IBS Journal November 2017


39


This is not about one single new technology disrupting business processes. It’s about using those elements of cloud, APIs and blockchain that become relevant to you and answer a problem you have


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So the companies which traditionally would have left the bank to do the payment transactions are now building it into their products because the customer expects it I asked?


“Yes. And the banks are now learning from that consumer-focused process to make things simple, intuitive and easy-to-use. So, it’s not about how much functionality a banking application has, or how many options it has. Maybe the user doesn’t want 15 options – maybe they just want a few options which make the whole process fast and simple. So we need our clients to design, deliver and test products with us. The old times of product development – where the sales guy goes and meets some clients, tells the product guy what he is hearing from the client, the product guy goes away and reads a few newspapers, calls some friends at other banks, then draws a


picture on a whiteboard then takes a picture of it for someone in the tech department to build it – are long gone.”


“This is because, invariably, when you put the finished product in front of the client they might ask: ‘What’s this, and why should I want it?’ And there is nothing worse than a product you are trying to find a market for.”


Watson explains further: “So we have applied a very simple and direct approach here by bringing clients into the process, asking them what they want. The aim is to build the products of the future that will predominantly serve their digital strategy not ours. Recently we had a series of clients come to our North Carolina product development centre and we had them in a room talking to our product developers about what they wanted us to do versus what we were intending to do. Sometimes we find out that they need a solution for something that does not even require logging into our systems. Maybe they are trying to solve a problem for their company and their digital strategy. In such situations, we go as far as bringing in fintech to allow those potentially disruptive technologies to help move the discussion along. That can often change the direction of the conversation completely. “


And what has changed since the emergence of the fintechs I ask him. “In the past when we saw a fintech that we thought could help solve our client’s problems, we would try to buy them, paint them blue, and call them Deutsche Bank. Now we are perfectly happy to sit in front of a client and say we are Deutsche Bank and we can


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