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TCS BaNCS™
TCS BaNCS™: Enabling Transformation in Banks and Financial Institutions
Highlights
- Core and digital banking will shift towards cloud-native and microservices, requiring banks to adapt and innovate.
- Cloud-based core banking offers agility and scalability but poses security and compliance risks.
- Payment transformation, risk management, and integrated financial services powered by cloud, automation, and AI will shape Fintech's future.
Core and digital banking systems are shifting towards cloud-native applications and microservices to boost agility, while real-time finance and advanced analytics are reshaping FinTech and payment systems globally.
Venkateshwaran Srinivasan, Global Head of TCS Financial Solutions, shares insights on the shift to real-time finance and cloud-native architectures to meet rising customer expectations.
How do you see the evolution of core banking systems and digital banking impacting financial institutions over the next decade?
“I am seeing core banking and digital banking systems increasingly adopting cloud-native principles allowing customers to leverage the power of SaaS/cloud in an increasingly powerful manner.
“Several large banks still struggle with business and regulatory change management with their monolith application landscape or, at times, a complex spaghetti both make day-to-day IT management too complex and, even more importantly, do not deliver on the expectations of agility which businesses of today demand. We see architectures increasingly moving towards microservices, which will help impart agility and enable quick responses to opportunities. Also, all aspects of finance becoming real-time will mandate this shift away from legacy architectures, which simply cannot cope with business expectations and will, in turn, impact competitiveness in the market.”
TCS has featured in the leadership club for as many as 12 categories in SLT 2024. What significance does such a recognition have for a firm like TCS?
“Firstly, the number of client wins reflects the trust placed in us by customers across multiple geographies and we are grateful to them for choosing TCS BaNCS to be their transformation partner of choice.
“This recognition across so many categories is mainly due to the breadth and depth of our offerings and the consistent investment we make year on year across the spectrum of financial journeys of a consumer. The strength of the partnership we have with our customers and our execution track record are the other key determinants of market success that result in recognition like this.
“For us, it is all about being relevant to our customer’s business and operational priorities and aligning our investments to enable their success.”
What are the benefits and potential drawbacks of adopting cloud-based solutions for core banking?
“The cloud is truly transformational in the sense that it truly changes how a bank or any enterprise looks at foundational IT capacity. It has also leveled the playing field, in a manner of speaking, for newer organizations that are able to align their costs with their growth needs better and get away from a ‘Capex and ROI’ way of thinking. It also transforms organizational capability to interact and evolve or participate in ecosystems that deliver superior value and help them be present where customers need them to be in their financial journeys.
“The concerns around security, regulatory compliance, privacy, etc. come to mind, but I am sure these are getting more and more manageable in the days to come. Also, in the banking world, there could be some exacerbation of risks when you talk of, say, multi-tenant cloud instances. These need to be understood better and managed carefully.”
What trends do you see shaping the future of Fintech in the next 5-10 years?
“Business-wise I feel deep and broad payments transformation will continue as globally we move towards more and more real time in all aspects of money movement, be it local or cross-border. With this will naturally come the need for more innovation in managing risk - be it security or fraud as the growth will bring about such imperatives. It will also entail higher focus on operational resilience.
“The global spread of wealth and large populations moving towards relative affluence in many nations, especially in emerging markets, will necessitate the growth of technologies and players who can help them manage their financial needs at scale in an empowered fashion, keeping in mind that this generation will be far more demanding in terms of sustainability and are digitally native. Think sophisticated digital advice and green financing, and you get the picture.
“I see all aspects of financial services getting interwoven into consumers’ lives more and more. In a sense, ’banking’ will become less and less visible and rather be the silent enabler of business and activity both in retail and consumer contexts. Financial services will become seamlessly integrated into consumers’ lives, making banking a ’frictionless’ enabler of business and activity. Technologies like cloud, automation, and consumer-centric ecosystems will power this shift. AI’s power will be unleashed, necessitating solutions for privacy, intellectual property, sustainability, and resilience in a GenAI-pervasive world.”
What steps should banks take to ensure data security and compliance when upgrading their core banking and CRM systems?
“Data security and compliance are key today not just for tech leadership, but they have become crucial elements on the Board and C-Suite agenda given the pervasiveness of technology in every aspect of business and the number of external touch points increasing so dramatically, thanks to mobile explosion, cloud, IoT and other technologies becoming mainstream. In areas like data security and compliance, I feel, first and foremost, there is nothing called ’steady state’. ‘You are never truly done’. So, banks should firstly embrace this attitude that there is no one-time fix. The threats from cyber and other fraudsters are continuously evolving, and therefore the proactive and reactive elements of strategy to counter these also need evolve constantly.
“Secondly, what can help is working with partners who have made security core to their business and evolution. Security cannot be something you slap on as an afterthought. Security needs to be incorporated by design and choosing partners who embrace this way of thinking is something for banks to consider.”
How does TCS BaNCS platform address the challenges faced by modern banks?
“At TCS BaNCS, we are constantly seeking to leverage the power of technology to help on both sides of the equation i.e. how do we help clients design, manufacture, and distribute products that are innovative with unique pricing or other differentiated characteristics and how do we help them run their operations and technology in an efficient and as much an automated manner as possible. How we do this will be by a combination of core native product capabilities, sophisticated and right-grained API capabilities, as well as data and analytical capabilities, which enable an increasing level of differentiation on the front line while enhancing efficiency at the back end. Some of the increasingly newer questions around security and resilience etc. are of course much more relevant today and these we spoke of earlier as well.”
Can you share some insights on how TCS leverages data analytics to enhance CRM functionalities for its clients?
“Banks are increasingly wanting to provide personalized and contextual services in real-time as well as to stay relevant to their customers as their financial needs manifest. We believe in the ‘one customer view for the enterprise, and one enterprise view for the customer’– and this is constantly a work in progress be in terms of data, reports, or analytics given the multiple dimensions of both sales and relationship management – In terms of customer acquisition and retention, account management or growth/product productivity and performance. Some of the key capabilities that are used, like spending patterns, life stage analysis, next best product, loan risk analysis, product recommendation engines, and loan repayment patterns, are continually enhanced with datasets from our partner banks.”
What are some of the things that TCS is doing that would help TCS stand tall in SLT 2025?
“We will continue to listen to clients, understand what opportunities and challenges they are seeing in their world and constantly adjust and calibrate our roadmaps and agendas to their priorities. Being relevant for their present and their future – that is all we try to do.
“Coming to some specifics, we will scale some of our initiatives around AI. We are making solid progress in our roadmap towards microservices, and we will be nearing the end of that journey in 2025, which should make our value proposition even more compelling. We are also expanding our offerings to sharpen the focus on wealth management, more focus on payment evolution, etc.”
How do you see the evolution of payment systems influencing the financial services sector?
“Payments are one of the most visible ‘now and here’ services to a bank’s customers—even as industry evolutions in payments seek to make payments more and more ‘invisible’. We are looking at payment segments that are digital and frictionless. We see one track of evolution, such as wallets, contactless payments, biometrics, etc., clearly influencing the nature of how consumer payments evolve.
“Real-time payments are transforming interbank transactions, driving the evolution of digital core systems. The sector is embracing microservices and cloud architectures for seamless integration. ISO 20022 adoption in payments enhances compliance and STP. As payments become increasingly digital and real-time, banks must meet demands for faster, cheaper services, making payment processing a key area for change in the next few years.”