How to adapt your business to an ever changing world

Financial institutions cannot wait to reshape or completely rebuild their platforms because it could quite simply be too late. But what about using the digital transformation journey to enrich functional capabilities and at the same time transform legacy systems and significantly reduce running costs?

We are facing a global challenge. Together we will be able to build a new society that will define the 21st century. In this publication we look at 19 areas that financial institutions need to consider in order to remain competitive while also making a positive contribution towards society as a whole.

Although widely acknowledged as a potentially game-changing capability, the adoption of cloud technology for High Performance Computing (HPC) is still very much in its infancy. However, based on our hands-on experience of this when working with a Tier 1 financial institution, we firmly believe the cloud has the ability to enable firms to rethink the way they approach the complex technological challenges to perform enormous grid calculations.

DevOps has received a great deal of media attention and has become mainstream in many industries. However, some banks and financial services companies that are grappling with monolithic technology stacks are still unaware of the benefits of DevOps or how to adopt the new methods.

Open banking and cloud technology are very closely entwined. Their growth will inevitably progress in parallel. Banks that wish to capitalise on the open banking opportunity will adopt strategic cloud solutions and as open banking develops, cloud technology will move from useful to essential.

This survey was conducted to examine the current usage and future trends in how High Performance Computing (HPC) is being used within financial services organisations. Firstly, the areas in which HPC is being used were examined. The only surprise here was that there were a couple of cases of it being used in the Treasury area within banks.

Financial institutions become an integral part of the working capital management at the heart of an industrial ecosystem: this is called embedded banking. Potential participants include industrial companies, banks and financial service providers, suppliers and end customers.

In the digital age, data emerges as the universal currency. New technologies have reduced the cost of storing massive volumes of data so many organisations have embraced the ‘data lake’ as a definitive data management solution. Organisations across all sectors ingest, store, manage and distribute unprecedented volumes of data, but the reasons for doing so are not always clear.

Technology in banking has moved out of the back office and is now central to all that a bank does. In the digital age, technology enables a good customer experience that is fundamental to banking success. But many banks find themselves hamstrung by the technology that made them successful. Why?

So far, many banks seem to have treated open banking as a regulatory compliance issue. While it is that, viewing open banking as simply a regulatory issue greatly underestimates its enormous potential to transform the industry and to change how banks interact with customers and third parties. Although it is still early days, open banking will certainly redefine what it means to be a bank. In this paper, we revisit the fundamental drivers of open banking and suggest ways that banks can seize this unique commercial opportunity.

This Point of View is the product of fruitful conversations with financial services executives around the globe. It explores the nature and scope of cognitive banking: how it fits in with the other pillars of exponential banking, and why banks should welcome this new dawn in technology. It demonstrates that the benefits of cognitive banking are limited only by the imagination and that early adopters will be well rewarded.

This Point of View explores some of the key commercial issues surrounding open banking. It offers a practical summary of the views we have developed over an extensive period of working with many of the world’s leading banks. After a brief overview of the drivers of open banking, the paper examines how banks can monetise this opportunity, including API pricing and revenue options.

The last few years have seen huge investment into software that brings distributed ledger technology (DLT) to financial markets, but it remains unclear as to whether it will be fit for purpose. In particular, it remains to be demonstrated that DLT is capable of working in intensely demanding, high throughput environments, suitable for financial markets.

GFT has been working with cloud technology since its inception. As part of our thought leadership programme we recently sponsored an independent survey of investment banks conducted by HTF Research. The aim was to understand how they are using cloud and their plans for doing so in future.

An immersive and hyperpersonalised financial experience This point of view explores the notion of augmented banking, one of the four pillars of exponential banking as envisioned by GFT. Through insightful analysis and illustrative case studies, you will learn how to leverage exponential technologies to create an immersive banking experience that goes far beyond today’s digital interactions.

Any bank considering a cloud migration must have an inventory of its applications and future road maps of these going forward. In both of these areas banks seem well prepared. This report considers what is happening in the capital markets area, regarding banks’ current cloud strategy and their planned usage of public cloud in the future.

For decades, mainframes have been the cornerstones of IT infrastructure in many businesses, with banks at the forefront. However, the demand for increased flexibility to cope with ever-changing business processes and the need to reduce recurrent costs are forcing companies to move towards open platforms.

Banking in 2020: exponential technologies in financial Services – This point of view outlines GFT's vision for leveraging exponential technologies as key enablers of growth for financial services organisations through the generation of new business models.

For the third consecutive year, GFT has surveyed decision-makers in banking to gain insights into the trends behind digitalisation in the financial services industry. Based on 285 interviews, the survey offers valuable insights into the status of digital transformation, Bank as a Platform and artificial intelligence across eight countries - Brazil, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. Download the report and the infographic for a complete picture of the survey results.

Many banks have been working hard to ensure they are in a position to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) – a regulation driven by the EU with a global reach. GDPR has a broad scope for protecting personal data, with far-reaching consequences in terms of 'extra-territoriality'. It has every potential to hit firms with punitive fines for breaching guidelines – up to 4% of annual revenues.

Open banking is here to stay and fast becoming a reality for financial services organisations that want to stay competitive in terms of innovation and customer offerings. But what are the practical aspects that organisations need to consider as they prepare to seize the opportunities presented to them in the open banking environment?

This paper reviews the development of supply chain management in the automotive industry over the past several years, analyse the challenges faced by the automotive industry with particular reference to the financial supply chain, and suggest ways in which the financial services industry can be a more effective partner to the automotive industry.

Information technology is increasingly pervading every aspect of our lives, promising fantastic opportunities for improving our health, wealth, knowledge and the way we live together.

Banks now operate in a fiercely competitive market, with revenue streams being challenged by new customer behaviours, low interest rates and the entry of new agile market participants. To survive, banks are evolving to keep their customers engaged, continually pursuing the most efficient and effective solutions.

By adopting a Bank as a Platform approach, banks will be able to shift to a business model that is based on service offerings as a means of delivering greater and more sustainable economic value. This vision calls for a modular and open IT architecture that can coexist with core banking systems while ensuring seamless data exchange between the bank and third parties.

The recent analysis by GFT looked at key markets in Europe, Asia and America with regards to the market penetration of mobile payment technologies and their adoption by users. Significant opportunities are offered to banks as providers of future oriented payment technologies, yet the challenges are also immense.

The economic and regulatory environment of recent years has placed a powerful downward pressure on any real investment within banks and other financial services firms, whilst at the same time diverting a significant portion of remaining resources to coping with rapidly evolving regulatory requirements.

Digitalisation within the financial industry will affect how banks will actually implement new digital processes within their own branches. Doing so will turn bank branches into important pieces of the overall jigsaw puzzle of future banking.

If there was some expectation that 2016 would be the year in which the regulatory tide facing banks would begin to recede, many will be left disappointed. A sense of regulatory fatigue within the industry is understandable, but if anyone thought that the regulatory challenge would become easier in 2016, then they are sadly mistaken.

GFT specialists look into the recent Blockchain phenomenon and provide a blueprint for initiating business change.

As the trading world continues down the path of electronification, innovators turn to gamers for solutions, exploring Augmented Reality as a technology that can reduce information overload and improve real-time decision-making.

Against the backdrop of the ever-increasing importance of collateral from a trading, risk and capital management perspective, holistic management of collateral is rapidly becoming a necessity.

It is a well-known phenomenon that back office operations have historically lacked major investment. So why is it now the flavour of the month?