If Qatari financial services firms are to differentiate themselves in the competitive marketplace, innovation is now more crucial than ever. Digital transformation and capitalizing on data provide a vital opportunity for organizations to focus on emerging customer needs, uncover deeper insights, and mitigate risks when launching new services.
This, however, will require the use of data enrichment with “alternative data” from geolocation, demographics, medical records, retail foot traffic, and other specialized external sources. It also requires a financial institutions’ data platform to collect, aggregate, and process data in any format, said an expert.
James Petter, VP International, Pure Storage, said “The days of “business as usual” are over for financial institutions in Qatar. Retail banks, insurers, investment firms, and wealth management companies alike are all under pressure to deploy new “anytime-anywhere” digital services”. To survive and thrive in today’s era, financial organizations must become data-centric for managing all key tasks, from customer-facing services to internal back office operations, he added.
By adopting a data-centric approach, using application performance transformation, and by consolidating critical data from multiple source—including IoT devices―local Qatari financial services firms can now accelerate processing, adopt automation, deliver personalized experiences, and slash costs. Much of this will be achieved through artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation (RPA), and advanced analytics.
Tapping into these innovations, however, requires highly scalable, high-velocity access to vast amounts of customer and business data. This all begins with employing modern data strategies in four critical areas.
To accelerate their digital transformation journeys, Petter said, financial enterprises in Qatar require a data platform that can consolidate, connect, and accelerate data from both historic and current data sources. The platform must have the capacity to accommodate streaming data from IoT devices and telemetry. It must also deliver analytics and AI/ML applications on-demand.
Financial services firms are now deploying data hub platforms to accelerate data in a way that improves both performance and profitability.
According to Petter, Online and mobile banking customers demand convenient services, whenever and wherever they want them. For Qatari financial institutions to stay competitive, delivering such experiences is now strategically critical and customer loyalty depends on it.
The opportunity now exists to reimagine the entire customer experience, from core banking to mobile to call center. With analytics-driven ML, organizations can transform their retail applications, including conversational commerce, voice interfaces, and virtual assistants.
Globally, on banking industry’s regulatory compliance, Petter said it is now a huge expense for financial institutions. Analysts estimate it costs the banking industry $270bn annually. In addition, according to a recent Thomson Reuters report, compliance and risk practitioners expect that price to climb. Stopping fraud and criminal activity remains a top, yet expensive, priority. As does risk management. Both require more immediate access to data and intelligence. Consequently, many firms are accelerating the identification and reporting of liquidity, counterparty, market, and credit exposures.
