Warren Sanders, Co-Founder and Director of digital banking specialist EWG, helps untangle the industry’s toughest issues and explores how fintech and digital transformation strategies are rapidly changing financial services for the better
Firms in the financial services industry continue to grapple with disconnected legacy systems and manual processes, while meeting the increasing complexities of their business, regulators and clients.
Equally, inaccurate budgeting and forecasting, a lack of business insights and real-time information remain issues. These challenges demonstrate that such platforms can no longer support agile businesses operating in today’s financial ecosystem.
Digital banking is now spearheading the industry’s development through technology, collaboration and integration. It is time for finance to be client and digital first.
Fintech and regtech are playing a pivotal role in this fast-moving transformation. They offer numerous benefits by helping businesses work smarter and quicker, reduce errors and operate more efficiently by optimising resources and processes.
A key element is banking as a service, or BaaS, which deploys the latest technology via cloud-based dashboard interfaces and API (application programming interface). In BaaS, licensed banks integrate their digital banking services directly into the products of other non-bank businesses.
EWG is the go-to specialist digital banking partner for the fiduciary, corporate and fund services sectors, offering a cloud-based dashboard interface that enables third-party business software to communicate directly with EWG and share data securely in real time.
This democratisation of data creates greater transparency, improves the client experience and puts data in the hands of clients. EWG services more than 200 jurisdictions and plays its part in reshaping the global financial services landscape.
Digital banking used to appeal to a generation of young, tech-savvy users. These days, the digitisation of services is more broadly adopted and persuasive.
A greater number of companies are migrating to cloud-based services, giving them scalability to make it easier to keep up with the increasing demands of clients.
They are secure and cheaper to implement than existing legacy systems and help businesses meet their ESG commitments, notably in terms of decarbonisation and sustainability.
Disruptive edge
The other notable change is the disruption of the status quo. Fintech businesses are able to compete effectively with traditional players in the finance sector as a result of the levelling of the playing field through digital transformation.
There is a recognised, growing dependence on technology to gain an edge over the competition.
Evolving client expectations are driving innovation towards prioritising speed, decentralised models and frictionless transactions.
The pandemic has fuelled significant growth of digital commerce and record payment volumes, which presents challenges for traditional providers to maintain the same levels of profitability using legacy infrastructures.
The main driver of change is the wholesale shift to real-time payments and a cashless world. Others include ‘embedded finance’, the seamless integration of financial services adopted by non-financial companies.
By unlocking the full potential of payment data through leveraging powerful artificial intelligence and money laundering tools, EWG is able to offer efficient, effective, tailored products in a secure, protected environment.
Within these developments is the understanding that the professional trust, funds and corporate sectors are highly specialised.
This dictates that the digital banking provider of choice is equally specialist in and has a thorough understanding of their business challenges and how to solve them, using the latest technology.
EWG has pioneered a new approach, deploying a cloud-based, simple-to-use dashboard user interface, or alternatively its API, that allows third-party software to communicate with EWG and share data in a real-time and secure way.
Direct connectivity also drives significant efficiencies including the provision of reliable data and insights.
EWG labs
In the fast-moving world of financial services, a business that stands still means it is going backwards. Recognising the pace of change, EWG has launched a new technology venture – EWG Labs – to support the development of our range of products and applications.
The new business will drive all in-house technological innovation and development in relation to the EWG Client App, the EWG API and client-side integrations.
Behind all of this sits a team of exceptionally talented people, together with a collaborative approach that takes time to understand our clients’ needs, forges strong relationships and creates real value.
EWG has an ambitious and exciting technology development roadmap, which is focused on the end-user and client experience in a hypergrowth technology sector. We forecast this will enable our clients to grow even faster and drive an exciting future for the company.
As far as the Channel Islands are concerned, EWG also foresees a bright future. Jersey is a top-rated international finance centre, with an excellent record of innovation and a pedigree underpinning constant growth, particularly in the non-banking subsectors of fiduciary and funds. It, and EWG, are well positioned to lead this charge.
Further information
Contact Warren Sanders, Co-Founder/Director of EWG
Tel: 01534 608022
Email: warren.sanders@ewggroup.com
• This advertising feature was first published in the June/July issue of Businesslife magazine