They say there is no better mechanism than good examples to promote continuous improvement, generate learning, adapt to cultural changes, and consolidate new behaviors. If these examples, in addition, are given by the leaders of a segment, the positive effect is enhanced.
The book ''Digital Platforms in Financial Institutions in Latin America'', presented by NTT DATA, compiles the experiences related to architectures and platforms in the banking industry in the region. It focuses on the lessons learned and the digital transformation processes undergone by some of the most important players in the segment to take them as a model to promote a better quality of service in different countries, increased financial inclusion through easier access for citizens, and as a consequence, an improvement in people's daily lives, given that we are all involved in financial transactions on a daily basis.
The book reveals some key conclusions that give us a glimpse of the future of the banking industry. In an increasingly competitive environment, considering both internal and from the emergence of traditionally non-financial players, with growing regulatory pressure and increasingly informed and demanding customers, digital architectures and platforms - with the Cloud playing a key role - are becoming increasingly important to accelerate business.
Indeed, more than 70% of leading financial institutions have a unified platform capable of launching new digital products and services, avoiding time-consuming and technical or technological complexities. Thus, they achieve higher levels of time to market, quality, security, resilience, and efficiency in each project, which translates into a better customer experience and significant competitive advantages. The DevOps methodology proposes a new way of working for IT areas, more dynamic, agile, collaborative, and productive while challenging the status quo on how things have been done historically.
Modernization, Resilience and Customer Experience
The old legacy systems, a barrier to innovation still quite common in these types of companies, are no longer in place today.
The use cases show improved results as banking institutions adopt open and agile architectures and platforms. At the same time, they deploy automation plans to increase efficiency and sustainability strategies to improve their reputation, as customers and investors demand more responsible behavior.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has demonstrated that resilience is a key driver of value for organizations looking to stay competitive in a fast-paced world. Another challenge is ensuring product launch speed does not jeopardize operational stability, security, and compliance. Therefore, methodologies such as SRE (Site Reliability Engineering), which allows continuous and safe improvement adapted to agile models, or chaos engineering, through the implementation of premeditated chaos to ensure the system remains responsive, have come to the forefront.
In this growth path, the customer is truly at the center. Financial institutions are creating 100% digital experiences to allow access to any product or service with just a few clicks, with all the security provided by biometric onboarding (i.e., the customer can access it through his unique biological traits) and in just a few minutes, at any time and from anywhere through an app.
New, more collaborative business models are also emerging, such as Open Banking, which encourages the different players to exchange information to offer a better service to their users, and Banking as a Service, which shows the opportunity to compose new products and services with banking capabilities provided as a service. And, of course, the whole crypto universe: more than 50% of the participants in this book have already launched a strategy in the field of virtual assets.
The challenges are many and varied. The future is digital. This book, adding the two previous premises, works as a GPS of success. It shows only the roads already traveled by the leading financial institutions in the region and which lead to the right destination.