Fast-paced technological reforms are reshaping the financial services ecosystem globally. Technology integration in banking has exposed a whole new spectrum of capabilities that can be leveraged to improve performances by gaining an intricate understanding of operations. Banks are adopting a more customer-centric strategy built upon the foundation of intelligent technology architectures.
Similarly, Middle East too is at the cusp of innovation-led growth with the banking industry playing a pivotal role in accelerating digital transformation across the region. ITC Infotech, a leading global technology services and solutions provider, helps clients co-innovate as they prepare themselves to transform from a digitised bank to a platform of services leveraging open banking capabilities.
We sit down with Vishal Kumar, President and Regional Head, Middle East, Africa and APAC, ITC Infotech, to learn more about how ITC Infotech is well positioned to be the technology partner of choice for clients in the Middle East.
How is ITC Infotech delivering business-friendly solutions and helping clients overcome challenges and accelerate growth?
ITC Infotech has harnessed its deep-domain expertise and capabilities to deliver best-in-class technology consulting solutions that help clients overcome challenges and accelerate growth.
We enable clients to effortlessly achieve digital transformation and create agile financial services operations.
We enable clients to effortlessly achieve digital transformation and create agile financial services operations. We, along with our banking client stakeholders, have jointly addressed challenges faced by them that need technology interventions in identified areas by seamlessly:
• Being a technology partner that has differentiated offerings
• Building proof of concepts, leveraging design thinking, and bringing our service line capabilities
• Helping banking clients identify value by implementing solutions incrementally within their environment
• Supporting in business case creation to facilitate clients seeking internal budget approvals
• Finally, as a technology partner we bring in our mature system integration, implementation, data migration and advanced technology services enabling clients derive value
In your opinion, how will you contribute to the digital development of the financial and banking operations in the Middle East?
ITC Infotech has played a pivotal role in helping clients in their digital transformation journey. We aim to continue delivering business-friendly solutions to our clients while providing them with the flexibility that is critical in today’s environment. Some of the areas of our focus and engagements with banks in the Middle East include:
• Modernising both core banking and front-end applications that facilitate rendering of a differentiated level of experience to the end customers of financial institutions
• Orchestration of open banking capabilities
• Automation of manual tasks via RPA and BPM tools that not only digitise banking operations but also enhance colleague experience
• Simplification of adherence to risk and compliance needs for a bank by way of effective management of monitoring and computation tools and data and analytics enablement to underlying processes
• Innovation by way of machine learning, blockchain, virtual reality technologies addressing needs of hyperpersonalisation, digital currencies creation, metaverse experimentation
• Driving adoption of sustainable banking practices and compliance with ESG mandates
What are the technological trends you are witnessing in the Middle East and how can you be a catalyst in helping customers across sectors to stay ahead of the curve?
Most banks in the region are already working towards strengthening their core technology foundations to cater to evolving customer expectations and a challenging macro-economic environment. We see innovation in the areas of cards and payments technology, renewed focus on risk and compliance especially around information security and fraud mitigation, emergence of crypto banking in the region and finally a push towards ESG integration within the bank’s ecosystem taking centre stage across the Middle East.
From a technology perspective, automation, cloud, machine learning concepts, API management and data-enabled services are being extensively leveraged by the banking community. While banks may be at different levels of maturity across regions, they are all looking at a trusted partner to bring in an ecosystem of vendors/suppliers and create value by investing in relationships. The end goal remains strengthening of the bank’s technology foundations for anticipated changes. ITC Infotech has a clear focus towards the Middle East, existing long-standing client footprint and willingness to invest in growing our relationships further. We are well prepared to be the technology partner of choice for our clients.
What are the future plans to stay relevant in the Middle East and play a pivotal role in the clients’ digital transformation journey?
Middle East is at the cusp of innovation-led growth with the banking industry playing a pivotal role in accelerating digital transformation across the region. Being a partner of choice to leading digital champion banks across the GCC, we are in a unique position to co-innovate with our clients as they prepare themselves to transform from a digitised bank to a platform of services leveraging open banking capabilities. ITC Infotech continues to stay committed in bringing its best-in-class digital capabilities and global experiences to help our clients in the region differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
