SmartStream
Ongoing reinvention for client needs
A key partner to banks of all sizes and a purveyor of AI-enabled solutions that are helping the fi nancial services industry thrive in an increasingly challenging and competitive environment, SmartStream is known for its intense focus on clients’ needs. But it was not always so. Jim Banks looks at how the company has been transformed under the leadership of CEO Haytham Kaddoura.
oday, SmartStream is known for bringing the most advanced technologies on the market into the financial services sector – and making them work to address the specific needs of banks of all sizes. It is a company that understands the industry’s current and future challenges, creates innovative solutions, and steers them towards the pain points the industry is facing. And it is a big step forward from when Haytham Kaddoura stepped in as CEO in 2016. Kaddoura is credited with improving the company’s fortunes around quickly and decisively, bringing to bear his experience in computer science, organisational restructuring, management consultancy and financial services. His journey towards SmartStream began back in 2007, when he set up the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and helped set up a wealth fund that acquired the company.
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“The fund was always looking to build its capability and my job was to look at the dynamics of different acquisitions,” he explains. “SmartStream was the one I was most heavily involved in. I had oversight of it from a portfolio management perspective and I was on the board. I liked the team and I saw its potential.” From his position on the board, Kaddoura was quick to see how the company could better help its impressive roster of loyal clients adapt to the rapidly changing world of digitalisation. “The company, as is often the way with organisations led by technically focused people, had lost sight of what investors wanted,” he explains. “The person at the helm was too technically focused and playing with new technological toys was the priority for the company, but it was not always done for the benefit of the client.”
“The company had moved away from what it was known for and was chasing fringe technologies, so the financial results were heading south and the board asked me to step in and make a quick turnaround in six months.”
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In that short time, Kaddoura was able to make the company profitable and he has remained CEO ever since, achieving consistent growth in revenue along with an on-going focus on investment in new technologies. Most important of all, however, he has seen SmartStream get closer to its customers.
A strong belief in innovation Kaddoura’s belief is that technology only has value when it addresses the specific needs of customers. “In the early days, it was about looking at what kind of investment was needed,” he says. “The next year the focus turned to AI, blockchain and other emerging technologies. That led to the launch of the Innovation Lab in Vienna in 2018.”
The Innovation Lab, led by chief innovation officer Andreas Burner, frequently partners with tier 1 banks to investigate the use of AI and emerging technologies, exploring how they can help re-engineer traditional processes to reduce cost and boost efficiency. “When Haytham became CEO, he immediately founded the innovation lab to look at increased automation and reduce the number of touchpoints,” says Burner. “We are always looking at AI, ML and blockchain too. We also anticipated the importance of the cloud, AI and ML early because of his belief that, for many problems, the solution is not to put more people on it but to solve it with technology.” Kaddoura understood, moreover, that SmartStream had always been a good software company with a large and impressive client base. But he also realised that innovation needed to be seen through the lens of client problems – not the technology itself. “He greatly increased R&D investment because he anticipated that ML, AI and the cloud needed that investment to be mastered before they would pay off,” Burner continues. “He did that at the right time. He completely changed that as CEO. He specifically put money into research, not just into headcount and development.”
Future Banking /
www.nsbanking.com
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