At the SAP Financial Services Forum in London last month, the topic of digital transformation dominated the agenda. From legacy banks with lumbering IT systems to nimble fintech startups, the consensus was clear: The long-standing status quo is simply unsustainable in an increasingly digital economy
Over the past few years the financial industry has started to reinvent how it operates. Organisations are changing the way they serve their potential and existing customers, while maintaining the high levels of compliance and security that their customers and regulators require. The technologies available today mean that financial services organisations aren’t constrained in the way they once were. They can now access secure and compliant technology, on-demand, in the cloud which is helping them to create new ways to bring value to customers. But not all financial institutions have been able to take advantage of these technologies in the same way as newer entrants to the market have
Cloud-based technologies are spreading rapidly through the business world: the research firm IDC expects the cloud software market to be worth more than $100 billion by 2018, implying compound annual growth of more than 21%, roughly five times faster than traditional packaged software. It is clear that cloud computing is on course to become an […]
Leeds Building Society is to revamp its customer engagement tools through a ten-year deal with HP Enterprise Services, which will encompass a number of independent software vendors working on different parts of the business. The deal builds on the earlier deal between the two firms in 2013, which focused on the building society’s core banking platform.
Financial services firms have always faced market volatility, but new challenges are forcing most to rethink their traditional operating models in favor of outsourcing. The expanded use of outsourcing models will help improve revenue and create new business opportunities
The Object Management Group has formed a new working group to study issues of documenting and controlling data across distributed cloud environments, a big inhibitor of cloud for those with strict data sovereignty requirements such as banks and financial services firms.
Cloud computing is becoming more prevalent throughout the financial sector but many firms say they are less than halfway to having a firm cloud strategy in place, with controls and security remaining primary concerns.
As many more tech companies begin offering bank-like services, mainstream banks are searching for ways they can fight back
Britain’s banks have reliably serviced the banking needs of millions of customers for more than a hundred years; providing a safe place to store hard-earned cash, mortgages to buy dream homes, and great interest rates to accumulate savings
BT has formally today the availability of a personalised video capability as part of its Cloud Contact portfolio of services following pilot project with two UK retail banks. The system, which allows businesses to email individually tailored videos to millions of customers by integrating relevant data with video templates, was developed by Israeli marketing technology specialist Idomoo.
For banks, a race to remain relevant is on. In the past few weeks, Lloyds Banking Group has announced its intention to double-down on digital banking, closing branches and cutting costs. In the US, BBVA Compass announced that its agreement with startup Dwolla to offer real-time payment facilities to customers makes it the first mainstream bank to open its technology platform to digital developers like Dwolla
Banks and other financial institutions are finally spending more on growing new products in areas such as mobile and data analytics rather than maintaining legacy systems, according to a new report by Capgemini.
Argentina’s Banco Macro will use the Mambu cloud as the basis for a new business unit, which will offer loans to micro-enterprises and small businesses. The aim is to provide a lifeline to areas that have historically lacked access to financial services.
As SunGard’s first ever chief technology officer, Steven Silberstein knows a thing or two about financial technology. In a past life, he was global head of prime brokerage at Lehman Brothers. He later became chief information officer at Chi-X Global, before joining SunGard in a newly-created position two years ago.
Australian bank Westpac has signed up IBM to assist a major digital banking push in New Zealand. The bank plans to use IBM’s private cloud technology to build mobile services and social media presence.
The European Commission wants to bring down the barriers to cloud computing in a move that promises to revolutionise the way transaction banks can serve clients.
Unlike manufacturing companies, which run their operations on a single predominant ERP system supported by a few auxiliary solutions, banks have added layer upon layer of technology, ending up with an unmanageable snarl of systems and applications. Just to put things in perspective, it is estimated that on average global banks have more than 5,000 applications.
Australian broker Macquarie Futures has begun using a cloud-based reconciliation service from Gresham Computing and Amazon Web Services, which the broker says will help it to make its North American derivatives business more efficient.
Firms looking to adopt cloud-based services should consider the security and data privacy implications associated with moving critical systems into the cloud, and not let vendors drive their technology strategies for them, according to Bank of England CIO John Finch.
Combining development and operational deployment of software into a more integrated cycle can greatly improve time to market and improve efficiencies giving “10 times faster software driven innovation”, delegates at the annual SifmaTech trading systems conference and exhibition in New York were told.
Across the financial services sector, the question is now less about where cloud technology is being used, and more about where it isn’t used. Where do financial institutions draw the line when it comes to deciding whether to keep a process or IT-related service in-house or outsource it to specialists such as Amazon Web Services, SAP and many others?
Despite the well-known benefits of cloud computing, 75% of banks in Europe are using outdated core banking systems. Why are some banking institutions slower to adopt cloud than others?
Bank of America is working with Facebook’s Open Compute project on a radical revamp of its systems. David Reilly, head of its Technology Infrastructure unit, tells Banking Technology why Software Defined.Infrastructures are the way ahead.
A new mobile voice recording service is being developed by UK tech company Voxsmart, which it claims is the first to automatically capture every type of communication on a mobile device so that it can be used for trading compliance purposes, including the FCA in the UK and Dodd-Frank in the US.
Credit Agricole CIB has signed an outsourcing deal with Genpact, in which the technology firm will help the bank by providing its IT development and maintenance, production support, infrastructure management and user support in the US.
India’s first women-only bank has launched in Mumbai and six other Indian cities, offering a service aimed at increasing financial inclusion for women in one of the world’s most populous countries.
Three independent UK building societies – Ipswich, Loughborough and Dudley – have agreed to use a new software as a service solution from Unisys to handle their mortgage and savings accounts. The deal represents the latest move in a series of steps by the UK’s building society sector to adopt cloud platforms.
Start-up financial analysis company Kenshō is planning to become the first professional analytics platform built completely on Nasdaq OMX’s FinQloud cloud computing platform, which is powered by Amazon Web Services.
Portugal’s Caixa Geral de Depositos bank is planning to grow its trading business in Brazil, using a hosted service provided by SunGard.
Cloud computing company SAP has signed a deal with Citibank for a major new cloud platform that promises to simplify corporate to bank connectivity for some of the world’s largest banks, Banking Technology has learned.
US banking and payments technology specialist FIS has launched a cloud-based real time core banking utility aimed at mid-tier banks in central and eastern Europe, which it says will help client to roll out new products faster and cheaper than ever before.
Leeds Building Society has joined the shared services alliance founded by HP Enterprise Services and the Yorkshire Building Society in September, in a deal that will see the society move its core application for mortgages and savings to the cloud. The deal also marks a growing recognition among the UK’s mid-tier institutions of the power of cloud to help them move with the times.
Basic security mechanisms in payment and banking systems are poorly applied and are out-gunned by the resources available to cybercriminals, a session at the Money2020 event in Las Vegas was told.
Social media may be a dirty word to most banks’ CFOs. But when 28 hours of a 40-hour week are lost to emails and searching for information, there has to be a better way, according to Tony Zingale, chief executive at Jive Software, which has just launched in Europe.
US based Pinnacle Bank has chosen to outsource its processing to Fiserv as part of its Precision bank platform, in a move the bank says will help it to scale and roll out new products including mobile banking, bill payment and checking. Based in the town of Elberton in the US state of Georgia, Pinnacle […]
US banks Clare Bank and Farmers Exchange Bank have chosen to install cloud-hosted core banking services from vendor Temenos, in a deal that the banks say will help them reduce costs and roll out products to customers more easily.
De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Netherlands’ national banking regulator, has cleared Amazon Web Services for use in the country’s financial sector, clarifying key supervision criteria for Dutch organisations looking to move infrastructure or services to the AWS cloud.
US consulting, market data and technology firm Jordan & Jordan has chosen to launch its execution compliance and surveillance service on Nasdaq OMX FinQloud, the cloud computing platform built for financial services and powered by Amazon Web Services.
Banks should not be afraid to go further and faster in their adoption of cloud computing, says Mohamed Gamil, chief operating officer at Islamic Bank of Britain.
German exchange group Deutsche Börse has announced what it claims to be the world’s first vendor-neutral marketplace for cloud services.
