1788: HCL Technologies - Digital Change in Financial Services - a podcast by Neil C. Hughes

Rahul Singh from HCL Technologies discusses how covid has accelerated digital change in the financial services industry. Banks had to adjust in 2020, as the use of cash dropped off a cliff and mobile banking grew by 13%, while branches were forced to close overnight rapidly. As lockdowns were imposed without warning, some of the world’s oldest, most cautious organizations were suddenly forced to change – do nothing, and they would surely see a mass customer exodus. 

HCL manages IT for Deutsche Bank, ING, and Metro Bank, so I asked Rahul to share his unique insight into the industry challenges faced during the pandemic. He also explores the three significant digital shifts that have occurred within the financial services industry:

1. An explosion in remote working. With existing ways of working, and the obvious privacy and security concerns, banking has been slow to adopt remote working compared to other industries. However, the pandemic made it a necessity – banks had to find a way to enable people to work remotely without damaging customer experience.

Rahul talks about the key areas they had to address: removing entrenched rule-based processes to accommodate remote workers and providing the required collaborative tools for employees to complete the necessary functions. He also discusses how recent announcements from HSBC and JP Morgan indicate this isn’t a temporary shift but a permanent change.

2. Pushing mobile payments to the top of the agenda. Paying through your phone was once a nice to have, but that all changed when the pandemic meant we had to avoid unnecessary physical contact – so chip and pin card machine use dropped. This meant banks had to speed up mobile payment roll-out and ensure mobile apps were reliable – they couldn’t risk letting customers down at the crucial moment. Imagine queuing for half an hour to enter a supermarket, loading your trolley with essentials, and then finding payment doesn’t go through when you arrive at the checkout…

Rahul says this meant banks’ contactless and phone payment options had to mature quicker than initially planned. IT projects had to be re-prioritized, with future-facing alternative payment projects now pushed front and center. The sudden introduction of new rules and directives, such as the FCA’s decision to increase the single transaction contactless payment limit to £100, also means banks must be prepared to quickly update payment systems based on directives at short notice.

3. Adopting public cloud computing at breakneck speed. Financial services have been one of the slowest industries to adopt the public cloud, with regulations and restrictions keeping FS out of the fast lane. However, banks had to dramatically speed things up when they suddenly had large remote workforces to support, requiring computing beyond the current capabilities of many existing on-premise or private cloud systems.

This led to many flexing their financial muscles to make a move and play catch-up. Rahul can explain how this move unfolded, with critical workloads shifting to the likes of Amazon and Google. He says that every bank around the world will emerge from the pandemic with a public cloud strategy, meaning it will become increasingly prevalent across the industry.

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