Intelligent banking platform pushed

CEBU, Philippines —  Pressured with the unending threats in cybersecurity, the banking sector continues to fight and encouraged to immediately step into intelligent banking platform.

According to SAP Philippines managing director Edler Panlilio,  as consumers increasingly go digital, particularly amid the never normal, “it is now a crucial period for financial institutions to recalibrate their banking services and help improve financial inclusion and provide better customer experiences through customer-centric service offerings, such as becoming an intelligent bank.

Data Intelligence for instance involves sifting through tremendous amounts of data gathered from various clients and transactions recorded in the bank's systems. External sources also add up to these data, including mobile operators, social networks, and credit bureaus, among others.

 “For banks to truly explore the full potential of their data, they need to ensure that the entire data lifecycle is adequately managed and governed—from data collection, recording, monitoring to visualization, analysis, and interpretation. When done correctly, data assets can add significant value to the bank's profitability and sustainability,” he said.

With AI-enabled tools, financial institutions can effectively use and transform them into data intelligence, which is necessary for making intelligent business decisions and staying competitive and profitable. Banks need a clear data strategy to utilize the full benefits from data, which constitutes three crucial aspects, he recommended.

First is data management that involves data ownership and governance, including data collection, storage, structuring, review, cleaning, and monitoring.

Next is reporting and visualization, which involves the creation of an intelligent view of the bank's performance, quality of the portfolio, staff productivity, and other categories necessary to drive the business.

And lastly, data analytics, which is deemed as the most challenging yet valuable part of data strategy. Through analytical models developed by banks, they can predict customer behavior, understand better their needs and preferences, and proactively manage the overall business.

 “As financial services become more available due to digital banking, AI-powered analytics can help banks differentiate themselves, particularly with the help of data intelligence. Nowadays, data intelligent banks utilize AI and ML to analyze and transform massive data sets into intelligent insights. With these insights, banks can understand better their collected information and provide better services and experiences to their customers while ensuring robust regulatory compliance and risk management,” Panlilio explained.

Panlilio mentioned that among the country's banks that utilize data intelligence is the UnionBank of the Philippines (UnionBank). “As part of its data strategy, the UnionBank accelerated its digital initiatives further by collaborating with SAP to create a new banking model to support customer-centric services.”

With the help of SAP Data Intelligence, UnionBank integrated into their systems the first-known "Data Science Factory" model in SEA's financial sector. This model can help the bank realize an enhanced business management, improve internal processes, and have a better end-to-end perspective of all its operations, he added.

UnionBank's adoption of SAP Data Intelligence for its new digital model provides several advantages. This comprehensive data management solution helps the bank transform its distributed data sprawls into critical data insights, delivering innovation at scale.

Intelligent banks using this solution can easily find the most relevant data through enriched metadata tags, user-generated ratings and comments, and unified business glossaries. It can also build an enterprise data fabric that connects data silos and increases visibility into several data assets.

Amid the ‘never normal’ world, organizations across all industries are taking initiatives to retain their customers—banks and financial institutions are no exception to this reality.

 “As intelligent banking becomes one of today's most significant trends in the industry, it's high time for banks and financial institutions in the country to embrace AI-enabled technologies for their digital transformation journeys,” he noted.

Becoming an intelligent bank does not only ensure customer retention. It also enables banks to develop innovations that make for better banking experiences while helping achieve increased financial inclusion and defining what lies ahead for the future of banking.