With the increasing importance placed on AI, machine learning, and digitization, it’s all the more important for the banking industry to re-examine its digital strategy.

Our interview with Pradeep Pant, Executive Director, Rawstone Technology, and ex-Chief Digital Officer at Taipei Fubon Bank focuses on the importance of digital innovation in the banking sector.

On how banks are going digital

There are two kinds of approaches banks are taking:

• Digitizing by heavily investing in technology.
• Becoming digital by re-thinking all customer journeys.

On the emergence of Banking as a Service (BaaS)

The BaaS sector is rapidly emerging and will continue to accelerate in the future as it helps both banks and fintechs.

It helps fintechs in generating business scale and provides banks with an alternative route to reduce costs that come with digitization and technology.

On the digital transformation challenges banks face

Finding new talent and retraining current talent for digital transformation is the foremost challenge for banks in their digital journey. They need to include speed and innovation in their tech mindset.

Successful digital transformations can only occur when the banks also go through a cultural change in how they work. Sustaining digital transformation and unleashing its full impact needs fierce customer focus, distributed organizational structure, capabilities to use data analytics, and agile operating rhythms.

On how sales teams can sell better in this new landscape

Salespeople need to act more like customer coaches — giving information and specific insights about the market and also teaching customers to use the bank’s digital tools and channels.

Finally, in a digital organization, sales and marketing have to be closely connected, preferably in real-time