At times of economic turmoil, chief financial officers (CFOs) are under even more pressure than usual to manage risk and drive resilience. That means managing their organisations’ profit and loss, cutting overheads, and otherwise reducing costs while planning for the future. The way forward for getting your P&L in line is to drive revenue.
In the current economic environment, banks and other financial services firms recognise the need to embrace digital transformation to get maximum value from their technology investments and do more with less.
I speak to a lot of people about the security challenges facing financial services organisations in my role as Cyber Security Sales Director at Microsoft. The topics of those conversations change as the threat landscape evolves and new approaches to managing those threats emerge.
Digital modernisation is quickly becoming critical for business success in financial services. Especially in areas like customer experience and business process efficiencies. But the key to any modernisation is innovation.
Traditional banks have often relied on a strong brand reputation and financial products to attract and retain customers. But with a new wave of youthful and more digitally-savvy consumers emerging, simply being reputable may no longer be enough to stay competitive in this market.
Traditionally, banks have thought of anti-money laundering and know your customer (AML-KYC), fraud and cybercrime as three separate problem sets. They each have their own distinct teams with their own independent processes, tools and reporting structures. AML-KYC has been the primary focus for financial regulators.
I hear a lot of people talking about the journey to the cloud. But for me, the cloud isn’t a destination, it’s the enabler. The destination is agility. When we talk about app innovation, we’re talking about exploring new ways to become more agile as organisations.
How can financial services organisations be more innovative and resilient? They need to remain future focussed, identify opportunities to build differentiated experiences, better manage risk and modernise core operations. At Microsoft, we are committed to helping our financial services customers  take advantage of this opportunity and this support extends further than just our organisation.