




































                               American International Journal of Multidisciplinary Scientific Research; Vol. 1, No. 3; 2018 

ISSN 2638-1249  E-ISSN 2638-1273 

Impact Factor: 5.8 

Published by Centre for Research on Islamic Banking & Finance and Business 

 

 

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Leveraging Technologies to Redefine Business: Technology 

Perspective 
 

 

B. Vijaya Lakshmi
1 
& B. Ravi Kumar

2 

 

 
1
Department of Business Management, Sri Pamavati Mahila Visvavidyalayam (Women’s University)-Tirupati,India 

2
Department of MBA-Amrita Sai Institute of Science and Technology, India 

Correspondence: B. Ravi Kumar, Department of MBA - Amrita Sai Institute of Science and Technology, India, 

Email: ravi9949418650@yahoo.com 

 

Received: September 11, 2018             Accepted: September 30, 2018    Online Published: October 1, 2018   

 

 

Abstract 

The disruptors in the financial services industry are rewriting the rules, banks used to perform operations 

traditionally. The financial services industry known for conservative and resistant to change has been challenged by 

financial technology (fintech) companies that compete by combining digital technology, social media, and big data 

analytics to replace traditional models with financial products and services enabled by new technology. The present 

study is an attempt to portray the Role of Fin Techs, Challenges etc. 

 

Keywords: Challenges, Opportunities, Role of Fin Techs, Trends. 

 

1. Introduction 

Digital disruption is occurring at every level of the financial services industry. New competitors, new channels, new 

processes and new consumer expectations are shifting the industry paradigm. Banks today are facing rapid and 

irreversible changes across technology, customer behavior and regulation. The net effect is that the industry’s 

current shape and operating models are no longer sustainable into the future.  

The only way to survive in this world of disruption is to stay in sync with these movements and accelerate execution 

to gain a critical competitive advantage. Subsequently, it is imperative for companies to embrace cutting-edge 

technology if they are to succeed in this fast-paced, agile environment in which every business needs to operate.  

By 2025, the banking landscape is most likely to include some of today’s popular banking brands in addition to 

other prominent names. The use of modern day technologies will differentiate successful companies from laggards.  

Fin techs have changed how financial services are structured, provisioned and consumed, but have not successfully 

established themselves as dominant players. Although Fin techs have limited success in their approach with in the 

competitive landscape, they have laid the foundation for future disruption.  

2. Challenges - Confronting Digital Pace 

There’s been plenty of discussion over digital transformation in the last few years, the challenges of this sort of 

organizational change have become increasingly evident. Digital transformation remains a slippery eel that financial 

service providers just can’t seem to grab on to.  

2.1 Legacy Technology and Infrastructure  

Legacy systems and complex process architectures are limiting banks’ ability to enhance customer experience, 

impacting their advanced analytics capabilities. In financial services, this often happens because established players 

are rapidly bringing in new technologies through acquisitions or mergers, creating an architecture that’s a 

Frankenstein project of smaller pieces. It’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t scale well. This is a problem particularly 

poignant in well-established financial services companies that may have been architecting piecemeal on the back-



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end for years. Building a new, ideal solution from scratch is not a practical option from a fiscal or timeline 

standpoint.  

People want to create something new, not pay for problems that are already there. However, it is very necessary for 

building a robust digital business that will survive long-term.  

2.2 Supports for Change  

Digital transformation is not just about technology, it’s also about business process and organizational changes. 

Organizations that want to be successful with their digital transformations need to start by aligning stakeholders 

from across all facets of the organization behind the company’s innovation efforts. Having the team working off of 

the same playbook and finding ways to build on technologies being deployed throughout the organization is vital.  

There are many other challenges currently faced by financial institutions however the in-depth coverage is not the 

prime focus of this paper.  

3. Opportunities - Strategic Choices in Digital Age 

The digital transformation process of the financial sector involves adapting to the new digital client, reinventing the 

value proposition (even beyond what is strictly financial) and being able to create new business models based on 

technologies such as Cloud, mobility, Big Data and Analytics. The first major challenge is to keep moving to adopt 

a true customer centricity strategy that focuses on the customer as the center of all business decisions. There is no 

alternative since in the digital age the customer has plenty of information at his fingertips and a greater power. This 

reality requires bank institutions to respond to interaction and service models that the digital customer already has. 

In this sense, understanding, learning how to interact and meeting the needs of new customers are still key aspects to 

maintain and ensure competitiveness within the sector.  

There are four fundamental ways in which digital capabilities can be used by banks to create value.  

First, digital technologies increase a bank’s connectivity—not just with customers but also with employees and 

suppliers. This extends from online interactivity and payment solutions to mobile functionality and opportunities to 

boost bank brands in social media.  

Second, digital draws on big data and advanced analytics to extend and refine decision making. Such analytics are 

being deployed by the most innovative banks in many areas, including sales, product design, pricing and 

underwriting, and the design of truly amazing customer experiences.  

A third way that digital creates value is by enabling straight-through processing—that is, automating and digitizing a 

number of repetitive,  

Finally, digitization is a means of fostering innovation across products and business models. Examples of this 

include social marketing and crowd sourced support, as well as “digitally centered” business models.  

4. Role of Fin Techs 

Following years of dominance by large institutions, the industry is undergoing incredible disruption in the form of 

nimble, tech-savvy startups. Well-established financial services companies are increasingly finding themselves 

confronted with fast-moving fintech disruption. Fintech companies are currently very active at trying to disrupt the 

financial services market. There is a huge funding boom happening in financial services, similar to the one that 

happened in the 2000s, when the Internet was starting to take off and there was a lot of money chasing a lot of 

different ideas.  

The digital shift underway in the Fintech sector has pushed innovation to a whole new level, across the globe.  

Levering the potential of AI, particularly in the Fintech arena, will revolutionize the relationship between humans 

and machines. And one of the key aspects will be to use cognitive systems to amplify human intelligence. To stay 

competitive, banks must remain cognizant of numerous implications from within and from outside the financial 

services industry. In these times of uncertainty, only one thing is  

certain – change. Below are some of the fintech trends that expected to drive future dynamics of the banking 

ecosystem.  

 
 



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5. Trends  

Trend #1: Significant Investment in Digital Transformation  

Digital disruption has impacted the financial services industry, and banks are investing heavily in digital 

transformation. Rapid growth in online and mobile banking, as well as empowered customers embracing digital 

touch points, is further fueling the need for investments in digital transformation  

5.1 Trend #2: Cloud Computing  

Banks have been leveraging the cloud to streamline processes, and with a growing confidence in its security, there 

has been an increase in its uptake. The banking industry has witnessed a huge push toward the cloud, with most 

banks initiating migration of infrastructure and applications to the cloud. Banks generally have been a bit cautious 

with cloud implementations and tend to stick to implementations in peripheral functions such as ERP, HR, and 

service desks versus core functions (consumer loans, payments, enterprise data) that link to the general ledger, 

mainly due to risk concerns There is a requirement for banks to have the ability to scale their processing capacity up 

or down, as per the prevailing market demands  

Trend #3: Next-gen chatbots  

2017 saw several major banks in India such as HDFC, ICICI, and YES Bank, amongst others, adopting chatbots for 

supporting customer interactions. Currently, these chatbots are said to possess the intelligence of a 2-3-year old. 

However, as machines do not suffer from physical or learning fatigue, the evolution of a chatbot could be best 

described as more exponential than linear. So, in 2018, we could expect more chatbots to be deployed with 

improved quality of interactions, speed of responses, and accuracy in decision-making.  

Trend #4: Machine Learning  

Banks in 2018 will start adopting new regression models powered by machine learning to deliver better offerings. 

The brightest data scientists will be involved in this delivery and they will be aided by insights into customer 

behavior, expectations and responses. These insights will be gained by adopting big data tools and will enable banks 

to predict customer needs and meet them in a customized manner.  

Trend #5: Blockchain  

Several major players have already begun pilot projects to measure the feasibility of adopting blockchain into their 

ecosystems. NITI Aayog officials are working on the project named ‘IndiaChain’, India’s largest blockchain 

network. It’s aimed to reduce fraud, speed up contract enforcement and increase transparency in banking operations.  

As blockchain is virtually unhackable due to time stamps that mark a data entry in a distributed ledger, banks will 

explore options to leverage the power of blockchain to transform backend operations.  

Trend #6: Smart workflows  

With the help of embedded AI aiding the backend operations of banks, they will be able to quickly identify 

bottlenecks in their operation workflows and bring in significant improvements in process efficiencies.  

Trend #7: Automated personalization  

Banks will leverage the power of fintech to personalize the offerings that users see on all their devices. Banks will 

change the appearance of apps based on actual usage. This will make users feel more connected with banks and it 

will also set the stage for efficient self-service. There will also be advancements in providing pre-filled data to users 

based on their previous interaction history, preferences and banking habits.  

Trend #8: Open banking  

With initiatives such as Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Aadhaar Enabled Payment System (AEPS), banking 

will become more ‘open’ in 2018. With more APIs exposed by banks, the process of carrying out payments and 

other banking transactions would be greatly quickened as well as simplified.  

References 

Assessment of Disruptive Potential in Financial Services--http://www3.weforum.org/docs/ 

FinTech – Challenges and Opportunities-- https://www.mckinsey.de  

Strategic choices for banks in digital age-- https://www.mckinsey.com  

Top 10 fintech trends --https://yourstory.com/2017/11/  

Retail Banking Top 10 Trends - http://www.capgemini.com  

Finserv Survey - https://www.janeirodigital.com  

Financial Trends– https://hcltech.com  

TechVision-2018-Tech-Trends-Report – https://www.accenture.com  

 

Copyrights 

Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. 

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution   

license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) 


