Complete Story
07/25/2017
Recap - AFT 2017 Spring Summit
Interactive Session Again Shows Off AFT Coopetition
A hallmark of any Association for Financial Technology conference is the interactive sessions. These are where the term “coopetition” – cooperation among the competition for the betterment of the financial technology industry – became synonymous with AFT. That tradition lives on! Brian O’Neill, FIS Senior Vice President and Chief Client Officer presided over the interactive session at the 2017 AFT Spring Summit at Amelia Island, Fla.
Tabletop lunchtime discussions served to feed the main interactive gathering with topics covering vendor management and regulatory compliance, sales and service, partnerships and alliances, and innovation.
Here at some topics and comments heard at the session:
Vendor Management Risk
- Sometimes a new process is not a new product.
- Our concern is that they don’t already have risk processors in place.
- Make sure you partner with the right organizations.
IT Exam Process
- They are not giving the financial institutions enough time to prepare.
- Guide financial institutions through the process with examiner packets.
Third and Fourth Party Vendors
- Financial institutions need to rely on them.
- We added a new section under our Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act review form.
Consultants
- Have a strategy for dealing with consultants.
- Deal directly with clients; notify clients that consultants prevent us from delivering products.
Consolidation
- Diversify/leverage core competency with different verticals.
- The need of the best possible experience has never been higher than it is today.
- Consolidation happens on both sides (vendors, FIs) we have to help them.
Changing Customer Expectations
- Fintechs do a fantastic job of using data; we are sitting on a goldmine.
- Other industries drive the customer experience.
- Consumers want the same experience from us they get from Google, Lyft, Starbucks, etc.
- Bots are a big thing in terms of getting information out into the hands of folks.
Open APIs
- We do charge for that access.
- We’re trying to feed the demand for self service
- Charging for application programming interfaces means you are holding up change.
- Bankers are afraid they don’t know which side financial technology companies are on.
Innovation
- Put it in front of customers before they know they need it.
- The biggest problem in the industry is fear to market.
- You push things aggressively into production and let the client assimilate them at their own pace.
- Agile innovation promises to greatly transform businesses and institutions.
- As an industry, we have to be careful of putting those huge roadmaps out there and losing agility to deliver in a very uncertain marketplace.