DESPITE the challenges and disruptions of COVID-19, the regional Financial Services Industry (FSI) has continued to forge ahead and accelerate the pace of digitisation in response to the pandemic.
Recent Microsoft-IDC’s findings revealed that more than 66% FSI organisations are accelerating digitisation of their businesses. This figure rises to 86% among FSI leaders, organisations who have the most mature culture of innovation, defining their ability to drive sustained innovation.
Based on the survey of 597 regional business decision makers in FSI across 15 markets in Asia, the sector was found to be ahead in its ability to innovate in response to challenges.
Results also showed that over a span of six months before and since COVID-19, approximately 70% of all FSI organisations in Asia Pacific say that innovation is now a “must” and almost all FSI Leaders (96%) agree and are actively putting this into practice.
“One thing is clear: the industry’s rapid response, reflected in the increase of maturity in adopting a culture of innovation, across people, process, technology and data practices, has paid dividends,” said Microsoft Asia regional business lead (financial services) Connie Leung.
In this regard, organisations are encouraged to:
- Leverage platforms to drive transformation: As FSI organisations continue to forge ahead and integrate technology in their operations as well as products and services, moving mission-critical business processes and workloads onto cloud platforms will be key to ensure that innovation scales.
Technology architecture will also need to be well-integrated to effectively enable transformation which will be a key measure of technology Return on Investment (ROI).
- Enhance people’s capabilities through enterprise-wide skilling initiatives: A diverse cross-industry, multicultural and multi-generational talent will be key in generating new and disruptive ideas.
Beyond that, FSIs need to champion a culture that embraces collaboration, especially with third parties, to create new value.
- Utilise data for extreme personalisation and rapid value creation: Investing in data will not only enable FSIs to enhance and differentiate products and services but with trust, privacy, and security paramount for their businesses, a well-integrated data architecture will enable the building of accurate, trusted and secure data sources for reliable decision-making when it is needed most.
This will enable personalisation and real-time insights.
- Integrate automation within processes to empower continuous innovation: Automation will be key especially for business processes that have high implications to customer experience, to accelerate the enablement of enterprise-wide collaboration and knowledge sharing.
Processes will also need to account for a way to ensure a formal and systematic approach to driving innovation and incorporating this within operations for sustained impact.
“As FSIs continue to forge ahead in a post-pandemic world, lasting transformation will only take place if FSIs alongside investments in technology and prioritising people and culture as they are key to ensuring greater collaboration and continuous transformation,” added Leung. – Dec 7, 2020
