The financial services industry has experienced significant transformation with the adoption of technology. This technological revolution has transformed the way financial services deliver from front to back driving up customer engagement, enhancing risk management and reporting, and reducing operations time as well as costs. The transformation has also led to a flurry of new age (or digital native) organisations providing innovative products to financial services sector – collectively known as Fintech. The Fintechs have disrupted the financial services by way of newer products and customer engagement models, enhanced risk management and faster as well as lower cost operations. While, many financial services organisations have partnered with Fintech and built in-house capabilities, many traditional players are facing challenges to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape. This disruption has also impacted the Global Capability Centres (GCCs) of these financial institutions providing them opportunity to go up the value chain and enhance participation in these innovations.
The above requires that GCC’s enhanced focus on talent development, Centre of Excellence (COE) establishment, global leadership engagement, digital capabilities, and ecosystem development.
The first key insight to focus on is talent development. To thrive in the highly competitive and digitalised financial services world, it is essential for GCCs to develop technical and leadership skills that can drive innovation and adaptation. This can be achieved by investing in employee training and mentoring programmes, developing partnerships with educational institutions, and nurturing a culture of continuous learning.
The second insight is the establishment of COEs. These are microcosms that focus on specific areas such as blockchain, digital payments, or robo-advisory, to drive innovation and value creation within the organisation. COEs bring cross-functional teams from different departments together to foster collaboration and drive innovation.
The third insight is to foster active engagement with global leaders within their organisation. This is required to build GCC credibility and integrate into global strategies and decision-making processes to ensure that GCCs are contributing in the rapidly digitalising financial services world. This engagement on strategic areas shall also require GCCs to be bold in not just rightly positioning the ideas, capabilities but also embrace valuable insights and best practices for GCCs to learn from.
The fourth insight is to leverage the digital capabilities of India. India has built top of the line population scale digital capabilities, which provide great opportunities for GCCs to learn from and develop digital solutions for the world. GCCs can learn from India's experience in digital transformation and apply these lessons within their respective organisations. Additionally, the GCCs can showcase their digital capabilities to a global audience and potentially attract investment and partnerships.
The final insight is to build a collaborative ecosystem. This involves engaging with FinTechs, academia, and international organisations. GCCs’ collaboration with fintech startups can go a long way in creating a mutually beneficial ecosystem, where startups can benefit from building solutions for global problems and GCCs can benefit by creating greater value for the organisation. Engaging with academia can help develop a pipeline of talent with high-quality technical, entrepreneurial, and leadership skills. Also, it allows GCCs to co-research with academic and research institutions. Finally, collaborating with international organisations such as the ISO, NIST, W3C, etc can help GCCs to gain access to the expertise and also provide good avenues of engagement for GCC talent.
GCCs must focus on these insights to thrive in the rapidly evolving world. The transformation brought about by technology and FinTech is expected to continue, and GCCs must innovate and adapt to stay competitive. By investing in talent development, establishing COEs, engaging with global leaders, leveraging India's digital capabilities, and building a collaborative ecosystem, GCCs can unlock their full potential and generate value for their respective organisations as well as financial services industry.
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