As consumers adapt their habits and increasingly transact online, demand for digital financial services has risen exponentially.

As a result, financial institutions (FIs) are under pressure to provide smooth onboarding processes, featuring the most up to date and easy to use technology combined with security and compliance - or risk losing the customer at the first hurdle.

To delve further into these challenges, FStech partnered with HID Global to conduct a survey to shed some light on how financial institutions in UK and around Europe view these challenges.

In this podcast, Dean Stevenson, a consultant and secure identity specialist at HID Global, explores the results of this recent survey and how FIs are keeping customers safe while reducing friction.

As the workforce prepares for the long-term shift to hybrid working, financial services organisations are considering how the established operating model should change to maintain both security and agility. But hybrid working comes with its own challenges. Whether it's personal devices accessing corporate data and applications or cybercriminals exploiting vulnerabilities opened up by remote access - the risk is vast.

Enhancing IT security seems an obvious route to address the challenge, but how do FS organisations meet the demand for agility without increasing complexity? And what measures should they consider to make hybrid working secure without reducing employee productivity?

Additionally, how are companies integrating secure access into wider strategic priorities as they scale?

To answer these questions and explore possible solutions, FStech was joined by Helen Patton, Advisory CISO and Richard Archdeacon, also Advisory CISO at Duo, a secure access specialist (now part of Cisco).

The past year has brought unprecedented disruption for financial services providers and their customers.

For many, the pandemic-induced risk landscape has created new challenges for FSIs including balancing disruption detection, digesting information from all over the globe, and managing a co-ordinated response. From local COVID-19 lockdown mandates affecting physical branches to cyber criminals targeting financial services providers, there are devastating consequences for an organisation's reputation and bottom line when crisis response is inadequate.

As a result, FSIs have been under pressure to ensure they have 24/7 visibility of emerging risks, so that they can respond swiftly to protect their customers and employees while ensuring operational resilience across their physical and digital presence around the world.

To tackle this challenge, forward looking FSIs are exploring the potential of real-time alerting platforms, which use AI to process billions of data units daily from thousands of public information sources such as social media, blogs, information sensors, and the deep web, to alert customers to emerging and sudden threats as they occur.

To delve further into these challenges for retailers and possible solutions FStech was joined by Helen Sutton, Senior Vice President of EMEA and APAC sales at Dataminr.

Banks are under immense pressure to undergo rapid transformation and roll out innovative new products and services at the same pace as their competitors, while at the same time ensuring the high-quality customer experiences which consumers now expect.

Attempting large scale digital transformation in a short period of time always carries a degree of risk when it comes to operational continuity, with some FSIs left counting the devastating cost of IT failures and data breaches to their reputation, compliance and their bottomline.

This situation has only been made more difficult by the fact that many FSIs are simultaneously attempting to undergo migrations to the cloud, while also carrying years of accumulated legacy infrastructure at a time when employees are working from home, which can make visibility across all their networks and applications an almost impossible task.

All these factors combine to mean that when a system fails or is brought down by malicious actors, the process of establishing root cause and ensuring full recovery can be excruciatingly slow, with the impact on customer trust reverberating well beyond the weekly news cycle.

To delve further into these topics as well as some possible solutions to these dilemmas, FStech was joined by Phillip Gervasi, Senior Technical Evangelist, at Riverbed.

The shift to remote working has triggered an explosion of digital communications challenges for financial services firms - and a corresponding surge in the data privacy risk. As employees send millions of emails and messages across digital collaboration platforms, financial institutions are in a race against time to protect their systems, employees and reputation from the devastating consequences of a data breach.

However, while much of the data privacy focus for FSIs centres around securing end points, the shift to cloud and boosting cyber security measures, research shows that over 90 per cent of data leaks are caused by human error - with emails sent to the wrong recipient one of the most common ways a company can expose itself to risk of GDPR non-compliance and cybercrime. And as the regulators step up scrutiny - and dish out eye watering fines for breaches - many FSIs are fighting an uphill battle to improve employee awareness of the potential costs of making a mistake.

To combat this challenge, many firms are turning to automated data privacy platforms, which use AI and machine learning to scan emails and digital communications for compliance before they are sent with real-time warnings, which can prevent sensitive information from ending up in the wrong hands.

To delve further into these challenges and possible solutions in digital communications risk, FStech was joined by Rick Goud, Chief Information Officer at secure communications provider Zivver.

Open Banking is already proving to be a significant disruptor in the current financial services market. It's providing a new way to elevate customer experience by harnessing data to improve services and offer a much wider range of products.

But what if Open Banking could be taken one step further? Imagine an ecosystem that goes beyond the standard format and instead reaches customers outside of but related to financial services, enabling banks and financial institutions to offer an even wider range of products.

Alexandra Leonards spoke to Hans Tesselaar, executive director for the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), about the opportunity to expand and adapt Open Banking.

With just months to go until 6AMLD is set to be fully enforced in June, organisations are scrambling to adapt to an environment that assigns additional liability for breaches to senior managers and threatens heavier sanctions across the board, with organisations all too aware of the financial and reputational risk should the regulator come knocking.

But with the anti-money laundering risk landscape changing rapidly, as new threats emerge from digital payments and increased cyber security risk, organisations are being forced to re-evaluate their underlying technology infrastructures as well as improve employee awareness of their responsibilities with regards to 6AMLD.

These teams have only a few months to tackle the multitude of challenges surrounding data management, data visibility and data siloes, without compromising user experience in the process.

To delve further into these topics as well as some possible solutions, FStech was joined by William Brown, Head of Global Product Management at Bottomline Technologies to take a look at how organisations are implementing the digital transformation and transparency measures needed to be ready on time for the deadline.

There have been easier times for customer onboarding. The money laundering industry is currently estimated at being worth around two trillion worldwide, every year, and the challenges posed to FSIs by the introduction of the EU's 6th AML directive, Brexit, and the pandemic are well established.

But these challenges are amplified by the fact many organisations are still unaware of where the data truly lies within their organisation. Many are weighed down by siloed legacy IT which holds data from different business areas in systems that are unable to "talk" to each other. And many organisations simply don't have the right data needed to onboard customers risk-free in the first place.

Faced with these challenges, FSIs are tasked with minimizing the risk of cyber criminals and fraudsters - whose techniques are rapidly evolving - from infiltrating their systems without alienating customers with onerous and time consuming onboarding processes and sending them straight into the hands of competitors.

To combat this problem, some are exploring the potential of AI and analytics to provide a more complete view of customer data, which helps to strike the fine balance between giving customers what they need when they need it and minimizing risk for the FSI. At the same time, emerging technologies such as biometrics offer organisations new strategies to keep one step ahead of the criminals.

To delve further into these topics as well as some possible solutions to these dilemmas, FStech was joined by Adam McLaughlin, Global Head of AML Financial Crime Strategy and Marketing, NICE Actimize.

FSIs continue to spend ever-increasing billions on protecting their data, as high-profile threats such as ransomware fill the headlines, and highly complex supply chain attacks like Solarwinds shock the world. However, taking advantage of how organisations move digital assets remains an evergreen attack vector for cybercriminals.

While insider threat might be associated with vengeful employees or with sales team members trying to steal valuable leads, simple employee negligence while moving digital assets presents an open door for cybercriminals looking to infiltrate secure institutions operating in strict regulatory environments. Confidential data transferred from one system to another also represents an opportunity for interception, and unauthorised access can also occur when data is stored at rest for download on a file transfer server.

In addition, legislation such as GDPR, PCI DSS and ISO 20022 are muddying the waters, and pose the threat of steep fines for businesses who fail to foster an awareness of where their files are being transferred and who has access. But in today's remote working reality, file transfers represent an integral part of part of many people's daily workflows and organisations are also tasked with delivering transfer protocols which are secure but not so onerous as to reduce compliance.

To delve further into these topics as well as some possible solutions to this digital dilemma, FStech was joined by Sean Devaney, vice president at CGI and David Martin, Partner Manager at Progress Software.

As the demand for digital services skyrocketed during the pandemic, financial services providers had to move faster than ever before to provide continuity for their customers across digital channels and platforms. And while retail banks make headway against the digital challengers, many sectors, notably wealth management, investment and asset management are struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

As a result, digital advocates working in traditional wealth management firms are making the urgent business case for digital transformation to prepare for the future. However, many are experiencing pushback from senior leaders concerned that digital transformation goes against the grain of a rich heritage of highly personalised service and relationships extending back many generations, as well as highlighting the cost and security implications of moving customer data onto new technology at a time of disruption.

But as customers from millennials to more mature investors become more mobile, wealth management needs to evolve quickly to survive while retaining the tailored customer experiences and seamless service that set traditional financial services providers apart.

To delve further into these topics as well as some possible solutions to this digital dilemma, FStech was joined by George Baily, marketing lead for wealth at Crealogix.