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Showing posts from December, 2023

The Shift to Trust-Based Partnerships in Financial Services: Aligning the objectives

In the dynamic world of financial services, rapid innovation, rising customer expectations, and increasing complexity are the norm. This reality necessitates a shift from traditional in-house operations to more   specialized, external partnerships . Historically, these relationships have predominantly followed a   customer-supplier model , focusing mainly on financial negotiations. However, there’s a growing trend towards* long-term strategic partnerships*. Financial considerations remain crucial, but there’s an increasing awareness that squeezing partners for short-term gains is unsustainable and leads to higher long-term costs. The emerging model emphasizes long-term trust, striving for a   win-win-win situation for both partners and their customers . Successful partnerships are marked by   shared risks and rewards , fostering mutual investment in each other’s success. A vital component of these partnerships is aligning commercial agreements with shared objectives. For example, consi

The Unseen Backbone of Banking: A Deep Dive into Matching and Reconciliation

Last year I celebrated two decades of immersion in IT, specifically within the Financial Services sector. During this period I have been a witness to remarkable transformations in banking and technology. The emergence of Fintech companies and their customer-centric approach, along with significant advancements in software engineering like Agile methodologies, microservices, and cloud computing, have reshaped the landscape. Yet, intriguingly, the back-office operations of many financial service companies have remained relatively static over these years, still grappling with   manual encoding, repetitive tasks, and heavy reliance on Excel . A particularly manual and yet automatable process in the Financial Services sector is   matching and reconciliation . This process arises in various forms, i.e. from identifying and addressing discrepancies (typically occurring due to issues or gaps with the integrations) in master-slave integrations to correcting or removing duplicates and semi-autom