The COVID-19 pandemic pushed a global workforce to go remote, and Maveric, like many organizations, adapted swiftly to this new reality. While remote work offers flexibility and resilience, a growing body of evidence suggests that the limitations of virtual interactions can hinder innovation, collaboration, and company culture. A recent Microsoft study found that remote work can lead to “siloed thinking” and a decrease in cross-team Collaboration. 

Navigating the New Normal – From “Zoom Fatigue” to “Room for Zoom”

Maveric deliberated returning to the office as the pandemic receded, a move that echoes a broader trend across industries. Google, Apple, and Amazon have all implemented hybrid work models, recognizing the value of in-person collaboration and its positive impact on engagement and productivity. A PwC survey reveals that 87% of executives believe the office is essential for fostering a sense of belonging and building solid relationships.   

Improving Employee Relationships is vital to enhancing Collaboration.

Consider an alarming industry stat: more than one in two managers (53%) feel burned out. In a post-COVID environment, companies have stepped up their efforts to improve relationships through a slew of engagement events—surveys to measure employee sentiment, offer mental health resources, enhance their culture of recognition, promote open communication, and renew investments in building trust and employee development. One crucial focus area is revisiting the physical design of the modern workspace. 

The Power of Presence: Data-Driven Insights. Where “IRL” Beats “URL”

The return to the office is not a nostalgic throwback but a strategic imperative backed by compelling data. According to a recent HBR study, face-to-face interactions are three times more likely to lead to successful Collaboration than virtual ones. Furthermore, Gallup research indicates that employees who spend some time working in the office are more likely to be engaged and connected to their company culture.

Maveric recognizes that while technology bridges the gap, it cannot fully replicate the energy and synergy that arise when teams gather in a shared space. This understanding aligns with the findings of a McKinsey report, which highlights the importance of “serendipitous encounters” and informal interactions for generating new ideas and fostering innovation.

Pandemic Panic” to “Post-COVID Power-Up”: Lessons from the Analysts. 

Businesses are recovering from the pandemic by reimagining their business model and focusing on four areas: recovering revenue, rebuilding operations, rethinking the organization, and accelerating digital adoption. The third step – rebuilding operations – has immediate returns on maximizing revenue opportunities. In that regard, consider how collaboration is emerging as the top game changer.

• McKinsey surveyed 800 global executives and found that 70% believe their companies must change their business models to survive and thrive in the post-pandemic world.
• A Bain & Company study finds that companies that quickly recover from crises outperform their competitors by 20%.

A New Space for a New Era: “Cubicle Camaraderie” Makes a Comeback

Maveric’s relocation to the expansive Kalyani Vista office in JP Nagar, Bengaluru, underscores the company’s commitment to collaboration. The 1000-seater premium facility is easily accessible and offers a dynamic environment that fosters cross-team interaction and knowledge sharing. The transition is a tangible embodiment of Maveric’s dedication to providing its associates with an optimal work environment, echoing the approach of companies like Salesforce, which recently invested in redesigned office spaces that encourages collaboration and creativity.

Fueling Growth and Vision: “Teamwork Makes the Dream Work”

Returning to the office and moving to a state-of-the-art facility aligns with Maveric’s ambitious growth strategy and vision to lead the BankTech space. The enhanced collaboration and team dynamics from in-person interactions fuel innovation, accelerate project delivery, and create a fertile ground for fresh ideas to germinate.  

Aided by its emphasis on expanding service lines and venturing into new geographies, the strategic decision reinforces Maveric’s commitment to promoting community values and shared purpose. Additionally, the shift helps the leading Tech systems aggregator in attracting and retaining top talent and creating a cohesive team that navigates the complexities of global expansion to deliver exceptional value to clients.

The Future of Work is Hybrid, But the Heart of Collaboration is Human

Maveric’s return to the physical office post-COVID highlights the company’s forward-thinking approach to fostering collaboration, strengthening its culture, and achieving its strategic objectives. Embracing the power of a world-class work environment is a bold step towards shaping a future where innovation thrives, teams flourish, and Maveric continues to redefine the boundaries of what is possible in the BankTech industry.

About Maveric

Established in 2000, Maveric Systems is a niche, domain-led, BankTech specialist, transforming digital ecosystems across retail, corporate, wealth management, cards & payments and lending domains. Our 2600+ specialists use proven solutions and frameworks to address formidable CXO challenges across Customer Experience, Assurance, Regulatory Compliance, Process Excellence and New age AMS.

 Our competencies across Data, Digital, Cloud, DevOps, AI and automation helps global and regional banking leaders as well as Fintechs solve next-gen business challenges through emerging technology. Our global presence spans across 3 continents with regional delivery capabilities in Amsterdam, Bengaluru, Chennai, Dallas, Dubai, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, London, New Jersey, Pune, Riyadh, Singapore, Sweden, Dubai and Warsaw.

Our inherent banking domain expertise, a customer-intimacy-led delivery model, and differentiated talent with layered competency – deep domain and tech leadership, supported by a culture of ownership, energy, and commitment to customer success, make us the technology partner of choice for our customers.

In today’s era where AI and ML have become streamline services and products for companies, every industry is embarking on creating new use cases with them. Across wide range of industries, some of which are historically existing from start of mankind, every traditional way of working is being re-looked at to improve, to automate and to refresh the way it’s done.

In all this, even Banking industry which is close to $5 trillion in size globally as per 2023 figures, is not behind and is equipping itself with AI and ML intelligence to future-proof itself. All the peripheral industries that are linked to banking are using AI and ML in multiple ways. It is matter of time that banks will have to bring in AI to change as per the needs of globalization, international banking and trading and finance management areas among others. Here is my take on where next we can head to using AI and ML in Banking and Fintech as an industry that’s growing at 6-7% CAGR every year.

Automated Personal Finance Management.

We all have had our shares of influencers’ videos guiding us on personal finance management journey and how we can improve our XIRR with every penny. If influencers can be trusted why not the banks itself? Banks can embed Personal Finance Management into their portals to enable users to set goals for themselves. Based on those goals, banks can accordingly lock their debits and funds from being spent if it is taking user away from their financial goal.

Automated Audit reports

Banks need to generate their audit reports at regular intervals to comply with the regulatory bodies or for audit purposes. For the same they need to get data from multiple systems and input or generate reports with external trigger to comply with regulatory requirements. With AI and ML, banks can accelerate this process to get reports at regular intervals that can track the banks spend, their reserves, etc. to use it for checking compliance and generate necessary report.

AI to reduce cybercrimes in finance

We all have come across several schemes that people fall prey to and lose their money. AI can be a blessing for us if we can improve our predictive analytics using the past data and add more intelligence to curb the crimes in future. Banks can automate responses to cyber attacks without waiting for human intervention to fight it. After trend analysis on the patterns of attacks, AI can help in generating solutions as well. AI can therefore be made more robust first in threat detection, incident response and then using ML pro-actively predicting any possible future threats.

Self-healing banking portals

There are times where digital banking portals have crashed owing to some technical issue, data recovery and network problem among others. Some manual intervention is needed to get them up and running. Just like we have self-healing machines which can proactively repair themselves, our digital banking portals as well using AI and ML can detect such malfunction preemptively and heal itself on its own. This can eliminate the time systems have to wait for someone to repair it. Similarly, these systems are also down for maintenance activities at regular intervals, which causes inconvenience. To facilitate continuous service, AI/ML can eliminate the downtimes by breaking down the maintenance activities smartly and carrying them out seamlessly in the background.

Intelligent loan recovery 

The number of NPAs and bankruptcies that are filed everyday are growing everyday adding pressure on banks’ profits and on the end customer. To facilitate this loan recovery AI and ML can assist banks. By tracking the spend patterns associated with the customer, banks can very well conclude if the about-to-be defaulter is avoiding the payments to get away or is genuinely facing the losses and hence not able to pay.

Smart Data Backups

For all financial systems, may it be bank data, customer data, credit report data and other critical information, regulatory bodies advise data backups to be taken at regular intervals. When such backup is planned other data read/write is paused until the activity is complete. This pause causes discontinuity and can be avoided if smart data backups are brought in picture. Using AI, databases can detect a change in record and take a backup to avoid the downtime. Using ML, database can learn to recover itself beforehand so that data recovery does not cause discontinuity.

Smart Budget Categorization

Based on the trends of spendings, for salaried customers, banks can smartly use AI to categorize the salary every month and create a spend analysis to make them understand how they can effectively use their funds. Going deeper into this, market conditions can also be incorporated to drive more action on how profits can be maximized with investment in real estate, stock markets, mutual funds, insurance etc.

Realtime Cross border settlements 

The current process followed to settle cross-border payments is time-consuming, lengthy and involves risks. Using AI, banks can cut down on time and risk of conversion rate while ensuring competitive rates and transparent pricing. AI combined with blockchain technology can help in enhancing transparency and security in cross border payments by using shared ledger systems. Besides, AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data to determine the most efficient routes for transactions, reducing processing times and costs.

Borderless Banking

We all have experienced the ease of banking with UPI coming in. Now with UPI being integrated in foreign countries, borderless banking has started becoming a reality. With use of AI and ML, this borderless banking can further be enhanced to improve security, access and ease. Currency conversion, banking regulations, investments in foreign stock markets can all be made easier by bringing AI in picture. Getting better conversion rate, background check before investing in foreign stock exchanges, understanding banking better can all be solved using AI

Reducing Financing Risks for banks

In India, there have been rise in NPAs lately. There have been scams wherein underlying collateral was faked and loans were approved to fulfil the targets. This kind of practices create risky liabilities on bank which might result into fall of banks. Big banks like Credit Suisse, Silicon Valley Bank, Signature bank and many more no longer exist owing to their risky assets and liabilities. To curb such falls, AI and ML can be used to regularly monitor the health of the assets and collaterals with banks and such risky loans as well to manage credit appetite of banks.
Humans are fearful that AI would take up their jobs and eliminate the need for human intervention. I say that why not use AI for bringing in the ethics, fairness and ease that’s needed which otherwise is lagging because of human greed, illegal interventions and laziness. A secure and closed industry as banking should embrace AI to make the current system more responsible, more trustworthy and more ethical than ever before.

What’s in store for the financial industry with this AI boom would be an interesting space to watch and learn. A secure, closed, and regulatory driven domain like banking is embracing AI and ML with a spark of creativity and convenience. This will make way for new ways to interact with money and grow financial wealth securely.

About Maveric Systems

Established in 2000, Maveric Systems is a niche, domain-led, BankTech specialist, transforming digital ecosystems across retail, corporate, wealth management, cards & payments and lending domains. Our 2600+ specialists use proven solutions and frameworks to address formidable CXO challenges across Customer Experience, Assurance, Regulatory Compliance, Process Excellence and New age AMS.

 Our competencies across Data, Digital, Cloud, DevOps, AI and automation helps global and regional banking leaders as well as Fintechs solve next-gen business challenges through emerging technology. Our global presence spans across 3 continents with regional delivery capabilities in Amsterdam, Bengaluru, Chennai, Dallas, Dubai, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, London, New Jersey, Pune, Riyadh, Singapore, Sweden, Dubai and Warsaw.

Our inherent banking domain expertise, a customer-intimacy-led delivery model, and differentiated talent with layered competency – deep domain and tech leadership, supported by a culture of ownership, energy, and commitment to customer success, make us the technology partner of choice for our customers.

The Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI) sector, alongside Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs), is undergoing a period of tremendous transformation in India. Driven by factors like digital adoption, regulatory changes, and the rise of fintech, staying ahead of the innovation curve requires navigating a complex technological landscape. This guide explores some key trends shaping the BFSI & NBFC tech space in 2024 and offers insights for navigating this dynamic environment.

Top 10 Technology Trends in 2024:

1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): AI and ML are revolutionizing how these institutions operate. According to Gartner predictions report, it is said that by 2026, 75% of businesses will use generative AI to create synthetic customer data. From fraud detection and risk management to personalized customer experiences and loan underwriting, AI is streamlining processes and operations by enhancing decision-making capabilities. ML models leverage historical data and predictive analytics to assess credit worthiness swiftly and accurately, expediting the lending process at reduced risk.
2. Cloud Adoption: Cloud computing offers scalability, agility, and cost-effectiveness. Migrating to the cloud enables institutions to deploy innovative solutions faster and leverage advanced analytics for better customer insights, and focus on their core business priorities without the burden of managing infrastructure. A recent survey stated that 83% of financial services companies already use cloud infrastructure in some capacity, and 38% choose hybrid cloud with single and multi-cloud solutions. It is highly possible that by 2026, 70% of leading banks will increase their cloud spend.
3. Open Banking and APIs: Open Banking regulations are fostering collaboration within the financial ecosystem. By leveraging APIs to integrate with third-party fintech solutions, these financial institutions can expand their service offerings beyond traditional boundaries, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation across multiple touchpoints, ultimately delivering greater value to customers in the digital age.
4. Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC): The emergence of ONDC presents a significant opportunity for BFSI & NBFC institutions. Integrating with the ONDC ecosystem, institutions can offer financial services like microloans and payment processing to a wider range of merchants and consumers. Supporting this trend Government of India (GoI) has brought in initiatives to target registering 900 million buyers & 1.2 million sellers on the ONDC platform and generate USD 48 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) for the next 5 years.
5. Cybersecurity: As financial institutions become increasingly reliant on technology, cybersecurity threats become more sophisticated, according to CERT-In, India’s financial sector faces on an average of 4,400 cyber-attacks daily. Implementing robust security measures is paramount to protecting sensitive customer data and ensuring business continuity. Strengthening risk planning against unforeseen fraud with AI and automation tools which can analyse synthetic data to identify emerging threats and continuously update detection algorithms to stay ahead of fraudsters.
6. RegTech: Regulatory compliance is an ongoing challenge for BFSI & NBFC institutions. In 2022-2023, India’s regulatory framework saw 5,986 updates, averaging over 16 updates per day. RegTech solutions powered by AI and automation can streamline compliance processes, better financial reporting data models, reduce costs, and minimize regulatory penalties.
7. Customer Experience: In today’s competitive landscape, delivering a seamless and personalized customer experience is crucial. Embracing omnichannel strategies, chatbots and AI-powered virtual assistants, can elevate customer engagement, drive operational efficiency, and gain a competitive advantage, ultimately positioning themselves for long-term success in the dynamic and evolving financial services industry.
8. Advanced UPI: Indian Payment landscape is witnessing a rapid evolution with 59% increase in volume and 45% increase in value of UPI transactions compared to 2022. The emergence of UPI Lite, UPI Tap & Pay, and UPI Credit lines signifies a paradigm shift in the way payments are made and processed in India. These new features offer enhanced convenience, speed, and flexibility to users, empowering them with seamless payment experiences across various channels and devices. BFSI & NBFC institutions need to adopt these trends to stay relevant.
9. Marketing Technology (MarTech): Marking advancement in India fuelled by technology like Machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and deep learning are fundamentally changing how institutions engage with customers, analyse data, and extract valuable insights.
10. Hyper-personalization: In a digital-first landscape, where according to a study, 86% of customers are willing to share their data for a more personalized banking experience. Hyper-personalization in BFSI and NBFCs not only enhances customer satisfaction but also fosters deeper engagement and loyalty, driving sustainable growth and differentiation in a competitive market. Through advanced algorithms and machine learning, these banks analyse vast datasets to understand individual preferences, behaviours, and needs, delivering highly targeted and relevant services and recommendations

Navigating the Landscape:

• Identify Your Needs: Carefully assess your institution’s specific needs and challenges. What are your pain points? What are your strategic goals? Understanding your priorities will guide your technology selection process.
• Embrace Innovation: Don’t be afraid to experiment with new technologies. Pilot projects and proof-of-concepts can help you evaluate the potential benefits of emerging solutions before full-scale implementation. Consider establishing Centres of Excellence (CoEs) to embrace experimentation in a controlled manner, maximizing benefits.
• Prioritize Security: Cybersecurity should be at the forefront of your technology considerations. Invest in robust security solutions and ensure your systems are compliant with data privacy regulations.
• Build a Strong Technology Partner: Partner with a reliable technology solutions provider who understands the BFSI & NBFC landscape. Look for a partner who can offer domain expertise, comprehensive solutions, implementation proficiency, and ongoing support.

Maveric Systems – Your Partner in Success

Maveric Systems is a leading provider of IT solutions specifically for the BFSI & NBFC sector. With our deep domain expertise and a comprehensive portfolio of AI-powered solutions, we can help your institution navigate the evolving technological landscape. We offer solutions for:

• Customer Experience
• Process Excellence
• Regulatory & Compliance
• New Age Application Management System
• Assurance

Contact us at indiasales@maveric-systems.com to initiate a conversation about your unique requirements. Let’s explore together how we can tailor our solutions to meet your specific needs effectively.

Author:

Nivedha Ganeshan is an Associate Manager – India Sales handling Client engagements, at Maveric Systems.