Industry: Credit Risk Management

Tackling Tech Bloat: Slimming Down to Boost Efficiency, Security, and Innovation

Written by Brendan Deakin on July 10, 2024. Posted in Blog.

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Tackling Tech Bloat: Slimming Down to Boost Efficiency, Security, and Innovation

How Major Banks and Large Financial Services Providers can Streamline their Tech Systems

Today’s technology can be both a vital enabler to progress and growth, and also a potential hindrance to efficiency. With the accumulation of outdated, redundant, or overly complex tech systems, larger financial institutions, including major banks, are feeling the pressures of tech bloat. And just like any other bloating, tech bloat is uncomfortable – hampering efficiency, escalating costs, and stifling innovation – which makes it a critical issue to address. For larger banks in particular, the urgency to streamline tech infrastructure has never been greater. With an increasingly competitive (and much more highly regulated) environment for financial services providers, eliminating tech bloat is essential to enhancing your overall operational efficiency, improving your security, and enabling your ability to remain agile.

According to a 2023 survey by MuleSoft and Deloitte, large enterprises now use an average of more than a thousand applications across their organization.

So what exactly is tech bloat, and how can you slim down your stack? Read on to find out more.

The Silent Saboteur: Understanding Tech Bloat in Financial Services

Referring to the excessive accumulation of outdated, redundant, or highly complex tech systems that weigh down an organization, tech bloat in financial services is becoming increasingly common. This phenomenon stems from a variety of causes, but the biggest tends to be an abundance of legacy systems that have been patched and repurposed over the years. Of course many financial services providers require very specific needs to be addressed (including everything from core banking systems and risk assessment models, to cybersecurity software, workflow automation, customer relationship management, financial planning and forecasting, data sources, fraud and identity management, loan origination software, and payment processing). As the list of needs (and related tech) grows with your organization, so does the bloat.

But many of the software solutions you have will overlap in functionality, leading to inefficiencies in both operation and cost. A survey by Freshworks shared that “54% of IT professionals say their organization pays for software” that never gets used. And often these systems are not integrated with each other very well, creating numerous silos of information, complicating workflows, and making data access tricky. Not to mention the fact that extensive customizations and add-ons over the years, while useful at first, can quickly turn into burdens, limiting flexibility and making maintenance and updates difficult. And of course those updates are critical, because with constant regulatory shifts, financial institutions do regularly need to update their systems, which can result in a quickly tangled web of temporary fixes that, you guessed it, add more bloat (not to mention leave you more vulnerable to everything from data breaches to lapses in compliance).

Unveiling the Not-so-Hidden Consequences of Tech Bloat

Now that we’ve looked at what it is and how it starts… What impact does tech bloat really have on day-to-day operations? As it turns out, a lot – and those effects get compounded the longer your bloat hangs on.

Financial Implications: First and foremost, tech bloat significantly strains your financial resources. Maintaining and supporting any number of redundant systems is, well, redundant, leading to increasing operational and maintenance costs. And outdated systems tend to consume a disproportionate share of your budget, diverting necessary funds away from more strategic, growth-focused investments, and hampering your ability to invest in more innovative, efficient solutions.

According to Freshworks, “the cost of trying to use unhelpful technology amounts to more than $84B annually in wasted time in the US alone, or $10M every hour of every day.”

Operational Inefficiency: A bloated tech environment slows down business processes and complicates workflows, with legacy systems and overlapping solutions creating bottlenecks. This inefficiency affects day-to-day operations, but also has a compounding effect the longer it continues, leading to longer turnaround times and a lack of flexibility and agility in your operations, ultimately adding friction to customer experiences.
Risk and Compliance Challenges: The more outdated systems you have to manage, the more the risk of errors, data inconsistencies, and compliance misfires increases. All financial services providers must adhere to stringent regulatory requirements, and the more bloated your organization, the more challenging it is to ensure compliance, leading to potential fines and reputational damage.
Security Vulnerabilities: Along the lines of compliance struggles, outdated systems are often easier prey for cyber attackers. The complexity of a bloated tech environment makes it much more difficult to implement robust security measures effectively, leaving you open to targeting by cybercriminals. Any breach (data, compliance, ransomware) can have severe consequences, including financial losses and significant damage to customer trust.
Innovation Roadblocks: Want a surefire way to stifle innovation? Maintaining and integrating multiple tech systems makes it extremely challenging to adopt new technologies, even if those technologies are ones you really, really want to utilize. In an industry where agility, flexibility, and continuous innovation are required to stay competitive, this hindrance to tech advancement places larger, more complex financial services organizations at a distinct disadvantage – making it difficult to explore new opportunities and deliver cutting-edge solutions to your customers.

Any of these consequences should be enough to address your tech bloat problem, but put them all together and you can see it’s not just about security or reducing operational costs – it’s fundamental to unlocking your potential for sustained innovation and sustainable growth. Streamlining your tech infrastructure allows you to overcome these challenges and position yourself for future success and customer loyalty.

Case Study:
Reducing Tech Bloat

Consider the case of Provenir customer NewDay. Some of their existing systems were proving costly in terms of release times and updates, and were due for decommissioning. By implementing more holistic risk decisioning software, they were able to significantly reduce processing time and improve quote response times.

Sub-1

second decisioning processing time
99.95%

SLA for availability
80%

improvement in speed of change
2.5x

faster quote response

Winning the War on Tech Bloat: Strategies for Financial Institutions

So what can you do to streamline your operations and slim down for good? It sounds daunting, but what it really requires is a strategic, methodical approach (and the right technology partner).

1. Conduct a Technology Audit:	Identify Redundant and Outdated Systems: Thoroughly review all of your existing systems to pinpoint which ones are outdated, redundant, or no longer serve a critical function Assess Integration and Interoperability: Evaluate how well your current systems integrate and communicate with each other, identifying gaps and inefficiencies
2. Streamline and Consolidate:	Prioritize Critical Systems: Determine which systems are essential for your core operations and focus on maintaining and enhancing those first Phase Out or Replace Redundant Solutions: Gradually eliminate or replace systems that are no longer necessary or that duplicate functionality
3. Invest in Modern, Integrated Solutions:	Adopt Cloud-Based Platforms: Leverage cloud technology to improve scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency Emphasize Integrations and Scalability: Invest in solutions that can easily integrate with your existing systems and scale as you grow (or can scale as you continue to eliminate other existing systems)
4. Enhance Data Management and Governance:	Centralize Data Repositories: Consolidate your data into centralized repositories to ensure consistency, accessibility, and security Implement Robust Data Governance Frameworks: Establish strong data governance practices to manage your data quality, privacy, and compliance
5. Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement:	Encourage Innovation and Flexibility: Promote a mindset that embraces new technologies and innovative solutions Regularly Review and Update Technology Strategy: Continuously assess and update your technology strategy to align with evolving business needs and tech advancements in the industry
6. Partner with the Right Tech Providers:	Collaborate with Established Decisioning Software Companies and Consultants: Engage with tech firms and consultants to leverage their expertise and innovative solutions (and be sure they have experience with legacy migrations, complex integrations, and reducing tech bloat) Leverage Industry Expertise to Guide Transformation: Utilize the knowledge and experience of industry experts to navigate the complexities of technology transformation (i.e. does your new tech provider have an experienced Professional Services team that can help guide you?)

Fighting off Future Bloat

Now that you’ve slimmed your stack, how can you ensure that your tech bloat doesn’t return with a vengeance? Adopt a forward-thinking, agile approach. Agile methodologies are crucial, as they promote flexibility in technology development and deployment, allowing you to adapt quickly to changing consumer/industry needs and emerging industry trends. Agile methods encourage iterative improvements, which can help ensure that all of your systems remain both current and effective. Which is also why it’s critical to stay aware (and ahead) of tech advances in the industry. Keeping up with cutting-edge solutions and tech advancements allows you to proactively enhance efficiency and the customer experience. Look towards building a sustainable technology roadmap; with long-term planning that focuses on scalability and adaptability, you’ll ensure that your tech infrastructure can grow and evolve with the organization. Prioritizing this flexibility and continuous improvement and innovation will help you safeguard against tech bloat and maintain a streamlined, efficient, customer-centric tech environment.

Provenir’s AI-Powered Decisioning Platform

Part of fighting the bloat battle is selecting the right technology partner – one that can enable flexibility, scalability, and an end-to-end decisioning platform that you can build and grow your business on. Provenir’s AI-Powered Decisioning Platform brings together the key capabilities you need to turn decisioning into a differentiator, allowing you to deploy accurate, fully automated risk decisioning across the lifecycle, while also gaining actionable insights to optimize strategies and enhance performance across the entire organization. Featuring solutions for data, decisioning, case management, and decision intelligence, across onboarding, fraud & identity management, customer management and collections, Provenir’s platform is a one-stop solution that eliminates silos, brings teams together, and enables sustainable, customer-centric growth.

Want more info on how Provenir’s dedicated team of Principal Consultants and Professional Services experts can help you reduce tech bloat in your organization?

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Finance Forward: 10 Breakthrough Innovations Reshaping The Future of Financial Services

Written by Allison Karavos on June 26, 2024. Posted in Blog.

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Finance Forward: 10 Breakthrough Innovations Reshaping The Future of Financial Services

Explore how cutting-edge tech will redefine the industry

The past twenty years have seen incredible advancements in technology of all sorts (do we even remember life before the smartphone?) – and the world of financial services is no exception. But innovation is far from over. The financial sector stands on the edge of even more cutting-edge technology, with increasingly sophisticated tech emerging that will enhance decisioning accuracy, improve operational efficiency, and ensure maximum customer satisfaction and engagement. What’s ahead for financial services providers? While it’s impossible to predict exactly what the next twenty years will look like, we’re looking forward to what may be in store in the near future, based on the tech innovations and market-shaping forces in play today.

1. Evolution in Ways to Pay, Borrow, Lend and More

There’s a variety of tech advancements on the horizon that could reshape how we pay for things, how we borrow money, and the landscape of financial services and products in general.
Some of these include:

Biometric Payments

Payments authenticated through biometric data including fingerprints, facial recognition, or retinal scans, enabling a seamless (and secure!) way to pay
Voice-activated Payments

Payments initiated through voice commands via smart speakers or other voice-enabled devices, greatly enhancing convenience for users
Invisible Payments

This includes transactions that occur automatically in the background (one level up from our automated payments for subscriptions for example), with IoT-enabled purchases that reduce friction
Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Lending

These lending platforms will continue to evolve, using blockchain for transparency and security
On-Demand Loans

Instant, micro-loans available on-demand via mobile apps, tailored to individual needs with flexible repayment terms
Tokenized Assets

Tokenization of real-life assets (i.e. real estate, art) enabling fractional ownership and lending, and providing investors with new opportunities

The connected vehicle payments market could reach $600 billion by 2030.

2. The AI and Machine Learning Revolution

Already integral to processing large datasets, ongoing advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are set to continue to redefine risk decisioning and the entire user experience. Future algorithms will leverage advanced neural networks and deep learning to enable near-real-time decision-making by not only analyzing complex variables (including behavioral patterns and unstructured data), but also predicting results with uncanny accuracy. These advancements in intelligence will also further enhance personalization possibilities, facilitating the shift from static to dynamic risk assessment and accommodating for life changes and real-time behavior – greatly increasing the inclusivity and fairness of financial services offerings (and the customer experience!) along the way. Advanced analytics will also help financial services providers understand on a more granular level how people are using products, enabling you to make improvements, track the customer journey, and interaction points. Likewise, AI enables us to break down silos across different datasets, understand consumer behavior much more dynamically across different systems – and allow you to tailor new products and services accordingly. The applications when it comes to financial services are endless, including AI-driven financial advisors that can provide highly personalized financial planning and wealth management services, tailored to individual goals and behaviors.

As we’re already witnessing, Generative AI will continue to have a massive impact. It is certainly making life easier in many ways (chat bots, personalized email and marketing campaigns, dynamic customer management, etc.), but it will also mean greater ease in testing products and models as new data sets are generated (which used to take an incredible amount of time when done manually). Generative AI could also help test different use cases for products and UAT testing (which is traditionally very difficult and time consuming). We can also use Generative AI to translate videos and documents in real-time, or even do live translations in meetings, increasing the serviceable markets of financial services providers who may have previously been limited by language or region.

AI in Banking market was worth $6794.27 million USD in 2023, and is expected to reach $36765.29 million USD by 2023 (CAGR of 32.5%)

3. Quantum Computing: The New Frontier

Quantum computing promises to fundamentally change the capacity to process information by performing calculations at speeds unattainable by traditional computers, enabling the ability to execute complex risk simulations and fraud decisioning and detection algorithms. This speed enables quicker, and more informed risk decisoning for financial services providers. Quantum algorithms could simulate market reactions to economic events or stress test financial portfolios under a variety of conditions, providing insights at a speed and scale that just isn’t possible with today’s computation methods.

Globally, the financial services industry’s spending on quantum computing capabilities is expected to grow 233x from just US$80 million in 2022 to US$19 billion in 2032, growing at a 10-year CAGR of 72%

4. Blockchain and Decentralized Finance (DeFI)

Offering a decentralized and secure platform that can transform traditional banking infrastructure, credit approvals, and monitoring systems, blockchain technology can make big waves in risk decisioning, with advancements in peer-to-peer lending, smart contracts, and fraud screening measures. With transparent and fixed record-keeping, the technology can streamline processes and reduce operational costs, automating credit decisioning and other transactional processes. And with blockhain’s inherent transparency, the reliability of financial data is improved, greatly enhancing fraud and identity management. When it comes to the increasingly important aspect of identity verification, blockchain can also be useful – enabling Self-Soverign Identity (SSI) and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs). SSIs allow individuals to own and control their own digital identities, stored on a blockchain for maximum privacy and security, while DIDs use unique, blockchain-based identifiers that can be verified across different platforms without exposing personal data.

There is around $52 billion of value locked in DeFI, and global blockchain spending is expected to hit $19 billion this year

5. Rise of Central and Digital Bank Currencies

The potential adoption of digital currencies, including those issued by central banks (CBDCs) could dramatically alter the financial services landscape. Impacting how credit is managed and issued, these digital currencies offer new mechanisms for transparency and efficiency in financial transactions, with faster transaction times, reduced costs, and improved access to financial services, especially in underbanked/underserved communities. When it comes to risk decisioning, digital currencies can provide more streamlined and integrated data flows, enabling better tracking of financial behavior and transaction histories, ensuring more accurate risk assessments.

134 countries and currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC

6. Integrating IoT into Banking

The integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) in banking could provide continuous data streams to credit risk models, offering real-time insights into a potential borrower’s financial activities and habits, and ensuring more dynamic (and accurate) credit risk decisioning and lower default rates. For instance, data from smart home devices could inform lenders about a customer’s energy consumption patterns, which might correlate with financial stability or risk levels. This level of integration can lead to even more personalized risk assessments, potentially improving credit access and inclusion while mitigating risks for lenders.

IoT In Banking And Financial Services Market size is projected to reach USD $30925 Million by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 50.10% from 2023 to 2030.

7. Cybersecurity: Staying Ahead of Threats

With increased reliance on digital technologies comes increased cybersecurity risks. Robust security measures are critical, and future developments will include predictive and proactive security strategies to safeguard against continuously evolving cyber threats. The financial services industry’s vulnerability continues to grow, requiring innovative tech for protection like AI-driven threat detection systems that can predict and neutralize threats before they do damage. Proactive cybersecurity will become a critical component of risk management, ensuring that both customer data and financial assets are adequately protected. Advanced cryptography can also help with data security, including zero-knowledge proofs (allowing users to prove identity without revealing personal info, greatly enhancing data privacy and security), and homomorphic encryption, which encrypts data in a way that allows computations to be performed without decrypting.

Financial institutions are the second most impacted sector based on the number of reported data breaches; ransomware attacks on financial services increased from 55% in 2022 to 64% in 2023.

8. Sustainable and Social Impact Lending

Environmental and social governance (ESG) is a hot-button topic across industries, and can greatly affect financial services providers. Risk decisioning models will need to reflect the growing consumer and regulatory demand for responsible lending and banking practices, and could even influence the overall strategy of financial institutions towards more sustainable and socially responsible operations. With a rise in conscious consumerism and corporate responsibility driving the integration of ESG into financial decision making, lenders can use ESG scores alongside traditional metrics to assess credit and fraud risk. This approach aligns with global sustainability goals but also greatly appeals to a growing number of consumers (and investors) who place high value on organizations that prioritize ethical considerations in their operations.

Global sustainable finance product issuance totalled $717 billion in the first half of 2023.

9. The Impact of Regulatory and Ethical Developments

As technological capabilities expand, so does the scrutiny around their implications. AI and advanced data analytics in particular will require the need for robust regulatory frameworks to ensure these technologies are used ethically and responsibly – including data privacy, preventing bias in AI algorithms, and maintaining transparency and explainability in AI-driven decisions. Financial services providers will need to navigate a world where regulatory compliance is about much more than just following laws, but also about maintaining ethical standards and ensuring ongoing public trust, especially in decisions that affect individual creditworthiness and privacy.

By the end of 2024, Gartner predicts 75% of the global population will have its personal data protected by modern privacy regulations.

10. Identity Verification

The most critical aspect of offering loans or any other financial service is determining who you are dealing with and what the risk is. The way we identified individuals and their potential risk two decades ago was monumentally different than where we are today, and in the future this process promises to be even more seamless – and all-encompassing. We can expect even more dynamic verification codes to reduce the risk of fraud, highly-accurate DNA-based identification, genetic markers to be added to biometric identification systems, and more inclusive/accessible verification solutions that adhere to yet-to-be-established global standards for digital identity. Also possible are multimodal biometrics, combining multiple identifiers including behavior (typing patterns, mouse movements, gait) to continuously verify identity in real-time. Likewise, we can use wearable devices like smart watches and fitness trackers, as well as smart environment interactions (connected devices including smart homes, cars and workplaces) to verify identity, potentially reducing friction in the process.

Western Europe and Asia Pacific will potentially account for 50% of digital ID verification spend by 2028.

Future Innovation and The Customer Experience

Technology has always had the power to drive significant change in all aspects of society, and future tech advancements will continue to alter how financial institutions operate and interact with their customers. A common theme running through all of these innovations is the ability to personalize products and offerings, highlighting the extreme importance of the customer experience. A prime example of this is dynamic, responsive onboarding – where financial services providers are tailoring the onboarding experience to individual customers by matching data checks (including identity verification, AML, KYC, and more) to the event risk and the responses of the customer. Depending on the consumer’s answers in an application, the actual application itself will change dynamically – populating additional responses required or minimizing friction with fewer questions if lower risk is determined.

Today’s consumers will no longer stand for long wait times, inadequate customer service, and mass-marketed products. Instead, a competitive edge requires rapid response times, omnichannel offerings, customized products, and frictionless experiences – all enabled by automated, real-time decisioning.

But the concept of ‘decisioning’ itself will also evolve. Currently financial services providers utilize specific triggers that result in a decision being made, whether that’s from the end-consumer applying for a product, or from a provider proactively analyzing data and making a decision to offer a new product. But with the increased availability of data, extremely fast processing speeds, and the enhanced use of AI to analyze data and behaviors, decisioning will become much more fluid. Rather than trigger points causing a decision, are we in for a future where decisions around customers and products/services are just continuous? Seamless? Always happening? This too will result in more hyper-personalization and a customer-centric approach in all aspects of financial services.

Done well, personalization at scale for banking customers can lead to annual revenue uplifts of 10%

As these technologies develop, Provenir continues to lead the charge, offering an advanced decision intelligence platform that is adaptable, efficient, and strategically forward-thinking. Discover why choosing Provenir is the best decision for managing risk in a technologically evolving landscape.