Financial Institutions Move Beyond Legacy Infrastructure and Approaches to Innovate With Emerging Tech

Innovation is growing in financial services, where leaders are advancing digital transformation to gain a competitive advantage, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies.

Financial organizations face growing pressure to “modernize our infrastructure while making sure that the lights are kept on for the older technology,” said Manny Kamer, financial services practice leader at Dell Technologies, in a recent webinar.

The swirl of new technology, combined with the imperative to move faster to serve customers, makes for a transformative time in financial services, he said.

Overall, financial services organizations need to focus on “providing infrastructure that enhances security, enhances the compliance capabilities of products, and provides APIs that allow … end users to onboard equipment quickly,” Kamer said.

Joe Steiner, global chief technology officer of unstructured data solutions at Dell Technologies, said organizations “have to be prepared to change” and overcome legacy thinking in addition to moving beyond legacy solutions.

It’s all about flexibility, he noted during the webinar – flexibility to adopt the IT consumption models that work best for the organization, flexibility to adopt best-in-class technology components, and flexibility to enable data-sharing across the organization.

“Data is the rocket fuel for innovation,” Steiner said.

The rapid development of generative AI makes this an exciting time for financial services leaders and customers, he said. Large language models and other AI tools, he added, “are incredibly helpful to creative individuals within these organizations,” leading to “great data products and great outcomes” that will create competitive advantage.

Kamer said AI is helping financial organizations “make the best financial decisions, whether they are loan decisions, whether they’re fraud decisions based on credit card transactions, or whether they’re anti-money laundering decisions.”

Going forward, Kamer said he expects AI and ML to be at the forefront of the biggest innovations affecting financial services over the next few years, in areas ranging from detecting fraud to improving customer experience.

“AI is creating the biggest transformation changes in our lifetime,” he said. “It’s critical not to wait and to jump in with both feet and start learning about this from the start, investing in it … so that you are really able to take advantage of this technology.”

“Not waiting,” he added, “is the key to the successful institutions of the future.”

For more insight, view the webinar on demand.