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“A.I. cannot work in a black box,” says Nick Smith at SmartStream Technologies, in this FTF Exchange podcast. “It needs to be able to provide transparency …”

Managed services clients and prospects of SmartStream Technologies are showing lots of interest in A.I.-based technologies and how they can impact securities operations, but there is a caveat to that evolving demand for A.I., says Nick Smith, executive vice president, managed services, SmartStream Technologies, in this latest edition of the FTF Exchange podcast series.

“A.I. cannot work in a black box and nobody knows what it’s doing,” Smith says via the podcast. “It needs to be able to provide transparency to both the senior managers and the risk managers, and the regulators exactly what activity the A.I.’s been performing and what was the logic used for developing those activities. That’s where we start looking at supervised and unsupervised A.I.”

In fact, the transparency will show how SmartStream has incorporated what it learned five years ago when the securities operations provider began “working with Tier 1 banks, household name banks, and partnering with them, in terms of understanding their use cases, and the challenges that they face and also having access to their data,” Smith explains. “That enabled us to invest and develop the tools that we have today … What we’re really doing is providing the agile tools for an evolving demand that we’re seeing.”

In the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards competition for this year, SmartStream Managed Services won Best Outsourcing Provider, and SmartStream Air won Best Cutting-Edge Solution.

During the podcast, Smith also covers:

• How A.I. and machine learning are major concerns in the capital markets industry now;
• How machine learning is impacting the managed services offerings from SmartStream;
• The role that A.I. and machine learning play in the SmartStream Air offering;
• How A.I. and machine learning can be applied to the burden of securities data reconciliation; and
• The security concerns about A.I. among managed services clients.

Corporate actions are characterised by complex processes agreed upon by the company. It entails impacts on the company's financial structure as well as its stakeholders. Whilst corporates are still reliant on painstakingly manual processes, the compressing pressure brought by the frequent changing of event details, multiple intermediaries, and upcoming deadlines calls for a transition to a digitally optimised approach.

SmartStream offers automated solutions for corporate action processes. These solutions address the challenges and risks associated with inefficient practices through optimising operations control and real-time processing of event cycles, all, therefore, enhancing data management.

Joining the talk is Adam Cottingham, Global Head of Asset Servicing, SmartStream 

Corporate actions are characterised by complex processes agreed upon by the company. It entails impacts on the company's financial structure as well as its stakeholders. Whilst corporates are still reliant on painstakingly manual processes, the compressing pressure brought by the frequent changing of event details, multiple intermediaries, and upcoming deadlines calls for a transition to a digitally optimised approach.

SmartStream offers automated solutions for corporate action processes. These solutions address the challenges and risks associated with inefficient practices through optimising operations control and real-time processing of event cycles, all, therefore, enhancing data management.

Joining the talk is Adam Cottingham, Global Head of Asset Servicing, SmartStream 

In the partnership with Asian Banking & Finance, Smartstream and AsiaPay talk about the different ways digital wallets have changed Asia’s payments landscape.

Some of the key points discussed in this podcast:

• Learn about the pros and cons of the increase use of digital wallets in consumer payments
• Identify solutions for pain points of banks trying to engage customers preferences for contactless payments
• Find out what role payment services firms play in the rising adoption of digital wallets

Payment platforms such as AliPay and WeChat are gaining more users in Asia. As the region embraces technology faster than its counterparts, the demand for mobile payment solutions increases at a faster rate. But like all good things, there are actions that banks must take to keep up with the changing landscape in the industry.

Asia Banking and Finance Magazine spoke with Roland Brandli, Strategic Product Manager for Digital Payments of SmartStream, to get the latest update on the banking payment landscape. Brandli said that the adoption of contactless payments, particularly for mobile apps, which has become the biggest change in recent years, made this possible. “The adoption of contactless payments is huge. Before, someone would go to an ATM, take money out of it, and you would buy 20 coffees with that cash. That was one transaction for a bank. Now, he pays 20 times with a contactless payment device, which means it's 20 transactions for the bank,” Brandli said. From this development, the banking industry today revolves around an ‘instant’ world—one where clients expect to have transactions completed faster with mobile solutions.

Financial institutions that still use legacy technology will continue to fall behind if they do nothing to upgrade their operations. The main focus for FIs should be reducing collateral management credit and operational risks via an end-to-end, automated solution.

Some of the key points discussed in this podcast in partnership with ISDA and Asian Banking and Finance:

• Find out how to reduce the cost of ownership with cloud technology
• Figure out how best to utilise efficiencies through collateral optimisation and straight-through processing
• Discuss the importance of adopting the latest collateral features through APIs, and machine learning

In this episode of the What the Fintech? podcast, Jethro MacDonald, product manager, artificial intelligence and machine learning at SmartStream joins Fintech Futures.

For the main discussion, MacDonald and FinTech Futures reporter Alex Pugh discuss the differing applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) within fintechs and banks, the ways in which SmartStream leverages AI and ML to improve transaction reporting, how the space will evolve in the future post-Covid and the role of partnerships in innovation.

Listen to the full Podcast here...

In this podcast titled AI Technology in Banking, SmartStream has partnered with Asian Banking and Finance to talk about the findings of a whitepaper published by Smartstream: ‘Data rich, but information poor: Why is it critical for banks to employ AI-enabled technology?’ 

Data volumes have grown hugely in recent years. Rapid change is clearly needed if the industry is to unlock the riches of its data and turn what is currently a problem into an opportunity. AI has immense potential for the financial sector, particularly in servicing back-office operational processes. 

 Vincent Kilcoyne, EVP Global Product Management, SmartStream, joined the podcast to talk about AI-enabled technology, SmartStream’s Innovation Lab, and how banks are currently adopting these AI-enabled solutions.

The dual challenges of increased volumes and complexity mean event lifecycle validation tools need to evolve, to take advantage of AI and machine learning

In Part 3 of this podcast, hosted by the Asian Banking and Finance, Vikram Gupta, ED and Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank is joined by Andreas Burner, Chief Innovation Officer and Robin Hasson, Senior Product Manager, SmartStream.

 Some of the key topics discussed:

• The use of AI and machine learning to replace manual operations
• How predictions are made to establish confidence though a user interface
• The biggest lessons learnt with the adoption of AI and machine learning in the data quality space 

The dual challenges of increased volumes and complexity mean event lifecycle validation tools need to evolve, to take advantage of AI and machine learning

In Part 2 of this podcast, hosted by the Asian Banking and Finance, Vikram Gupta, ED and Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank is joined by Andreas Burner, Chief Innovation Officer and Robin Hasson, Senior Product Manager, SmartStream.

Some of the key topics discussed:

• Recent pilots conducted by Smartstream’s Innovation Lab to fast-track and prove high value AI business case
• How financial institutions measure implementation success?
• How long does it take to get AI technology in production and how reliable is the technology?
• The adoption of AI and machine learning