FinansWatch, Denmark: Cognizant’s Denmark Country Manager Says Banks Must Focus on Compliance Without Forgetting Innovation

Danish banks needs to be better at implementing new legislation as it will free up more capital, says Thomas Djursoe. According to him, social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) technologies are what Danish banks should focus on when thinking ahead. “Innovation needs to be a core focal point for Danish banks,” he points out. “The consequences of not keeping up can be very challenging for banks. Which is why, they need to think differently, think about newer ways of doing business, and think about the real possibilities of creating innovation.”

Djursoe says he wants the banks to embrace the concept of co-creation, where they team up with customers, partners, suppliers, universities, even their competitors. He says that Danish banks should become more agile with the help of cloud solutions. “From my perspective, the Danish banking sector is very focused on developing own solutions. In that sense, they have been less agile. I think the future will bring a shift of focus toward more cloud-based solutions, where the possibility of generating value goes farther and the speed of implementation is considerably faster compared to what we have seen before,” adds Djursoe.

According to Djursoe, it can be difficult for Danish banks to identify what customers want. “I think that the end users have started becoming more and more demanding when it comes to, for example, being able to access their banks when needed, no matter where they are. This creates a whole new set of demands for how banks should act in the future,” he says. “This need is underscored by the enormous success of solutions such as MobilePay and Swipp in the Danish market…a need that was there, but also a need that the consumers didn’t realize they had until it was presented to them. And once it is there, the demand for it increases manifold.”

Djursoe says Danish banks should become better at using social media to gather large amounts of unstructured data about customers, which they can then use for analyzing the needs of the customers. “To my knowledge, not many Danish banks look at all the unstructured data from social media today, which could, if used well, give an idea of how the customer is as a whole, and what customer preferences are…With the knowledge derived from these data, it is possible to narrow down what individual customers of your bank want and need, and thereby offer personalized solutions to them,” he points out.

He adds, “There will be more and more compliance coming, but the banks should put more focus into how they can resolve the issues of compliance in a smarter and more effective way. The faster they can implement the rules of compliance with better quality and at lower costs, more capital will be freed for innovation. The faster you are with implementation, the better and less costly it is for you.”

Djursoe says, “We have noticed that there are a lot of banks that feel that they are lagging behind on the implementation of various pieces of legislation forced upon them. This, in our view, is an obstacle for further integrating innovation into the banks.”

According to Djursoe, even though banks are developing their mobile phone platforms, it is still necessary to look ahead and see what the next big thing is. “You need to be at the forefront of what’s going on, and this you can manage by investing in innovation and in how you take on social media, mobile phone platforms as well as data analytics, and make it more agile by using a cloud solution,” he says. And how can banks get the money to invest in innovation? “Take a look at the costs of your IT environment,” Djursoe suggests. “There is a lot of money to be freed if you think about outsourcing.”

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