More than 60 attendees have participated in the webinar.

The unprecedented COVID-19 situation has not only brought upon a wave of changes, but also the acceleration of digitisation across many sectors worldwide.

In ‘Communication Trends and Technology for Finance Institutions in Asia,’ a webinar moderated by Asian Baking & Finance managing editor Paul Howell and attended by over 60 participants, key speakers discussed trends and case studies on the digitisation of financial institutions in the region.

Finding equilibrium in digital ecosystems
As financial institutions shift to a hybrid workforce setting, disruptions to the digital ecosystem ecosystem are bound to pop up. For Standard Chartered Bank’s Executive Director, Head of Collaboration and Communications Damian Leach, agility within the team is essential for an organisation’s success.

“For us, moving fast is absolutely key and being digitally relevant especially in mobile applications.”

The digital ecosystem is how institutions organically connect and ensure that the user experience across the portfolio is enabled with the right channels, is appropriate for the services and the location the business is in, and is also economically sound.

It’s essential to build solutions that will work across different devices anytime, anywhere—the experiences needed to create a solution for a bank laptop within corporate premises is extremely different from the experiences needed to craft solutions for mobility devices over a 4G network.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Leach. “You have to understand the ecosystem—decide an architecture that works on all experiences.”

Aside from making the digital jump themselves, institutions also have to ensure that the private, wealth, and retail departments can connect with customers via cloud-based products or services. It’s also about educating their customers that whilst face-to-face interactions are not possible, the bank is still there.

Digital banking is the next normal
Meanwhile, Poly’s Chief Technology Officer and Director of Sales Engineering for APAC Bill Zeng talked about the hybrid workplace situation for financial institutions.

Digital banking is the next normal, Zeng said, noting that video collaboration, together with audio, will be one of the cornerstones of the future.

A post-pandemic world will see a “rapid advancement of digital transformation in the financial service industry, emergence of new ways of virtual banking, and industries reborn out of necessity.”

Accompanying the digital transformation are Poly’s array of video and audio solutions, which enables live video collaboration between financial services experts, branch offices, advisors, and clients; delivers expertise at a distance for specialty services such as investments, loans, retirement funds, credit cards, amongst others; supports experts on the go with mobility solutions that bring video to their tablets and phones; and supports multidisciplinary teams over live video to support complex loan or services.

“Poly supports your platform of choice—video, conference, desktop, and headsets—everything in between,” Zeng stated. “The beauty of all these is the consumer can choose their platform; we can give you the best possible device and platform of your choice.”

In terms of security, Zeng stated during the panel discussion that Poly focuses on three aspects: people, process, and technology. They also stick to the open standard, and frequently audit as well as do scanning to ensure the codec is safe and sound.

Furthermore, Poly connects the network with a secure TOS to ensure that all video and audio are encrypted.