Soaking in the present to form a better future
SPONSORED INSIGHTS
Herbert Schild, financial services industry lead at Appian, is responsible for the company’s financial services strategy across the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), as well as globally for private equity firms. FinTech Futures decided to catch-up with Schild about ongoing developments in the marketplace.
FinTech Futures decided to catch-up with Schild about ongoing developments in the marketplace.
Tasked with helping drive growth, managing risk and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses through low code automation in their business processes, Schild has a management pedigree that includes previous stops at Santander Bank, PwC and Ernst & Young.
And with an MBA from Suffolk University, Boston; a BA in neuropsychology from Northeastern University, Boston; as well as having studied European law at the University of Vienna, his academic credentials can best be described as ‘eclectic’. Yet also highly relevant for his role at Appian.
For Schild, looking to the future also means recognising the present and while agility and time-to-market may be pre-requisites for the bank of the future, he notes the current market is still feeling the after effects of the financial crisis, eleven years on.
But he adds that fintechs are shaping the way incumbents look at their future, observing that they are learning lessons in agility and responsiveness.
The key for Schild, going forward, though, is establishing trust and improving the customer experience, noting that: “As consumers demand a more personalised service, technology will support a bank’s ability to deliver.”
To support this, cloud, low-code, artificial intelligence, etc. should be major components in a bank’s service arsenal. It will also allow for competitive differentiation.
As he puts it: “The more processes that are automated and streamlined on the back end, the more customers will enjoy a seamless experience that caters to their specific needs.”
“The young, nimble fintechs are able to respond to customer expectations, changing business strategies and evolving regulations very quickly. Established financial institutions will need technology partnerships that support this agile approach,” says Schild.
For future business processes he adds: “IT will offer the flexibility financial institutions need, to make it align with their business processes, not the other way around, as legacy systems forced us to do.”
“Usability like simple drag-and-drop functionality allows folks without any IT background to bring their ideas to life. And agility comes in during implementation: deploy in days, not weeks or months,” he says.
“In addition, business processes need to be integrating with existing systems so there’s no duplicate data or redundancy. Technology is what drives financial institutions to better understand their customers and thus improve business processes in the pursuit of serving them where they are,
“This means the expansion of low code automation from the first line of defence (LOD) towards the second and third LOD,” says Schild.
Schild is dedicated to ensuring that Appian’s low code supports seamless governance, risk and compliance programmes by enabling functions from workflow management for risk and controls into a unified view for compliance departments to better monitor risks and escalations.
