Can you give us an overview of your role?

At Intellect, I serve in the capacity of Chief Technology Officer, Intellect and IBM Partnership and have recently taken up the role as CTO for Intellect’s Insurance product’s in Americas and that involves using AI and Big Data technologies to deliver products for the Insurance industry. I am passionate about technology and have been architecting and delivering solutions for Consumer and Corporate Banking and delivering to various banks across the globe. My core expertise is solution architecture and I am really excited about the possibilities that AI, machine learning and Big Data bring to the world  of banking , insurance and financial services.

What prompted you to participate in BIAN?

Intellect joined Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN), the non-profit organisation that promotes and provides a common framework for banking industry, to help revolutionise the API-driven Contextual Banking Technology Framework.

Banks around the world are looking to simplify domain architectures and application integration as a means to reduce costs and deliver more competitive products.

With digital considered a ‘given’ in this race, banks are looking beyond to provide their customers the ultimate experience by always being a step ahead of their expectations. The future of the sector is open banking and APIs, which helps banks to pursue new distribution channels, while also finding new ways to improve the customer’s contextual banking experience.

Over the years, Intellect has invested strategically and built meticulously to achieve a unique, future-proof tech stack which is contextual, microservices-based, API-first and cloud-ready, powered by AI and ML. Supported by a revolutionary integration technology iTurmeric, the first-of-its kind enterprise integration, cloud- native platform based on API first architecture, it enables banks to progressively modernise while ensuring business continuity without the risk of rip and replacement.

The collaboration with BIAN extends Intellect’s commitment and contributions to global standards, by defining Open banking and API-based contextual banking technology framework to re-imagine banking architecture.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing the banking industry in the next 5 years?

Banking and financial services is perhaps the only segment that is most impacted by multi-dimensional changes of — regulation, product innovation, changes in economic and market conditions, multitude of technologies, data privacy requirements and serving multiple generations of end customers. With regulatory and competitive pressures stressing the revenues and incomes, banks and financial institutions are constantly looking for innovation to drive revenues and income.

Banks must become more nimble. They must develop (near real-time) a view of their client such that services can be offered in anticipation of need or interest. Doing this requires banks to break-glass. Old norms aren’t going to work much longer. The “siloed”structure banks have historically operated from (Product, Customer, etc) must be flipped on its side. Client Financial Journey is far more important, and that cuts across silos. But most banks and banking systems are not organized to facilitate such views.

This realisation has opened the door for the emergence of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), which can bring together the power of customer insight, revenue streams and FinTech innovations, while also improving customer experience. Open APIs will enable banking organisations to gather actionable data from various internal and external sources, including buying habits, financial goals, risk tolerance and even social interactions to provide contextual solutions.

Open banking and API-based contextual banking technology is the need of the hour.

How would you sum up the future of banking in one word?

The Future of Banking is API-Driven Contextual Banking.