TCS BaNCS Research Journal – Issue 14

TCS BaNCS Research Journal - Issue 14

The world is heading towards an approach of ecosystem everything. One where Google may soon login into our accounts with our permission. And where virtual and real spaces are connecting almost seamlessly.

To keep up with the varying tastes of our readers (and time pressures), we decided to bring you both long and short articles and blogposts in this edition. Subjects ranging from decentralized finance to AI, ISO2022 adoption, open banking, US retirements, and blockchain security, we wanted to give our SMEs an opportunity to share their viewpoints and write in a way that they are most comfortable with. We’ve also transcribed some of the recent webinars we conducted along with our customers on topics such as real-time payments, open banking, and asset servicing on the cloud for your reading. Some of the stories herald new approaches while others are hankering for more conversation.

• Next Generation in financial services: The coming of age - Financial services have traditionally led change and invested ahead of the curve in technology for several decades. But in the last few years, the rise of tech giants and the speed of adoption of technologies like Cloud and AI, seem to have left the tech savvy financial institutions thinking. Industries like retail have upped the ante, and there is a lot that financial institutions in general and banks in particular have been left to think about, as they look at the disruption, which is largely tech driven, that is now at their doorstep.

• DeFi - A perspective - There is an app for everything today. And a computer has made its way into almost everyone’s hands. The smartphone has moved up in its adoption curve in the last decade, and its demand is fast approaching saturation. The next frontier may well be an ecosystem of transparent and permission-less (or part permissioned) financial services, what is termed, Defi or decentralized finance. 

• Embedded finance - Now anyone can innovate on financial services. Are you ready? - The ability to create products and services that address unmet customer needs is a key ingredient in the recipe to becoming a successful company. Innovators are leveraging Technological evolutions to rapidly create products and services which address such unmet needs. Embedded Finance is all about meeting such unmet needs.

• The rise of retail wealth management – “Where the Wall Street meets main street” - Wealth management services have traditionally been focused on High Net Worth (HNI) clients and upwards, and the reasons are fairly obvious: These high-value services were conceived of for those with sufficient wealth, and such highly complex and people-intensive services did not lend themselves to a wider pool of lower valued “Mass affluent” (or “Mass market”) customer segments.

• Data strategy in the back office - Data management and strategy is a topic of substantial debate across all securities firms on a continual basis. Given the scale of volumes and with data doubling at a faster rate than ever before, it does look like that the topic will continue to be debated for a long time to come.