Month: September 2016
Allevo went on stage in an Open Theatre session called “The Trendsetter Bank”. A moment to share why we promote the concept of Banking On Open Source Technologies and what the trendsetter bank would look like, a perspective presented by our Business Development Manager, Ioana Guiman.
The session presented ways to help banks to become a role model. In a period full of challenges, the banking industry needs to take advantage of each opportunity and more than ever try to be relevant. With so many technology companies who have the advantage of starting from scratch and who provide new services people find convenient and easy to use, banks need to design better products to win back the preference of consumers and implement new technologies to offer a better experience of the process, while keeping their licenses.
It became crucial to understand and learn the behavior of customers and develop personalized offering over a short period of time. To compete on the market, banks could simplify products and services and focus on user experience from early design stage.
A bank’s top priority is being compliant and being safe. A bank is first and foremost supposed to be compliant to regulation. In this context, it is often being said that FinTechs are disrupting banks. In fact, they are sending a call for collaboration in offering joint services together to people who use them. FinTechs are today only supplementing banking services, they do not compete with them. And this is because FinTechs simply do not have the capability to displace banks. Ideally banks and FinTechs work together to deliver world-class services to people. Ideally banks and FinTechs work together to solve the issue of financial inclusion and thus win new customers, not steal customers from competition.
For Allevo this is a huge opportunity to provide our banking customers excellent automation and integration solutions, allowing banks to focus less on their ‘internal kitchen’, and more on designing attractive services and products for clients. We provide solutions that represent the very DNA of banking. Our proposition is FinTP, a versatile open source solution aimed to lower TCO and provide faster and better compliance.
The role of FinTP is to provide process and flow automation, seamless integration between various internal systems and external market infrastructures or networks such as SWIFT and to provide operators with relevant information in a one-window approach. You cannot set to create a bank without putting together a reliable infrastructure, able to support operations and to evolve at a steady pace. One very important aspect of FinTP is that its open source distribution model allows for banks who use it to contribute updates and improvements to benefit all users.
Banks should spend most on software that brings new customers. You cannot bring new customers just by deploying the best automation tool there is. It is simply not enough, nobody cares about what’s behind the scene. They only begin to care if something goes wrong and their money is inaccessible, so a lot of care and attention to detail needs to be invested in servicing people as best as possible.
Banks should not focus their best resources on back-office infrastructures. It does not mean these extremely important systems have to be neglected, it only means that they don’t bring in any new business. They need to ideally be fully automated, up and running 24/7/365, flexible and scalable. They need to be able to accommodate frequent changes in compliance requirements, industry standard updates, software and hardware upgrades. Last, but not least, they need to be secure, especially in this day and age when attacks happen less in the form of a person with a hoodie pointing a gun at the cashier, but go at a more despicable and devious level, covering their trails and provoking bigger damage than ever before.
We believe that open source is the future of software and that, even if late, banks should embrace it as well. We are looking forward to the day when most banks are doing banking on open source technologies and not only use open source software, but also contribute back to the community. It will be a moment of shifting from we only compete with each other to we can work together to solve common issues where there is no competition between us. . In open source, contributing is an essential concept because if you only use and not contribute back, you do it at the detriment of the community and every entity who does this, does it at the detriment of progress.
Allevo invited Sibos guests to attend a Romanian Wine Tasting event, accompanied by a selection of Swiss cheese. Day three ended in good smiles and good vibes.
In a period of transformation and a market full of challenges, the banking industry needs to take advantage of each opportunity. Staying relevant, by adapting behavior and embracing change, is one of the biggest challenges.
There are so many technology companies who have the advantage of starting from scratch and who provide new services people find convenient and easy to use. In this context, banks need to design better products to win back the preference of consumers and implement new technologies to offer a better experience of the process, while keeping their licenses. Banks have to put together an infrastructure capable of powering day to day operations and be compliant to standards and regulations, an infrastructure that requires minimal effort and resources to maintain and run.
It became crucial to understand and learn the behavior of customers and develop personalized offering in a short period of time. To compete on the market, banks could simplify products and services and focus on user experience from early design stage.
However, being compliant is of greater importance to a bank than being perceived as innovative. And ultimately, the role of a bank is not to be innovative, but to be safe and in line with regulatory constraints. Obviously, he who wins has best of both worlds – compliance and great services. And that is the trendsetter bank.
The trendsetter bank is a reference for the entire FinTech ecosystem. It is agile and flexible enough to quickly integrate new technologies, it has completely automated its internal workflows and it is trusted because it is regulated. It prefers open source technologies and provides holistic solutions to its customers, with state of the art services.
We spoke about what a bank could do to become a role model for the industry in our Open Theatre session yesterday at Sibos – “The Trendsetter Bank”. We then invited all wine lovers to join our exquisite Romanian wine tasting event.
At this year’s Sibos, we focused on FinTP, our software solution for processing financial transactions, and banking on open source technologies. We promote open source technologies in the banking industry. This is the suitable distribution model for banking software aimed to fuel everyday operations, simply because competition, differentiation and relevance do not start from back-offices.
All these need to happen at the level of services customers need and use.
In today’s day and age, if your bank has managed to put together an infrastructure capable of powering day to day operations and offer compliance to standards and regulations, an infrastructure that requires minimal effort and resources to maintain and run, you stand a chance of focusing on creating and delivering value to your customers.
We push forward the concept of banking on open source technologies, which allows a greater level of flexibility and transparency at infrastructure level.
Flexibility is given by the very essence of open source, which is cumulating contributions of several parties in one piece of software that evolves rapidly and safely. Why transparency? Just like glass walled police stations that are built to tackle corruption, open source software gives access to the code behind. Even if not everyone can read it, more parties than in the case of the one vendor providing traditional banking software review and approve it, both human and automated scanning systems. As a result, any application that is not open source is more likely to be able to inject malicious code or programs within a bank, as compared to software that is open and provides an open book of the code behind.
Contributors agree by consensus that versions are stable, signal any early flaws or glitches and then the certified party accepts, fully tests and promotes proposed changes into the main version. It is hard to keep vulnerabilities unnoticed and unhandled when automated tests are there to point out any inconsistencies or issues.
With all the talk going on around cybersecurity these days, specifically in banking, an extra case is being made for promoting the use of open source technologies. The more eyes on the code behind, less probability security breaches can come from the running application.
How is this now all linked to the trendsetter bank? A bank that has put together an open source infrastructure benefits of less of an overhead for managing internal systems and has freed up both human and financial resources for focusing on delivering state of the art services to customers. And these services do not even need to be designed and built from scratch, because usually for most problems there already are a couple of young FinTech startups who have come up with a solution. All banks need to do is partner and work closely with them to help them scale and offer, together, services people are comfortable with and eventually even get to like.
By Ioana Guiman, Business Development Manager, Allevo.
Source: Bobsguide
The most important people in the financial world gathered this days in the ‘Capital of Peace’ –Geneva, for the biggest event in the industry, Sibos. Geneva is attracting increasing numbers of startups and SMEs and it is home to around 200 multi-national corporations.
It is the 9th year in a row Allevo is exhibiting at this world class event. We are excited to be here and see our peers and partners and to meet new people from the financial ecosystem. It always is exciting to be at Sibos when it’s in Europe. So many meetings, so many relevant people, much easier logistics. The exhibition floor looks half the size of that of last year, but all vendors are still there. Less walking, happier participants. So far, about 8000 people were reported to have joined this year’s Sibos.
At this year’s edition of Sibos, we are focusing on FinTP, our solution for processing financial transactions, and banking on open source technologies. Allevo is a promoter of open source technologies in the banking industry and in the last couple of years it attracted new customers. Open source technologies allow a greater level of flexibility and transparency at infrastructure level.
We would also like to share our vision regarding the trendsetter bank that we see as a reference for the entire FinTech ecosystem. It is agile and flexible enough to quickly integrate new technologies, it has completely automated its internal workflows and it is trusted because it is regulated. It prefers open source technologies and provides holistic solutions to its customers, with state of the art services. But more about this we are going to share with the participants on Wednesday, September 28, starting 15:30, at the Open Theatre 1 session.
Today we kick started a contest for all lovers of geek watches. All our visitors participate in Wednesday’s lucky draw. On Wednesday we are hosting a Romanian wine tasting event, starting 16:00, where we are going to serve a great variety of Romanian wines and some snacks. It will be a good time, accompanied by a few glasses of good wine and lots of good vibes. During this event we will announce the winner of the contest by extracting a business card. Good luck!
With day one in the past, we are looking forward to find out more from peers at Sibos over the next couple of days.
In Banking Tech supplement issued by Finmedia our CEO, Sorina Bera, talks about the need for banks to make alliances with technology providers that are able to offer and implement solutions to streamline their banking operations.
Wednesday 16:30 ÷ 16:40 Allevo stand F67
Come to our stand and win a Detomaso binary watch! It is very easy to participate. All you have to do is visit Allevo stand F67, between Monday – Wednesday 09:00 – 16:00, say “Hello!” leave your business card and… fingers crossed! On Wednesday from 16:30 ÷ 16:40 we will extract a business card and maybe you are the winner of a geeky binary Detomaso watch. Good luck!
Wednesday 16:00 ÷ 17:00 Allevo stand F67
At the end of the third day of Sibos we are waiting for you at our stand F67 to taste a great variety of Romanian wines and grab a snack together. Romania is one of the world’s top-ranking producers of numerous delicious wines and we are inviting you to taste wines from popular domestic grape varieties such as Feteasca Neagra, Chardonay or Sauvignon Blanc.
So please drop by on Wednesday, starting 16:00, to meet our team, talk about wines and find out more about our solutions.