The FStech Podcast

With the coronavirus crisis prompting a vast shift from in-branch operations to online, like most industries, financial services has needed to adapt.

Open Banking is also disrupting the market, with both banks and FinTechs looking to boost customer experience by harnessing data to offer improved services and a wider range of products.

Both the shift to online and the disruption of Open banking have created opportunities for the market to grow and adapt, but they've also generated a whole host of new privacy and security concerns. With the backdrop of the pandemic to boot, there's never been a more challenging time for the market.

Traditional banks not only have to address changing consumer habits and a greater reliance on digital banking, but also face growing competition from alternative banks, including digital-only platforms.

Financial sector firms are already struggling to keep up with the ever-changing performance demands of applications, and the current pressure on firms to improve time to market and scale rapidly is only adding to these concerns.

Automation and object storage can complement core banking applications, which can be difficult migrate to the cloud, and enable better monitoring, management, and optimisation of infrastructure.

Though banks are currently awash with unstructured data, only a small percentage of this data contains the insights needed to ensure compliance and storage performance. The metadata which object storage enables can allow IT teams to isolate performance bottlenecks and spot compliance issues wherever they may be located, in way traditional file or block storage can't do.

Automation can give banks the rapid provisioning on-premise that they have accustomed to in the cloud, while the introduction of AI enabled self-healing in data centre can help them scale the systems rapidly without issue.

To delve deeper into these topics, FStech was joined by, Tom Christensen, Chief Technology Officer for Northern EMEA at Hitachi Vantara.

Rising awareness of data privacy among consumers has made secure identity verification essential for building customer trust, proving to them that the data fuelling a wide range of apps and digital services is securely stored and out of the reach of unscrupulous cyber criminals.

However, for financial services firms, this secure exchange of data goes both ways: companies need to be sure that highly sensitive financial, transaction and customer data is only accessible to those who have express permission to see it, or risk data breaches that could have a devastating effect on customer trust and, ultimately, the company's bottom line.

And while retail banking surges ahead with data sharing initiatives such as Open Banking, other sectors of the financial services industry, including insurance, asset management and investment banking risk being left behind, with many enterprises stuck with legacy technology and convoluted, complex sign-in procedures which create confusion for the end user.

To delve deeper into these topics, FStech was joined by Ben King, Chief Security Officer for the EMEA regions at Okta, the digital identity and access management platform.

With rising demand for digital services and real-time decision making in financial services, there is a renewed focus on properly governed data as the fuel for this transformation - and the world of investment and asset management is racing to catch up. Following the arrival of on-demand culture, with employees able to call up the data, movie or product they need at the touch of button on Amazon or Netflix, the days of trawling through an Excel database or legacy systems for the information they need is no longer an option.

As a result, asset management leaders need to ensure that teams and stakeholders have access to the information they need for fast, efficient, and transparent decision-making in real time while ensuring that data governance and compliance controls are front of mind.

This podcast features a discussion with Dean McIntyre, Director of Strategy at FactSet, an integrated data and software solutions provider, to explore the issues surrounding data governance and how asset managers can empower staff from front to back office, reduce operating costs and ease compliance in an on-demand culture.

As the pandemic moves employees as well as their devices and their workloads into remote locations, the cyber criminals have followed them there. As a result, a company is only as safe as the weakest link in its network, and must identify it before the attackers can exploit it.

And as surging demand for online financial services accelerates digitisation across the industry, it is not just users, applications and emails that need to be safeguarded: data workloads, operating systems and back of house infrastructure are also vulnerable to the changing threat landscape, be it nation state attack mercenary hackers or insider threat.

This podcast features a discussion of these challenges with Zeki Turedi, regional Chief Technology Officer at Crowdstrike, a cloud-based security platform provider, who helps us to explore the options for financial services institutions as they adapt their security transformation strategy to the rapidly evolving threat landscape.

The Coronavirus recession has made banks increasingly reluctant to provide accounts and finance to small businesses - apparently down to the higher regulatory burden and a perception that SMEs are riskier and more resource intensive.

This presents a huge problem for legitimate businesses, as it disrupts their business continuity and growth. A multitude of FinTech firms are seizing the opportunity to serve this sizeable chunk of the UK economy, and some of them are looking to coax traditional banks back in via partnerships and collaboration.

This podcast features a conversation with Søren Skov Mogensen, Chief Growth Officer at Banking Circle, which has conducted research into the subject.

As financial services organisations are forced to accelerate digital transformation initiatives to meet consumer and colleague demand for mobile and remote access to apps and sites, many are moving their tech and culture to DevOps.

Development and operations have never been more crucial to the running of a modern financial firm, then throw in the rising need for cyber security protections and you've got DevSecOps.

Cloud-based, agile and often automated with forms of artificial intelligence, this business methodology is increasingly separating the winners from the losers in sectors like banking and payments.

This podcast features a discussion on these topics with a couple of experts from a software security company Checkmarx - Director of Product Management Yael Hoze and UK Sales Engineering Team Leader Andrew Thompson.

Financial services firms are increasingly striving to hit that sweet spot between security and usability, giving a seamless user experience (UX) while protecting them from harm online.

As we all spend more time at home during the pandemic - rather than in the office or visiting a bank branch - it becomes all the more important to get the amount of friction right. More than anything, it's crucial to acquire and keep customers, who are looking for quick sign-up, easy everyday authentication and confidence in how safe their money is.

This podcast features a conversation with Paul Jones from HID Global's new Consumer Authentication business unit. We discuss what goes on behind the shiny mobile app, how banks sometimes trump governments in terms of identity trust and what's next in Know Your Customer tech.

Now more than ever, having a clear view of customer information can be the difference between success and failure in the modern financial services marketplace.

With teams and technology stretched to the limit, not to mention company budgets, it's crucial to make the most of the data assets you already have. But even for less legacy-burdened firms, this can be distributed across a variety of different systems, servers, databases and departments.

Working out a way to gather this data together in one place can revolutionise product development and customer service, giving easy access to key insights and freeing up IT staff to concentrate on more valuable tasks.

To talk about these challenges and opportunities, this podcast features a chat with some experts in the space: Alex James, EMEA Senior Director for Customer Success at data specialist Fivetran, and Hendrik Brakmann, Director of Data Science and Analytics at business banking challenger Tide.

The Coronavirus crisis has accelerated the rate of digital transformation within financial services, with companies from incumbent institutions to disruptive startups making sure they have the tech infrastructure to cope with increased online demand.

But one often overlooked factor in these strategic shifts is the role of Internet Exchange Points, with more and more FinTech firms looking to take control of their connections, rather than use third parties.

So this podcast features a discussion with Nurani Nimpuno, Head of Global Engagement at the London Internet Exchange (LINX) - one of the longest serving global link points - to talk through the trends and assess the future of this sector.