Forecasting the Future of Banking Operations — Cloud-y with a Chance of Insights
How can the latest technology transform the way we think and operate banking? That’s exactly what we wanted to find out at the Consumer Banking Operations (CB Ops) Digital Day.
“Inculcating Digital Mindset is the first step towards building a workforce that is relevant to the future of digital banking. Through CB Ops Digital Day, our staff got to learn about the latest technology like IoT, AI and Blockchain in an interactive way. Thanks to Innovation Group for the partnership in curating the program!” — Albert Kho, Singapore Consumer Banking Operations Head, DBS Bank
A collaborative maker workshop event organised by CB Ops, Innovation Group and One Maker Group, and attended by 120 executives, the event was designed to expose CB Ops participants to the latest digital technologies from Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and Blockchain.
The emphasis for the day being creation, creation creation!
If this than that… Hands on learning about the Internet of Things (IoT)
The first maker task is issued — Build your own Cloud Lamp.
For some, the concept of IoT might be a foreign sounding or technical concept. But it’s really all about getting different devices to communicate with one another to accomplish tasks.
With the first challenge, the participants got their hands dirty learning to control a Cloud Lamp using Google’s Allo, learning how smart devices are connected using wifi and can be controlled using speech recognition or algorithms and codes through If This Than That (IFTTT — if you haven’t heard about this, it’s the greatest automation tool for your electronic devices)
DBS has already been experimenting with such technology in our own services such as with our virtual assistant (you ask it a question, it responds by recognising key words/phrases).
One Block at a time — An intro into Blockchain
Blockchain’s been around for awhile but it’s gaining renewed popularity with the emergence of cryptocurrency. That aside, Blockchain is really the technology that drove the success of the first decentralised cryptocurrency, bitcoin.
Through a role play, participants got to learn all about the key components of Blockchain including
- Mining
- Hashing
Applying technology learning to Banking Ops
With new knowledge, the participants were invigorated and were challenged to think about how they could bring their learnings to solve banking problems.
They also got to learn from other case studies such as Crystal (a personality detection technology that analyses data to help people understand each other’s behaviour and improve communications) and Watson’s creation of an AI trailer (based on machine learning).
A winning idea is born — The Automated Confidential Services (ACS)
One of the most significant issues Operations faces at the front end during account openings is the large amount of time spent checking through forms and details to ensure accuracy.
Taking learnings about the capabilities of blockchain, the winning team came up with ACS. The central idea is to develop a distributed database of bank consumer’s personal particulars & banking transaction details in a transparent and incorruptible blockchain network of nodes formed by financial institutions (FIs) and government agencies (in particular, law enforcement agencies).
This is a technology the team foresees the government readily stepping up to use as it can help the latter use data analytics to combat transnational crime and money laundering. With such a technology, it will enable Any Trusted One to obtain Any Information at Anytime and Anywhere.
With the rapid growth of technology, this could very well become a reality for us at DBS in the near future.
