Today’s emerging technologies will not merely speed up transactions and reduce their costs through automation. They will also drive a significant restructuring of the entire financial sector, alter the balance of power between established players and newcomers, and change the way ordinary people manage and spend their money.
Three technologies will play particularly influential roles in this transformation.
Artificial intelligence advances
According to Deltec Bank, “The revolution brought by AI will enable financial services organizations to better predict their customer needs and offer unprecedented levels of personalization than ever before possible.”
Most sectors, including financial services, have recognized that according to industry leaders and experts, Artificial Intelligence business applications are becoming mainstream and that they help accelerate digital transformation initiatives.
AI’s capability to predict outcomes with a high degree of accuracy opens up new possibilities in many areas. In the loan’s arena, for example.
Business applications with data-driven intelligence platforms powered by advanced machine learning are helping organizations reduce delinquency rates, boost recoveries, and improve operational efficiencies.
Fortune 500 banks have saved millions of dollars by intelligently automating the reconciliation of fraudulent transactions using data-processing bots and conversational AI technology.
As AI evolves, the potential to open new paths to economic development is huge and growing rapidly. Traditionally, consumers looking for a loan are evaluated on their previous credit history, captured by companies such as Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and others.
With AI algorithms, the capability to predict creditworthiness through alternative credit scoring can potentially expand the marketplace to cover over 45 million people in the US alone who have no credit score.
Blockchain
“Blockchain has emerged as a potential alternative model for payments, clearance and settlement transactions and numerous other financial functions”, said Deltec Bank. The details of blockchain technology are somewhat complex, but the benefits for financial markets are very clear:
- Unhackability: While there is no system that cannot be hacked, blockchain comes very close.
- Transparency: Every participant in a blockchain network has real-time visibility into to every transaction, which means parties who don’t necessarily trust one another can feel safe doing business.
- Disintermediation: There is no middleman in a blockchain network, and the elimination of middlemen poses a real challenge to many established businesses.
- Security: Every transaction is cryptographically protected.
- Automation: Blockchain has another important feature called smart contracts. Smart contracts essentially take action when certain conditions are met. This feature can be used to automate processes such as insurance claims processing, digital order fulfillment and much, much more.
Though blockchain is a promising technology, widespread commercial acceptance could be 3-5 years away according to heavyweight experts in the WTO. Nonetheless, some early adopters have already trialed and begun to put this groundbreaking technology into place.
Examples include:
- Infosys Finacle has formed a blockchain-based trade network
- India Trade Connect, that is being used by a group of banks to run a blockchain-based trade finance-processing solution.
The power of blockchain will enable increased automation and transparency while helping efficiently manage trade and supply chain risks.
Cloud computing
As cloud technology evolves and becomes more sophisticated, its role in the financial sector also evolves, from cutting costs for systems like HR, and procurement, right through to a business enabler, it that can bring flexibility and innovation to traditional on-premise systems.
DBS Bank, the largest bank in South-East Asia, is a case in point. The bank has moved almost 50% of its compute workload to the cloud.
The migration of many important and fundamental systems to the cloud is, in part, driven by the huge technology giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Alibaba.
All of these companies plus many others have developed cloud structures which include a database, infrastructure, and other application offerings.
Experts in the industry say, the performance and availability service level agreements or SLA’s for these cloud-based offerings are now up to speed and are rivaling those available from more traditional on-premise systems.
Security, which is, of course, essential in building and maintaining customer trust and loyalty is running at equal measure, if not better than their on-premise counterparts.
To finish…
If Forbes are saying that this year AI has moved into the mainstream then I am almost automatically going to believe it. But would banks be adopting this technology so quickly otherwise? It may not be because of FinTech, more perhaps as an attempt to keep up with other industry giants.
Disclaimer: The author of this text, Robin Trehan, has an Undergraduate degree in economics, Masters in international business and finance and MBA in electronic business. Trehan is Senior VP at Deltec International www.deltecbank.com. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this text are solely the views of the author, and not necessarily reflecting the views of Deltec International Group, its subsidiaries and/or employees.
About Deltec Bank
Headquartered in The Bahamas, Deltec is an independent financial services group that delivers bespoke solutions to meet clients’ unique needs. The Deltec group of companies includes Deltec Bank & Trust Limited, Deltec Fund Services Limited, and Deltec Investment Advisers Limited, Deltec Securities Ltd. and Long Cay Captive Management.
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