Sibos 2020: “We’re going to see another wave of not just digital transformation, but data transformation. It’s the beginning of the next frontier.”

On day 3 of Sibos 2020, the conversation broached the weighty topic of tech execution, drawing links between the fundamental role of data in the ability of technology to reach its potential across financial services, finextra.com reports.

In the session ‘March of the machines: Getting better execution from automation, cloud and AI,’ Lisa Frazier, chief innovation officer, Wells Fargo, sets out that AI and machine learning are fundamental to the future of banking – just like they are in other industries.

Frazier points out that these aren’t just optional, nice-to-have features any longer. The reality is that these are fundamental given the sheer amount of data being produced every day: “The numbers are truly staggering. At Wells Fargo we sit on 200 petabytes of data, that’s essentially a million digital photos every day of your life.”

Robot process automation (RPA), Jason Kingdon, chairman and CEO, Blue Prism believes, is another of these fundamental revolutionary technologies.

Currently, the RPA market is around $2 billion but is facing a $1.3 trillion opportunity. 

While it’s still early days, Kingdon adds that Gartner estimates all organisations will have this technology by 2022, and while the implications of this kind of tech are still being learned what is clear is the ease of deployment and reduced cost these capabilities offer to financial institutions.

“It’s probably one of the least expensive enterprise technologies ever created. The cost of a digital worker is a few thousand dollars (depending on what it does), it can be downloaded for a free trial almost immediately.

“While firms have historically felt boxed in about decisions or choices made five years ago, digital workers are highly promiscuous and have the ability to swap technologies depending on the context in which they’re applied.”

Christin Brown, global financial services lead, Google, concludes that the way that data interacts with people and concepts involved (for example, within a global content management system), means that the future lies in taking these technologies and unlocking these immense data resources.

This means that when digital workers are deployed, they are able to be pumped full of data to enable them to learn, to improve algorithms, to become more accurate and become more effective. “We’re going to see another wave of not just digital transformation, but data transformation. It’s the beginning of the next frontier.”