• Simon Paris believes technology conversations at Sibos 2017 pragmatically focused on how technologies would help banks in various aspects
• Banks are moving towards technologies that bring more people into the financial services industry
• He also thinks blockchain is probably on the edge of genuine and tangible use cases

Here is the transcript

Simon Paris: I think what I'm enjoying this Sibos is probably can be summarised in one word, which is pragmatic. I’m finding that all of technology conversations are pragmatically focused on either how this is help the bank grow. How this helps the bank reduce cost to become more efficient, and how does this help the bank to reduce risk. So, let me give you some examples. When people talk about, for example, technology trends like machine-learning or artificial intelligence, people are immediately looking for used cases of how does that help in automation of loan decision-making or how does that help in detecting errors before in trading capital markets. Or people talk about used cases in blockchain. They are starting to say how does that create a trusted market place for the trading participation in syndicated loans or how does that help me in providence in trade finance. So, becoming very pragmatic, which I think is very healthy. Growth, cost, risk, very pragmatic focused on technology.

We are seeing very interesting trends in very interesting markets. In the Australian market and I work north, the Australian market is one of the most innovative markets in the world. For everything that we're doing around are connected to corporate banking. So, we work with all of the major Australian banks as well as the tier 2 and tier 3 banks. In this notion of connected corporate banking, lending, trade, cash, payments, corporate channels, integrated view from the relationship managers, integrated view from the corporate customer is really compelling. If I come further north, and as I go to let's take Myanmar, and some of the emerging economies of Asia, we're seeing that those banks are leapfrogging in their capability to become digital banks, branchless banks, cashless banks, ATM-less banks, and really expand financial inclusion and financial services pretty much for the whole population. So, very exciting for that means we’re bringing people into financial services.

If I look into some of the growth areas of China that have very robust economy, we are doing very well there. More than 60 Chinese banks are with us now on our solutions at Finastra. And of course, generally speaking, everybody is interested in payments. Of course, this is a payment conference, a correspondent banking conference. A lot of interest in real-time and immediate and how banks can comply but also turn that into value.

I think, first of all, it starts with the philosophy, which is, we have to realise as a provider that 90% of the innovation will not come from us. A bank has to realise that 90% of innovation will not come from the bank. Both of us need to realise that 90% of innovation will not come from the country the bank is in. So, being open, and that's what we stand for as you look around our brand, it wants to be the open platform of the future, which is very much about embracing the capability, and embracing innovation from wherever it comes. And then you have to ask yourself "what is that capability, what is that competence you need to have?" So, the ability to have seamless, frictionless integration obviously drives APIs and API-fication as a capability but it is also the ability to work seamlessly with fintech. So, we already consumed in our proposition more than 100 fintech propositions as part of our global solution offerings back to the market. So, we are seeing that the flywheel is moving faster and faster and faster as we embrace seamless integration into APIs and embrace the fintech community.

So, instead of question, I see banks moving not just forward but also upward and I'll explain what I mean. And I see them investing in simplification, investing in rationalisation, investing in industrialisation. So, when I say that I see them moving forward, they are looking to providers like Finastra to help them with their core mission critical processes whereas there are internal developers because they can develop directly on top of our platform, as a platform as a service. They don't have to worry about single sign on, or integration, or security, or interoperability at the core process. They can move upwards and focus purely on their internal resources on innovation. And that I think is game changing. Yes, we made a recent announcement, which is ground breaking in the area of complex lending. So, you may have seen this and to brief you about it, it's Finastra plus R3 in the Corda platform, and seven international banks, this seven represent 10% to 15% of global syndicated lending. And what this allows them to do is to compress the upstream time to work with the agents working on the syndicated loans from 25 days to one day. And then second step, allows them to build a marketplace, a platform-based marketplace for the trading of participations on syndicated loans. That is our huge announcement, we're the first in the world, I suspect we might be the first in the world and the one in the world who can do it because of the first mover advantage. We’re also working with trade and finance around providence, in terms of origin of the products, where they come from. All the way to the supply chain and how that supply chain can be financed. Not in the corporate level, but maybe in the product line level of that corporate.

So, like everything, there’s a hyped curve. So, two years ago in Sibos, blockchain was top of the hype of the curve and now maybe it's in the value of despair before becomes mainstream, right? Last year was maybe machine learning and artificial intelligence. This year is all about micro services and APIs. So, I think blockchain is probably on the edge of genuine used cases that are tangible, reputable value. Soon, sometime, one to two years, we are already involved in complex lending as an example but everything is moving through that curve.