There is no denying that the world has changed, resulting in the way we manage our businesses changing too. We all are aware of the perils and the negative impact of the global pandemic across all business sectors. However, the global BFSI sector has seen more volatility, security risks and operational perils than others. 

Recently Zensar hosted a global survey* to understand the current state of the global BFSI cloud and infrastructure IT sector. In this survey we identified that over four fifths (84%) of BFSI leaders had invested in hybrid cloud-based IT within the last 12 months.

Gartner's latest forecasts have reflected how IT spending for remote working is a growth catalyst for public cloud services, with predicted growth of 19% this year. Furthermore, another Gartner report states that the proportion of IT spending that is shifting to cloud, has increased in the aftermath of rapid adoption of the “work from home” model, with cloud projected to make up 14.2 percent of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1 percent in 2020. This sudden disruption has led many BFSI companies to revisit their IT strategy as it directly impacts their business, influencing the customer experience.  

1. Fast-changing customer expectations enforces superior experiences faster

As digital technology changes the financial services industry, businesses must balance complexity with the customers’ need for speed and availability. 71% of BFSI leaders believe their current IT infrastructure is unresponsive to evolving business and customer needs. While the same amount (71%) cited ‘inability to integrate legacy infrastructure with other technologies’ as a key challenge. IT infrastructure cannot afford to play catch up now.

One interesting insight was that over two-thirds (67%) of survey respondents agreed that ‘Managing shifting customer expectations’ is a key driver for their businesses to embark upon digital transformation programs by moving to the cloud. One of the key determinants of a successful business strategy is its ability to accelerate innovation. Companies that fare best, will find ways to reduce costs and improve services, while being increasingly agile. 

The best way to ascertain the benefits of digital transformation is to ensure improvement in customer experience score and rate of experience improvement. Companies that are able to keep up with constantly shifting customer expectations are those that are willing to focus their investments towards digital experience capabilities – doing so has positively impacted their finances and reduced customer churn by a significant amount. Over four fifths (85%) of all surveyed organisations are confident that they are delivering highly personalised digital experiences to their customers.

2. Drive efficiency and accuracy with hyper automation 

The benefits of digital transformation depends on increased levels of automation across the entire IT environment. Over half (58.%) of financial services organisations surveyed wish to increase investment on automation technology. The market shifts in the post Covid world are forcing BFSI enterprises to adopt innovative operating models focused on driving efficiency. 

To continually evolve and improve processes, BFSI organisations need to increasingly infuse IT operations with a cognitive automation first approach. This leads to improved efficiencies, faster time to market and more analytics driven operations.

3. Emerging work environments

The future of business - in the BFSI sector or otherwise - will have to account for the ‘work from anywhere’ model at the core of its existence. We believe that companies will have to plan, prepare and outline tomorrow’s organisation today. Cloud has proven to be that differentiator by linking global teams, ensuring work happens and employees, customers are engaged effectively. 

The surge in remote working solutions underscores this growing trend.

To cite from our own experience, we have recently seen a global financial advisory firm design a persona aligned, right-fit workplace strategy to manage productivity across its global workforce  to maintain a competitive advantage, spanning 30 countries. The strategy was designed based on the existing digital behavioural patterns of users in terms of application usage, hardware utilisation and services. The customer was equipped with a modern workplace, spanning across multiple business functions comprising multiple tracks, resulting in creating a seamless framework, higher ROI, scalability to function across rapidly changing business scenarios as well as maintaining the business as usual approach.

Concluding thoughts

Successful transformation for any financial institution needs to start with delivery of superior experience, agility and hyper productivity. All of this is made possible with the adoption of cloud. Cloud solutions should be used to enhance risk management, fight fraud, improve bottom-line, improve customer engagement, as well as enabling the overall ability to scale.

It is clear that BFSI organisations globally are at the cusp of change, growth and new directions by harnessing the core benefits from digital tools. This has been a definitive change in 2020 for this sector as enterprises look to unlock new opportunities, empower intelligent banking, modernise trading, and personalise software systems. 

* October 2020 and covered the regions of North America and the UK. Insights were captured from more than 600 IT leaders, across sectors such as BFSI, healthcare, government bodies and hi-tech manufacturing.