Les Rechan, General Manager, IBM Business Analytics
By Les Rechan
Corporate finance is often thought of as the central support system of an organization. It is key to ensuring that the organization not only survives, but thrives. While the core function of the CFO has remained consistent, the responsibilities and approaches of the position are rapidly evolving.
Over the next five years, the role of the CFO will continue to transform under the influence of analytics. As the primary guardians of information across all lines of business, CFOs can and should foster an analytics culture to support fact-based decision making.
Some CFOs are already ahead of the pack, applying analytics to their data to uncover hidden pockets of profitability. As data continues to grow, those CFOs who uniquely capitalize on it can proactively set leading business strategies. In fact, Gartner predicts that the amount of data stored by enterprises will grow 650 percent by 2018. Continue Reading »
Michael Zerbs,Vice President, IBM Risk Analytics
By Michael Zerbs
Sensitivity around risk management is no longer solely a concern for large financial services organizations. In an economy still freshly scarred by the global financial crisis, what we are seeing is a pervasive questioning of the fundamental assumptions that large organizations, and individual investors so easily took for granted pre-crisis.
Questions that are now top of mind include, do I fully understand risk exposures across my organization? Can I trust my governance processes to sufficiently ensure accurate risk reporting? Can I accurately quantify the riskiness of a transaction? And, is my point of reference for riskiness really reliable? Continue Reading »
Ademola Adewale,
Executive Director, Operations & Technology,
Keystone Bank Limited
By Ademola Adewale
The next phase of banking sector reforms and consolidations in Africa’s most populous nation will be driven, not by the industry regulator or by industry or market forces but, by technology, technology and technology.
Computing technology has become a key business driver for Keystone Bank as we embark on a comprehensive overhaul of our systems, processes and human resource assets and capabilities.
Like financial services institutions all over the world, Nigerian banks are increasingly realizing the transformative powers that technology can inject into their products/service delivery offerings and by extension, their reputations and expanding balance sheets. Continue Reading »
Miles Nosler, Student, Texas State University
By Miles Nosler
Over the last few years, whenever I saw an IBM Smarter Planet commercial on television I wondered what was behind things like Smarter Transportation? Smarter Cities? Smarter Commerce?
Since then I’ve come to understand what the Smarter Planet concept is about – tackling Big issues with smarter, interconnected technologies to improve the way we live and work. But, it didn’t truly sink in until I started crunching some Big Data with an IBM mainframe. Let me explain.
If someone told me I would take the top spot among 4,600 very smart students competing in IBM’s Master the Mainframe contest, I wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s exactly what I did, and now I have in-demand technical skills on my resume that are landing me job interviews. Continue Reading »
Charaka Kithulegoda, CIO, ING DIRECT
By Charaka Kithulegoda
It’s estimated that there are more smartphones on the planet than humans. By 2016, more than 10 billion smartphones will be in use around the global. And Canadians are leading that growth, with more than half of Canadian smartphone users banking from their mobile device – and that number grows even higher when looking at those between 18 – 34 years of age.
Our customers expect to be able to connect with their friends and family, browse and shop and of course, bank from their mobile devices. As the mobile marketplace continues to grow and expand, mobile banking is not just a convenient option for our clients, but a must have. So how do we provide our customers with easy access to their money at any time, wherever they are? Continue Reading »
Alejandro Valenzuela, CEO, Grupo Financiero Banorte
By Alejandro Valenzuela
Not many companies can say they’ve been in business for more than a century. As the CEO for Grupo Financiero Banorte, better known as Banorte – Ixe, one of Mexico’s largest banks, I’m proud to say we’ve been serving our customers since 1899. You can imagine how many changes Banorte–Ixe has gone through the course of 114 years—where the exchange of monies once came in the form or bartering and loans were handwritten on paper, banking is now marked by national currencies and automatic tracking through intricate technology systems. Today’s banking industry looks and operates in a very different way to how we began.
Every transformation we’ve underwent as a company has been in response to the changing needs of our customers. We started as a very small local bank in Monterrey, and here we are, 2013, as the third financial institution in México. We find our business undergoing yet another shift, but again, with the same focus in mind: our customers. Continue Reading »
Posted by
Steve Hamm in
IBM Chairman and CEO, Ginni Rometty at the IBM CIO Leadership Exchange in Johannesburg, South Africa, today.
Africa is already well known for leapfrogging the rest of the world in use of mobile money, but African countries now have another big leapfrogging opportunity: big data analytics.
Across the continent, there’s a tremendous potential for using data analytics in powerful new ways in a wide range of industries and domains, from telecommunications and banking to transportation and healthcare.
The big data opportunity for Africa came into sharp focus this week when IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and key members of her executive team visited Africa to meet with clients and government leaders. “Going forward, data is going to be THE source of competitive advantage,” Rometty told a South African audience.
Marcelo Lema, General Manager, Client Financing, IBM Global Financing
By Marcelo Lema
Suresh K L, Chief Information Officer, Fidelity Bank
By Suresh K L
Like many other countries in Africa, Ghana’s banking sector is in the midst of its most transformative phase.
The sector has expanded substantially over the last ten years, characterized by branch expansion and increased capitalization as financial institutions move to meet growing demand for consumer banking services across the country.
This is due to the continued economic growth, foreign investment, increasing diversification and a number of large investments in both the private and public sectors in Ghana and across Africa.
New technologies are helping to drive a wave of innovation across the African financial services sector as banks create new and accessible banking channels and take banking services to previously unbanked parts of society.
Dennis Bancod, CIO, Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation
By Dennis Bancod
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), one of the leading private domestic commercial banks in thePhilippines, has grown rapidly over the last five years. To continue this momentum, we’ve set a goal of adding 10 million new customers by 2014. Many of these will include the so-called “unbanked” – farmers, small business owners and others in provinces of the Philippines where ATMs and bank branches are more scarce.
Technology and the transformation of our business model will be two of the most important drivers behind RCBC’s ability to bring banking to the masses.
Traditional banking technology and business models were developed around the characteristics of urban areas: high density of clients, relative proximity to cash distribution centers and the availability of a telecommunications infrastructure, for example.
