.
Culture is another critical factor for supporting change management, agility, and technology adoption, which are inseparable parts of digital transformation. An organization looking to change its culture should consider a span of 3-5 years before ultimately changing it. And one of the markers of the right culture besides being supportive of change and agility is that the people do the right things without supervision.
The webinar explored several other crucial aspects of digital transformation in the BFS industry, offering objective and realistic inputs.
