How Banking Leaders Use Digital Transformation to Drive Agility

In banking, leaders across the business must take a collaborative approach toward digital transformation by starting wherever they are and meeting the front office, where customers interact, in the middle.

What does the Channel Tunnel have to do with digital transformation? The massive construction project is an analogy for what’s happening in banking, said Jerry Silva, research director of IDC Financial Insights, during the “How Finance Leaders Elevate the Role of the Back Office” webinar. 

Building one of the longest tunnels in the world required engineering teams to start at both the ends—England and France—and connect in the middle. Likewise in banking, leaders across the business—finance, risk management, security, IT—must take a collaborative approach toward digital transformation by starting wherever they are and meeting the front office, where customers interact, in the proverbial middle.  

“Digital transformation is not a technology strategy, it’s a business strategy,” Silva said in the webinar. “From that perspective, the institution needs to absolutely commit to transformation.”

In the webinar, Silva offers insight on driving digital transformation in an industry that has been going through a “perfect storm.” The 2008 economic meltdown led to a drop in consumer trust and loyalty, as well as increased banking regulations worldwide. At the same time, improved mobile devices and increased bandwidth spurred more consumers to expect services to be delivered on mobile and other digital platforms. These conditions fueled the rise of fintech and other point solutions, he explained, and banks struggled to keep up.

Even though banks want to deliver customer experiences similar to their fintech competitors, improvements to the front office can only go as far as the support from their back office technology, Silva said.

“I’ve been in banking for 35 years, and I’ve never seen such an exciting time,” Silva said.

Silva shared additional insights on:

  • Growing areas of IT investment in the next year
  • Cloud platform adoption trends
  • The future of connected banking 
  • Success criteria for achieving digital transformation

Watch the webinar recording for more insights, which also includes a panel discussion with Silva and Chris Artemenko, strategic advisor, financial services industry at Workday.

More Reading