South Africa enjoys one of the most mature fintech sectors on the planet, as several major financial institutions have embraced a culture of innovation as the pursuit of digital transformation has become an industry norm. 

This desire to innovate has spread across the rest of the African continent too, as banking, financial services, and insurance (BFSI) companies look to deliver solutions to a growing population that favours mobile over more traditional offerings that brick-and-mortar-focused organisations prioritised in the past.

As South Africa’s, and by extension Africa’s, population become increasingly digital in their behaviour and tendencies, so must local BFSI operators. 

It is with this idea in mind that enterprise information management software specialist OpenText recently held an Information Exchange session with local leaders in the BFSI environment. 

Setting the pace

The session allowed for concerns to be raised, thoughts to percolate, and collaboration to potentially be fostered, with well-known South African media personality Arnold Geerdts on hand to moderate the session. 

Joining Geerdts from the OpenText side of things were Thabiso Hlatshwayo, senior consulting manager, and Kobus Robinson, solutions consulting manager for cybersecurity, both of whom are well versed in the needs of the local BFSI sector, and what solutions OpenText had its disposal to meet all talking points that arose during the session. 

The overriding theme that surfaced during the discussions was digital transformation. This is an area that OpenText has expert knowledge in, especially as all of its clients both local and abroad have prioritised digital transformation within representative organisations to varying degrees. 

In the case of BFSI, both speed and scale are issues within digital transformation that came up on several occasions during the session. Given how competitive the local banking sector is, the ability to deploy solutions rapidly and across a client base can prove crucial, especially as digital-only and agile fintech companies have speed built into their businesses’ DNA.

One element that was acknowledged by all at the session is that the pressure is definitely on to keep pace or get quickly left behind. 

With time seemingly being the enemy for many of these organisations, it appears as if artificial intelligence will play an increasingly important role for many in future. 

AI-enabled solutions have simply proved too pervasive when it comes to automating tasks and freeing up time and capacity of those working on solutions to dedicate their efforts to more important efforts. 

The AI silver bullet

One area this was touched on was in the procurement process, which can often take a few years to complete thanks to the slog of the admin involved. With AI potentially reducing this time down significantly thanks to automating many of the time-consuming tasks, a procurement process that previously took two to three years in some cases can be halved. 

Those previous months gained can therefore be put to work perfecting and fine tuning a solution before it reaches customers, with all the laborious heavy lifting being done by AI. 

OpenText is acutely aware of AI’s benefit, having its own Aviator-branded suite of products, 

These range from predictive analytics for identifying areas of focus and concern well ahead of time, to AI for DevOps to speed up app delivery with automated testing, to AI-enabled cybersecurity which offers a more agile form of threat detection.

With recent research suggesting that 34 percent of organisations are leveraging AI to create new revenue channels, according to OpenText, it’s clear the same opportunity lies ahead of BFSI players as well, provided they have the desire to make the most of such opportunities and an information management software provider with the solutions to match.

OpenText, much like the attendees of the Information Exchange, is also cognizant of the gains in speed that AI represents. Here an estimated 57 percent of leaders across the globe acknowledge that AI ensures a faster time to market in the development and deployment of solutions. 

This speaks directly to the digital transformation concerns raised during the session. 

With time being a commodity that few organisations in the BFSI sector can grab hold of, the effective implementation of AI makes it more of a reality, and a path that OpenText wants to help its customers with. 

If your organisation is also wanting to leverage AI to get their competitive advantage back, it is well worth your time reaching out to OpenText to find out how it can best assist, whatever your digital transformation goals may be. You can contact the software specialist here.