Technology
A new digital dynamic for financial services
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on July 24, 2018
7 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Global Banking & Finance Review®
Company
Published by Gbaf News
Posted on July 24, 2018
7 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Chris Pope, VP of Innovation at ServiceNow
For the last decade (if not more), the financial services industry has undergone a process of extreme transformative change driven by digitisation, growing cybersecurity threats and shifting regulatory environments and priorities.
In tandem with these trends, there has been a dramatic increase in customer expectations and demands – which represents perhaps the most significant change in the financial service industry. Partly driven by a domino effect from other sectors, the financial services industry is under pressure from its user base to deliver new digital services and enhancements and to match innovations seen everywhere from consumer brands to public services.
Chris Pope
This desire for intuitive, sharpened, personalised services has created a new digital dynamic for the financial services industry which goes beyond omni-channel integration and multi-channel interoperability. Instead, the industry must focus on becoming opti-channel – the optimisation of financial services for a new era of immersive experiences.
For financial services organisations to capitalise fully on the opportunities of opti-channel approaches there is a significant technical challenge they must embrace.
From the back-end view though, it’s about building immersive links to the operational core of the IT stack. Truly immersive financial services applications must integrate with core functional systems of record and transaction such as CRM and ERP.
Achieving that integration, while maintaining security and still delivering a seamless user experience requires a specific architecture. The foundation is the core of transactional services technology, with essential reporting functions integrated with the data storage fabric. Then a more agile layer of data analytics, security, integration and other product differentiation technologies can be layered on top. This supports the delivery of incremental services to users, that can be configured via their device touchpoints.
The final layer is an upper tier of truly agile services innovation. This is where new delivery channels and new products can be created dynamically and opti-channel intelligence is used to deliver new banking services optimised for every customer’s requirement model.
As we go forward from here, the truly contemporary financial services company understands that it will not own every single piece of the delivery chain. Individual service components such as payment gateways, credit checks, background checks and financial investment extensions can now be more individually compartmentalised and, thus, delivered in a more optimal, opti-channel delivery mechanism.
This means that internal development teams also need to rethink their role as this pushes them way beyond agile methodologies. Organisation’s need a truly cross-functional workforce that is empowered to take on more ambitious projects with a network of scrums, squads, chapters, tribes and guilds all working together in a new matrix of positive connections.
This offers the end user the technologies they desire, which are optimised to understand their profiles, preferences, behavioural traits etc., with the deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Financial organisations can offer this at first as optional plug-ins to existing infrastructure and then as part of a full-blown services offering for the biggest return on investment (ROI). This is the innovation capability that truly agile development enables.
Chris Pope, VP of Innovation at ServiceNow
For the last decade (if not more), the financial services industry has undergone a process of extreme transformative change driven by digitisation, growing cybersecurity threats and shifting regulatory environments and priorities.
In tandem with these trends, there has been a dramatic increase in customer expectations and demands – which represents perhaps the most significant change in the financial service industry. Partly driven by a domino effect from other sectors, the financial services industry is under pressure from its user base to deliver new digital services and enhancements and to match innovations seen everywhere from consumer brands to public services.
Chris Pope
This desire for intuitive, sharpened, personalised services has created a new digital dynamic for the financial services industry which goes beyond omni-channel integration and multi-channel interoperability. Instead, the industry must focus on becoming opti-channel – the optimisation of financial services for a new era of immersive experiences.
For financial services organisations to capitalise fully on the opportunities of opti-channel approaches there is a significant technical challenge they must embrace.
From the back-end view though, it’s about building immersive links to the operational core of the IT stack. Truly immersive financial services applications must integrate with core functional systems of record and transaction such as CRM and ERP.
Achieving that integration, while maintaining security and still delivering a seamless user experience requires a specific architecture. The foundation is the core of transactional services technology, with essential reporting functions integrated with the data storage fabric. Then a more agile layer of data analytics, security, integration and other product differentiation technologies can be layered on top. This supports the delivery of incremental services to users, that can be configured via their device touchpoints.
The final layer is an upper tier of truly agile services innovation. This is where new delivery channels and new products can be created dynamically and opti-channel intelligence is used to deliver new banking services optimised for every customer’s requirement model.
As we go forward from here, the truly contemporary financial services company understands that it will not own every single piece of the delivery chain. Individual service components such as payment gateways, credit checks, background checks and financial investment extensions can now be more individually compartmentalised and, thus, delivered in a more optimal, opti-channel delivery mechanism.
This means that internal development teams also need to rethink their role as this pushes them way beyond agile methodologies. Organisation’s need a truly cross-functional workforce that is empowered to take on more ambitious projects with a network of scrums, squads, chapters, tribes and guilds all working together in a new matrix of positive connections.
This offers the end user the technologies they desire, which are optimised to understand their profiles, preferences, behavioural traits etc., with the deployment of machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Financial organisations can offer this at first as optional plug-ins to existing infrastructure and then as part of a full-blown services offering for the biggest return on investment (ROI). This is the innovation capability that truly agile development enables.
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