AVALOQ Open for business


Dr Thomas Beck, Group CTO at Avaloq, a Swiss headquartered global core and private banking technology and services firm, is convinced that Open Banking protocols and IT architectures are the future, he tells Neil Ainger


IBS Journal January 2017


13


“Smaller, newer FinTechs struggle to access the core banking marketplace, especially outside the payment and remittances sectors where they are traditionally strong, so we want to help them by providing a safe and secure platform for innovation,” continues Beck, as the 49-year- old industry veteran and ex-UniCredit employee discusses the changing marketplace.


“When I started out 23 years ago private and retail banks still designed or at least installed ‘off-the-shelf’ systems and ran their own ‘on premise’ core banking and IT operations and employees, but this isn’t the case anymore,” says Beck. “I could see the trend away from banks doing things themselves towards using external technology firms and their [cloud] services instead, so I decided to switch too. I joined Avaloq from UniCredit in 2012, initially as Head of Innovation Development before becoming CTO in July 2016.”


partner to innovative FinTech startups that have developed a great new customer experience, mobile service or processing aid,” explains Beck. “We also want to be a partner to banks and financial utilities that are increasingly looking towards the cloud and collaboration as a way to develop new tools and to control costs to meet rising customer service and regulatory expectations.”


“W e want to be a core banking


Banks nowadays want to partner to ensure flexible IT systems that can scale up and down to meet computing demand and cope with rising customer expectations of 24x7 omnichannel service. Mobile channels and online data-rich applications in real-time are also a must have.


“Digital core banking transformation projects are being launched to meet these demands, and that of regulators for more data,” explains Beck, pointing to the stress test and reporting requirements under the Basel III capital adequacy regime as an example and the strengthened Know Your Customer (KYC) stipulations.


www.ibsintelligence.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27