Senior business and technology executives from leading institutions in Vietnam assessed the next steps in their digital transformation journeys as they redefine operational processes and service delivery.
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Uyen of Asia Commercial Bank, Kalidas Ghose of FE Credit, Bryan Carroll of TNEX and Rajashekara Maiya of Infosys Finacle shared their views on the priorities in digital transformation.
Uyen noted “transformation” is a journey that comes from inside out. The challenge is in finding innovative ways of designing user-centric solutions to deliver a digital customer experience. Ghose, on the other hand, pointed out that adopting a horizontal business process management opens up new opportunities and facilitates customer journey. Carroll asserted that institutions must move to the cloud to transform and deliver the services that customers want.
The four speakers also tackled digital optimisation versus transformation, the deployment of private clouds versus public clouds, leveraging partnerships, and building ecosystems based on customer experience and loyalty.
The following key points were discussed:
The following is the edited transcript of the interview:
Mobasher Zein Kazmi (MZK): Welcome to our RadioFinance virtual dialogue. We have assembled a distinguished group of senior executives from business and technology across leading institutions in Vietnam to assess the next step in the digital transformation journey and evolution of various banks in the country, and how it is redefining operational processes and service delivery. I am Mobasher Zein Kazmi, head of research at The Asian Banker. I'm happy that we have a multifaceted virtual dialogue that we'll look at the topic for both business, product and technology perspectives.
Even before the pandemic, Vietnamese institutions have been digitising at a great speed to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex, competitive environment. Now, digitally native organisations in the country are using their direct to customer channels to deliver highly personalised experiences at scale. Platform companies are also bringing more value to customers by focusing on addressing customer pain points and also unbundling traditional value chains to forge new business models. The lower barriers of entry in market combined with easy access to capital are creating new competitors that play by different rules. Resultingly, banks have significantly enhanced their base of digitalisation and these efforts are manifested through upgraded frontend digital delivery and optimised processes with changes to backend operations, infrastructure, technology, and underlying business models. In this session, we will discuss how Vietnam's most progressive banks have designed their digital strategy to better position themselves in the coming decade.
Some of the topics that we'll be discussing today include how Vietnamese banks are driving digital first operating models by leveraging the power of cloud to deploy new applications or migrate existing business’ critical ones. How banks are leveraging new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), application programming interface (APIs), robotic process automation (RPA) and more to respond to the crisis, enable operational resilience, deliver personalised engagement, and accelerate innovation led growth. Finally, we'll also be looking at what's next in terms of digitising core businesses in terms of lending, deposits, and payments.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Dr. Nguyen Quoc Hung, the Secretary General of the Vietnam Banks Association. Dr. Hung has been appointed as Secretary General of the Vietnam Banks Association for term seven and he has more than 35 years of experience in the Vietnamese banking industry. He's also a former general director of the Department of Credit for Economic Sectors at the State Bank of Vietnam and has held many management positions in different banking and financial institutions in the country.
Let's commence with the introduction of our guests. First, we have with us Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Uyen, executive vice president, Digital Banking and Data Analytics at Asia Commercial Bank. Also with us is Brian Carroll, the chief executive officer (CEO) of TNEX Digital Bank. Joining him as well is Kalidas Ghose, the vice chairman and CEO of FE Credit, the largest consumer finance company in Vietnam and a subsidiary of VPBank. Wrapping up the panel is Rajashekara Maiya, who's the vice president, global head for business consulting at Infosys Finacle. I'd like to welcome everyone to the session.
For the Vietnamese banking sector, looking at the events of 2021, which has completely reset the expectations of customers, it's really accelerated several existing trends that were already in place in in the industry. Government measures to protect citizens and the rapid changes we're seeing in consumer behaviour has changed the operating environment for market players large or small worldwide.
As digital transformation deepens, the management of banks is expected to transition towards a leaner, smarter and more efficient business model. So digital transformation has that potential to allow Vietnamese banks to capture a much larger amount of data from an increasingly number of sources and to also better utilise this data to serve both decision making and the customers essentially. It will also help and enable the country's banks to reduce costs while also increasing operational efficiency and revenue and this will be generated, of course through innovation in products, services, and distribution channels. More importantly, with the right implementation, customer experience can be greatly enhanced. So underlying all of this is the power of modern technology that has the potential to unlock unlimited possibilities. Vietnamese banks are making continuous efforts in terms of digital transformation and in hopes of gaining a competitive advantage and capturing a larger share of the market. To this end, we do see that a majority of Vietnamese banks have either implemented or are in the process of enhancing their digital transformation strategies.
Looking at that first topic, in terms of how Vietnamese banks are driving digital first operating models, leveraging the power of the cloud in terms of deploying new applications and or migrating existing business critical ones, I do believe that in general, to keep up with the changing times and to stay ahead of the potential disruptions in terms of the business models that banks have used, especially as they relate to front office operations that needs to be adjusted. So modernising your applications is one element that can help facilitate the development of omni channel products and deliver better customer engagement. So I’ll start off with Nhu Uyen. What has been the experience at ACB? Can you share with us any obstacles or challenges that you've faced or perhaps tangible success stories at ACB?
Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Uyen (NNNU): When we talk about our experience in keeping up with changing times and facing potential disruptions, our transformation has very much been a journey that comes from inside out. A lot of challenges are coming from transforming from inside out. The way we look at transformation is that it's not only about technology but also about innovative ways of designing user-centred solutions. A lot of disruptions doesn't just come from technology, but it's the way that we deliver solutions differently to users. This transformation journey, as we start from inside out, has been both frontend and backend. So in order to deliver a digital customer experience, we have to also transform the way that we do our internal processes.
Transformation strategies
NNNU: The first cloud implementation that we had was our ERP system. We were the first bank to launch cloud ERP. We also digitised our collateral appraisal system, digitising our approval process in order to deliver a digital journey to service our customer because it's not just the frontend. When we transform from inside out, some of the challenges has been balancing speed versus risk management because we started from a brick-and-mortar business model. It was very successful. So in transforming and doing something new, there are a lot of competing interests that we have to balance. We have to balance between customer experience with development complications versus risk management. An example for that would be our electronic know your customer (eKYC) project.
One little detail is that we want customers to be onboarded from their natural touch point, which would probably be Facebook or Zalo, or a web browser rather than from an app that you force them to download. It means that it's more challenging to our development team because we have to make sure that we can be compatible to all sorts of web browsers and devices. We’re proud to say that we managed to launch our eKYC balancing all that within five months. It’s probably not something as impressive as a fintech or startup, but we did achieve all of these objectives where we have very stringent life net protection.
MZK: It’s certainly an interesting journey from your perspective. I'd like to bring Brian Carroll in as well, if you can share with us TNEX’s experience as a pure play digital bank that already had a digital-first posture.
Brian Carroll (BC): Hearing what ACB has done is amazing and seeing what VPBank has done is amazing. I agree with everything that's been said so far. I've been involved in digital since 1994. Before we called it transformation, I've been in a few a few of these dogfights. What I think that’s really important if I look at the industry first is there is a definite confusion, not just in Vietnam, but across the world in what actually we're trying to achieve. If we look at digitisation across financial services, across any vertical, it's fundamentally broken into two parts, optimisation, which is about making your current business goal faster and better picking various customer journeys and making them go faster. But that's okay. That is valid. You will see projects like robotic process automation, you'll see products like master data management and typically you will see that organisation is on an optimisation journey. But transformation – let's stop for a second – is about the development of new value propositions that better engage your customer and deliver sustainable income. To do that in a digital world is very difficult. I break it down into two approaches. One is called Brownfield. They're the traditional big transformation programmes that you see. They've started very much in the West. They’re big core and make promises to the board and revise every board meeting. And they typically fail, depending on what consultancy companies, statistics research you're looking at, between seven and 10 of these fail. Why? Because it's very difficult.
I'm lucky I'm not in my old world where you see the obstacles and the main obstacle is technical debt. If you look across Asia, the top 108 banks is in Asia-Pacific (APAC). The average age of core infrastructure is about 17 and a half years old. That's older than some of my customers. It’s very hard to unbake that cake. The difficulty isn't at the front. You can put a nice channel but just because you put a different coat of paint on a car doesn't make it a faster car. As the previous speaker said so well, you have to look at front, middle and the back because true transformation happens in the middle and the back.
So if we look at the second part and we're seeing a lot of banks across Asia, the vanguard in Asia was DigiBank with DBS, who've taken a Greenfield approach. They recognise that it is very difficult to take a Brownfield and turn it into a bank, a digital one. There's too much technical debt. You’ll end up bankrupt trying to pay it off or you destroy your existing business. And that involves creation of the bank on the side. A bank on the side has no technical debt, it's digitally native. It has new ways of working. But of course, it has a problem. It's the culture problem. And the culture is the difference here. We all know this. We all have read Peter Drucker's age old “culture eats strategy for breakfast” every day. But also there's a very interesting one that I live by, which is by a mathematician called Melvin Conway. No truer word was said that organisations are destined to deliver solutions that match the communication structures. And after consulting and working, and building the odd “Greenfield” bank, the fact that you're connected to an old culture, which defines success by different key performance indicators (KPIs) makes it difficult but achievable. Then we look at the blue banks out there, these are digitally native, no connection from the past and you see how successful these are moving like the new banks of the world. It's important that we don't mix the two.
An emerging culture
BC: As for obstacles in a digital-only bank, it's not the technology. Cloud, the design patterns are there, API patterns are there, open banking patterns are there, micro service patterns are there. Cloud deployment has democratised a lot of this and made it faster. The ways of working are there. But the biggest challenge is the culture. It was referred to by the last speaker. I’m a banker for about 28 years now and we were taught by risk. We were taught in a different way of measuring risk. How do you measure risk and digital? We still have this challenge, of course. We're all in the bank and financial services industry, we're trying to balance growth with cost, with risk. But how you do that in digital is different because the tools you have are different. But the culture, you need to not be afraid to fail, but fail forward, fail quickly. You need to be able to respond very quickly. I have never signed so much paper in my life than I have signed in Vietnam. The culture is very much emerging. Some organisations are getting it right. But the winners in Vietnam and digital transformation, getting sustainable business models and being able to change, it won't be technology. The technology is freely available on the cloud on Amazon, on Azure. It will be the people that can attract the right talent. And there's one amazing talent battle coming out of Vietnam at the moment that can actually wrap that with a culture, which is not based on command or control but is based on a culture of best idea must win. Not the most senior guys sitting at the top of the table. But best idea must win.
MZK: You've touched upon culture but also looking at the technology aspect of things, specifically around cloud solutions, I’d like to bring Kalidas Ghose into this as well to give us a sense in terms of how FE Credit has responded to these digitally-ready players who are looking to outcompete conventional, traditional brick-and-mortar operators in terms of delivery of digitally-based financial services. So Kalidas, if you could also weigh in your thoughts in terms of leveraging the power of the cloud.
So broadly, looking at some of the compliance challenges and the question is around what are the existing regulations and compliance requirements in place for those who are looking to move customer data to the cloud in Vietnam today? The other broad element that you've also alluded to is in terms of utilising data for risk-management purposes and broadly balancing both culture in terms of driving digital transformation and the risks that may result due to that. So, would you be able to give us some insight on this as well, Kalidas?
KG: With regard to the data, the local regulations allow for cloud transformations by being compliant using technology modules which are already available, which maintains the cycle, the privacy and the confidentiality norms that the local regulators specify. So without getting into the details of what those regulations are and how we have complied to each and every one of those, it should suffice to say that most of the more advanced technical technology or application platforms that are on the cloud that we have used at least have been able to encrypt and decrypt data during transmission, maintain local hardware, local backups salvage, for bringing up systems if they go down on the cloud and make sure that most of the data is residing locally – the data used for application processing purposes used on a tokenised basis. So there are some well-established but sophisticated technology solutions which are available to help us comply with the data regulations that we have. So that is actually not a hurdle or an excuse for not adopting the cloud as a platform. With regard to utilisation of data, that's where the real imagination, innovation comes through.
Maximising the full potential of cloud
KG: There are models which are emerging all over the world. So having a good Watchtower function for looking at the developments around the world and bringing it to your own organisation for your own market is also a very important capability, and building capabilities internally. It took us almost a year and a half to build the decision science platform that we are building: the data warehouse, the business intelligence (BI) solution, the modeling platform, and also the technology talent, which Brian alluded to, which is very important, which took us time to build use cases and apply these in practice.
MZK: I'll just segue here to Rajashekara Maiya on that note to talk about the deployment of cloud-based technology and given that it's still in a state of flux, and there's a lot of evolution. What value do you believe that it provides to FIs, so Maiya, over to you on this.
Delivering digital services
Rajashekara Maiya (RM): What we have seen is globally, there's a lot of development happening from the perspective of transforming the legacy and moving into the cloud. From a democratic perspective, Vietnam has almost 150% mobile penetration compared to your population of around 98 million people, we have more than 157 million mobile connections and especially in the rural area, you have almost 60% covered with the smartphones. The Vietnamese unbanked and underbanked population is around 60% of the total population. Considering the demography from the perspective of the entire generation, more than 70% of the population is less than 30 years of age. So all these combination plus the development that have taken place in the technology area, if you look at the cost of computation, it went down drastically to almost 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Customer communication went down to almost 30% CAGR and cost of storage also went down to almost 35% CAGR in a yearly basis for the last 10 years. All of these things are adding into a situation where banks should be involved if they want to address this unbanked and underbanked population, as well as trying to retain and sustain the existing customer relationship. We cannot expect them to come to our physical branches. Pandemic has accentuated the problem. So those digital services have to be delivered to their devices because more and more power is going to the endpoints. This is where we see cloud and technologies are going to come in handy.
From the perspective of reducing the cost, the bank should be able to expand or contract, depending on the number of loan, accounts, or the customers that they're adding to the environment. More importantly, it is going to be from a cost-efficient perspective. The banks are going to be asset-light and you have no hyperscale providing these services in every geography, in every region. And as Kalidas has mentioned, these players are abiding by the regulatory expectations of each of these countries including Vietnam's respect to the law on data localisation, making sure that there is protection around privacy and confidentiality. They are also assuming the security aspect of it because the more you get into digital, there are more chances of cybersecurity coming in, haunting you. These people are ready to take those responsibility and write the insurance or indemnities for you to make sure that it is going to be valuable for you.
Compared to a decade ago, we didn’t have much of the cloud knowledge or skill sets and talent available in the market. But nowadays it is available. So you have an access to whole user community who are going to help make your journey simpler, seamless and cheaper. This is what we have seen globally and this is equally applicable to the Vietnamese market as well.
MZK: The industry has not taken or adopted to the scale that we would like. Clearly, regulation is not a hindrance in this instance. But where do you see the challenges in terms of the institutions’ adoption of leveraging cloud?
RM: What we are seeing globally, and it is equally applicable to the region that we are currently talking about. The whole definition and the nature of work, workplace and workforce is changing. The pandemic has completely changed that paradigm. So you don't have to go to an office location. Everything is coming to you because of the nature of the situation, that theory, in terms of the technology available. Keeping this in mind, it is very important that the technology is related to that, it also needs to be impaneled and you have to embrace that. For example, If you don't want the workforce to go to the office and they are now working from home or from anywhere, cloud is the technology which will enable them to access the servers or the applications, or the solution that they will be working on. That is going to be delivered into their devices. Cloud as a technology is trying to help the global organisations, including financial institutions adapt to the new reality and help adjust to this changing definition around work, workplace and workforce.
MZK: Would banks prefer to deploy it on a private or public cloud? And would they prefer a vendor management deployment or a bank to manage one?
Cloud implementation: public vs. private
BC: Yes, we're a cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS)-first Bank. If you're not in cloud, you're not going to transform because workforce is one part of it. But to move at the speed and to deliver the services that customers want, you can't do it internally. It doesn't facilitate it. You can't use old keys to open new doors. The cloud argument’s already over. How we implemented it, we use the virtual private cloud (VPC) for security. Obviously, a very tight landing zone configuration to a walled garden. On implementation, let's be open and honest, it's coming back to talent, guys. You can't get good cloud people in Singapore, Hong Kong, or London at the moment because everybody needs these guys. So partnership is a huge part of this. So in Vietnam, it's very exciting to see that these partnerships, these companies that are specialising are appearing. We use Tech X down in Ho Chi Minh and we also use Amazon services. So those worked really well.
MZK: Since we're looking at the application, the strength of the various cloud strategies in place. I'd like Nhu Uyen and Kalidas to weigh in terms of utilising these emerging technologies, such as AI, APIs and RPA that cloud enables. How are your banks introducing or enabling service enhancement to your customers and broadly supporting your own business growth?
NNNU: For ACB going forward, one of the most important objectives after we have looked at a more digital-first kind of strategy, being more user centre is for ecosystem building. So in leveraging all these new technologies, especially APIs, one of the key things that we are looking at is how do we enable easier connection with other ecosystem players? This links to the previous discussion on disruption in the market.
Leveraging fintech and techfin partnerships
We see the disruptors and the fintech and the techfin of the world has more potential partners than just competitors. So we are using these new technologies by leveraging partnership with these fintechs as well as making sure we have an open architecture using open APIs. We have open APIs gateway in order to enable bringing in new innovations to support our business growth to help extend the service that we can bring to our customers because we can no longer stop and just be a bank providing deposit and lending services to customers. One of the important technology that we want to look into and with Brian’s point, it has to go hand in hand with the cloud, data analytics and AI. That's a look to the future in terms of how we accelerate the growth through innovations and new technologies.
KG: So I was talking about our transformation process going through these three or four work streams that we looked at. In the end of it, we realised, this has to be through partnerships. The partnerships are of two types. At the frontend where we are connecting the dots in the customer’s life, we looked at partnership with where the customer lives. For example, payment of utility bills or daily transportation or even food ordering, and e-commerce, or even healthcare, educational institutions, wherever his children or her children are studying. Essentially through a payment mechanism, but also adding credit, having different types of options for the customer. So those were partnerships in the frontend for making the customers life easier, making it more convenient. But at the backend, we looked at technology that would enable us to deliver some of these use cases. We looked at conversational AI. Similarly, OCR is for transferring data from a piece of a document like an electricity bill to make the actual payment or even use it for credit purposes. Speech-to-text technology for analysing telephone calls that we are having with customers.
There are many models which are being developed around the world and we want to incorporate these. Many of these are related to AI technology, machine learning technology, data analytics, etc., that we incorporated at the backend that has already been developed or are in the process of being developed by bringing it to use cases in our business model, in our market context. We believe in collaboration and learning from others, as much as building it ourselves. So we try to take the technology, build use cases around it, deploy and then scale it up. That's how we've been using some of these technologies.
MKZ: I'd like to also bring Maiya back in. Looking at all of these wonderful new emerging technologies, they also come with associated risks. So Maiya, if you can also give us a sense in terms of what FIs and banks need to be across when they're deploying or utilising these new technologies within their own internal processes. So what do they need to be mindful of?
Raising the bar on security
RM: We have seen that the success of any organisation when using these technologies is not for the sake of technology. But if they are really committed and they have use cases and it's supposed to help them transform the customer journeys, then we are seeing the real benefits emerging out of this. These technologies are going to add more complexities to the already existing complicity that the bank has. But some of these things they need to also be careful of because more things are going digital. We have seen that banks also have to raise the bar on the security element, especially when things are becoming digital and everything is getting digital access or the network. You see an emergence of a lot of these fraudsters and the cybersecurity threat providers coming into picture and trying to extract information and trying to use that to take the money out of the valuable customers.
So we have seen that if banks are not equally engaged in implementing and creating awareness and education around the usage of these technologies, these are going to cause more problem for the end consumers. While convenience is one aspect of it, security also has to be taken care of in a non-intrusive or non-invasive way. I think that is where more attention is needed to be given – technology combined with security aspect to deliver a more convenient way of banking. A faster, safer, more secure, and a more transparent way of doing banking is what we have seen in the emerging technology area. Banks need to concentrate on this element aspect if they take the journey on digital transformation.
MKZ: We've spoken about digital transformation but what does this mean in terms of digitising the core businesses, lending deposits and payments? Clearly, different banks have different stages but to deliver that quality of customer experience and having a superior customer journey, how can banks remain the trusted partners of customers? Where's ACB in terms of their digital transformation journey? What elements are currently missing And how do you see the space evolving in the future to make institutions really future proof?
NNNU: When people ask where we are now in our digital transformation journey, I sometimes use the analogy of learning a new language and becoming native in that new language. Moving from a traditional business model to a digital-first model, at first, even though you're fluent in this new language, it's still a second language and you still think in your first language then you translate from your first language into this new language. But as you master this new language, you will start thinking in this new language and there's no more translation, you can use vocabulary in this new language that never existed in your first language. That's where we are now. We have started to become fluent and bilingual in this digital world and bringing in new plot to be more digitally native. That's something that we have to continue to maintain and build upon. Ecosystem building is the next step for us. We want to be very open and be able to bring in new partners, to bring in new solutions that we have into our ecosystem in order to serve our customers. We want to learn, win and fail with them. The future for us is very much about ecosystem building.
MZK: You also mentioned partnerships and the fact that there's all these different platforms being built and building ecosystems as well. ACB has a very progressive mindset but there are other players in Vietnam today and other of your peers that are slightly behind the curve in terms of their adoption, or moving to the cloud. Where do you see wherein the challenges lie? Looking at building those key partnerships, is it just partnerships with fintechs? Who are you looking to collaborate with in terms of leveraging all the opportunities that new technologies provide, such as cloud does as well?
NNNU: Number one is the partners who help us bring in new technology. These are the technology providers of AI platforms for eKYC, AI platform for data analytics. The second type are the partners who bring solutions to customers, and we can, together with them, bring new solutions to our customers. We don't want to stop at just being a financial service provider, providing customers with traditional deposit loans. But we think that because were keeping this enormous amount of money from people and everything they do needs money, we have to be alongside with them in whatever they do. That means we have to be connected to all of these players who are serving our customer so that we can deliver one solutions to our customers.
MZK: I’ll pass this to Kalidas in terms of how FE Credit is going about building ecosystems and the type of ecosystems you're looking to build.
KG: For the most part, we are focused on making sure that our new IT stack is stabilised but also made more efficient and more technologies are embedded on it to connect the dots and make our customers lives easier and make them live their financial life out of our app itself and build their engagement model with us. But there are two factors that we are constantly focusing on which we think are our key success factors. One is hyper-personalisation and the other is contextuality. The whole process of a banking product, sales or marketing would be to launch products and contact customers for them to avail the product at our convenience or at our discretion. But to be embedded in a customer's life where the customer can access that product or that service, when they required it is something which is a game changer from our point of view. Ultimately, all the infrastructure that we have set up, the capabilities we have built, will be useful only when the customer sees the value. And that value can come only through hyper-personalisation and contextuality. Those are the future priorities for us from a digital transformation process.
MZK: Brian, your sense also in terms of the future and really looking forward to what your peers in the Vietnam marketplace can really learn from, either from big tech or even the pure play digital counterparts in terms of their digital transformation journey for you Brian.
BC: I couldn't agree more with the other esteemed panelists. We’re going beyond banking. In our platform, we want banking to be invisible and the experience to be upfront. So our ecosystem is made up of four platforms. We have a financial platform, a social platform, where you can chat with your people in app, you can talk to friends. We have a wellness platform. We're building this up because that ties into our fourth platform, which is our marketplace, our ecosystem of merchants which we built.
The future of banking
BC: So it's all about experience and loyalty. There is no loyalty, typically, in banking and traditional banking. You go with the best dealers or the less fees. But loyalty will come from embedding banking, having multiple touch points in a customer's life, generating that loyalty, being there at the times that they need where Kalidas is totally right. It's not just about personalised utilisation. So doing it at the right time with the right next best offer and the right next best action. When you log on to us, we ask you how you feel because we believe your financial health and your emotional health are directly linked. Your lifestyle needs to be supported by us so banking only should appear when it's needed. And it's not needed for all things. But it's needed, of course, for a large portion of what we do in our lifestyle. Yes, the future is embedded. The future is invisible banking, connected banking, lifestyle banking has been called by many names, but it's really interesting to see that all three people, three of the panelists are completely on the same page. So either we're all completely wrong but I think it's the latter. We're all very excited.
MZK: Looking at what those key markers are for success and I’ll also throw this in there in terms of whether banks need to be at the centre of that ecosystem. Maiya, over to you.
RM: What we're seeing globally, in more than 100 countries across six continents, we have seen two distinct trends taking place. One is power is increasingly moving towards the clients, the end users. The second is that banking is not merely banking. The experience is more than banking today. Globally, banks are trying to become transformation agents for other industries in terms of changing and learning from them. This requires them to look at the digital-first, customer-first, API-first, mobile-first, cloud-first kind of approach. For those who have taken this kind of approach, they will have the leading indicators of being successful in the market. But you've also seen that these are the banks, which are going to transform, engage, operate, and innovate better going forward.
MZK: Clearly, we've established that getting the digital strategy right is paramount and leveraging the wonderful applications that the cloud can provide will certainly set the institutions in the right direction. We're living in a new world and being in this permanent state of reinvention is not necessarily sustainable in the long term. So with that said, I'd like to thank all our guests again. We hope that the audience has benefited from the insights and the experiences shared by our guests.
Mobasher is responsible for the research business function at The Asian Banker across all subject matter areas retail banking, technology innovation, transaction banking, risk management and financial markets in the APAC/MEA regions. Prior to joining The Asian Banker, Mobasher Zein Kazmi served as Consulting Director – Asia at the RFi Group. He has an MBA (Investment Management) from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and holds a Diploma in Islamic Finance from Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK.
Neeti Aggarwal manages the financial technology and innovation research at The Asian Banker. With over 18 years’ experience, she specialises in banking, technology and fintech developments across APAC and MEA. She regularly engages the financial services community on critical transformational issues, speaking and moderating at various events. Previously she worked as research analyst with The Economic Times, India. She holds CFA from CFA Institute, USA and MBA (Finance) from India.
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