Banking and Financial Services

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Banking and Financial Services

Adapting in the Banking and Financial Services Landscape

The Banking and Financial Services sectors are currently undergoing a momentous transformation, influenced by shifting macroeconomic trends and an increasingly interconnected world. Customers’ expectations are evolving, posing challenges for financial institutions to meet their ever-growing demands. Technological advancements are revolutionizing the industry, opening new horizons while intensifying competition. The digital sphere presents vast opportunities, but it also brings forth new threats and rivals. Effective management and analysis of extensive data have become paramount, allowing financial companies to identify market trends, capitalize on emerging opportunities, and mitigate potential risks. Additionally, the sector faces mounting security concerns and a stringent regulatory environment. To thrive in this dynamic landscape, institutions must exhibit adaptability and agility, embracing transformation to remain at the forefront of the industry.

Diversity of the Financial Services Sector

The Financial Services sector boasts a diverse range of companies, each playing a unique role in the industry. While mega banks command attention, the sector encompasses not only Commercial Banks, Community Banks, Savings Institutions, and Credit Unions but also FinTech firms, Nontraditional Lenders, and Mortgage Brokers. Beyond the realm of banking, the Asset Management sector thrives with Brokers, Hedge Funds, Institutional Investors, Pension Funds, Private Equity Firms, Venture Capital Firms, Real Estate Investment Funds, holding companies, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs). Additionally, the Insurance space is an integral part of the Financial Services sector, housing diverse entities such as Insurance Agencies and Brokers, Life Insurance providers, Medical/Professional Liability insurers, Mutual Insurance companies, Property and Casualty Insurance providers, Reinsurance firms, Health Insurance providers, and InsurTech companies. Valenta takes pride in serving all these different entities, offering comprehensive solutions tailored to their specific needs.

Valenta's Services for Midsized European Banks and Financial Institutions

Valenta-banking-finance

Traditionally, large banks and financial institutions have harnessed the power of expensive consulting services, offshore outsourcing, and advanced technologies like AI and RPA. In contrast, midsized banks, regional banks, and smaller financial institutions have struggled to access similar opportunities. Recognizing this disparity, Valenta focuses exclusively on serving midsized companies and institutions within the Financial Services sector. We bring the same level of services and consulting expertise as those provided to Fortune 1000 firms. With our extensive experience across all facets of the industry, combined with the expertise of our local managing partners, who possess a deep understanding of the sector, Valenta empowers midsized banks and financial institutions to compete on an equal footing.

Top Challenges for the Banking and Financial Services Sector

Based on our experience and conversations with clients.

Below are the top challenges faced by todays Banking and Financial Services sectors. Valenta can assist with all of these challenges through a combination of Process Consulting, Digital Transformation and Staff Augmentation :

Top-challenges-banking -finance
  • Increased competition
  • Changing business models
  • Technology disruptions
  • Keeping up technically and with Fintech
  • Rising expectations
  • Customer retention
  • Automation
  • Continuous innovation
  • Mobile experiences
  • Cyber Security plus security breaches
  • Financial crime and fraud
  • Nondiscrimination
  • Regulatory compliance
  • Staffing

How Valenta Can Assist the Banking and Financial Services Sector

Valenta offers a variety of managed services and consulting areas to assist today’s Banking and Financial Services sector. We can provide data analysis, analytics, dashboarding and business intelligence services. Our data solutions ensure that the right data is captured, understood, and leveraged. We can also institute proactive Cybersecurity strategies and services plus conduct continual risk assessment. Valenta services can also address Change Management, Cost Containment Strategies and ensure Infrastructure Stability. Digital Transformation is a big focus of Valenta, and we can deploy Robotic Process Automation (RPA) across an institution or provider to better manage customers and to aid with financial modeling, decision support, and resource optimization.  Additionally, our RPA and Digital Transformation services can help institutions better manage risk and compliance requirements plus fraud and forensics.  Finally, our Staff Augmentation services can provide Data Scientists, Data Analysts, Business Intelligence, Software Developers, SoftwareAdministrators, IT Staff, Accountants, Bookkeepers, Financial Planning Assistants, and more. 

Valenta can assist the Banking and Financial Services Sector in the following ways.

Process

Process

Financial Institutions cannot afford to waste time or have inefficiencies in their organizations. Process issues appear frequently in rapidly growing companies and companies that have massive amounts of customers and transactions. We look for waste in all processes and have staff available for process mapping, task mapping and business optimization.

Repeatability, Execution

Execution

Excellence in execution is essential. Great ideas and goals are only the beginning. Successfully implementing new strategies, projects, and plans is the difference between success and failure. We help our Financial Institution clients flawlessly execute. 

innovation

Innovation

Innovation is a key to success for all businesses. Competition, customers, and the business environment are always changing. Innovation is how Financial Institution companies can stay ahead of the competition and be where their customers will be. We help our clients to be agile, nimble and ahead of the curve. 

strategy

Strategy

Developing and executing the right growth strategies is critical. Our Financial Institution clients benefit from bringing in our expertise for hire. We can provide an actionable strategy for our client companies plus detailed plans for how to get desired outcomes and results.

Digital-Transformation

Digital Transformation

There is a growing need for companies to automate and adapt to new technologies and ways of doing business.  Yet having these skill sets in-house can be challenging. Valenta implements solutions such as RPA and Conversational-AI for businesses of all sizes at competitive pricing.

Growth

Growth

In today’s environment a business must grow or die. One of the most painful challenges is sustainable and profitable growth. Our team of partners, consultants, developers, and back office staff can implement a myriad of growth strategies for Financial Institutions. 

Profits

Profits

The bottom line is crucial. Maintaining profitability and healthy cash flow is something every Financial Institutions must pay close attention to since margins are often thin. Valenta can identify opportunities for efficiency gains and can provide ROIs for all client projects. 

Support, Staff

Staffing

If current employees are under-skilled or not able to fulfill the requirements of positions, Valenta’s team of skilled and fully trained individuals can meet them. Hiring is time-consuming and there are not always skills available within budget. Staff Augmentation can bridge the gap of skills and economics. 

Digital-Marketing

Digital Marketing

Marketing in the digital age is constantly changing and evolving and it can be hard to keep up. Financial Institutions need to communicate with their customers and potential customers digitally. Lack of expertise or lack of budget is not an issue with Valenta’s fractional full-stack marketing services.  There are a multitude of cost-effective marketing options that produce when implemented correctly.

Services Valenta Provides for the Banking and Financial Services Sector

Process

Consulting

An end-to-end solution, from strategy to implementation. Specializing in turning strategies into measurable and sustainable results.

Valenta provides Consulting services that can be of great value to the Financial Institutions Sector. We can assist companies in this space streamline their back office, transactions, customer support, accounting, finance and HR processes for peak efficiency and the lowest cost. Savings generated can be devoted to improving and building out new services, enhancing infrastructure, or upgrading legacy software platforms. Valenta can also look for ways to use AI and ML to test new digital services and back-office tools and identify potential bottlenecks before they become issues.

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Digital-Transformation

Digital Transformation

Streamline workflows and improve productivity across business units. Implementing powerful tools to provide businesses with an unparalleled competitive edge.

Valenta Digital Transformation services can streamline back-office processes by leveraging RPA and Conversational AI. These same tools can be utilized for customer engagement and managing transactions. ML and AI can also be deployed as a service or product for managing transactions, customers, and staff.  Conversational AI solutions can be deployed to make support agents and sales staff more efficient and better informed. All Valenta services are offered in a flexible managed service model and are easy to scale up and ramp down. All of this can be of great value to the Banking and Financial Institutions Sector.

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Support, Staff

Staff Augmentation

Focus on growing your business, let us take care of the rest and save up to 60% on staffing costs.

The Financial Institutions Sector can also benefit from Valenta Staff Augmentation services. Hard to fill Data Analysts and Big Data Specialists can be supplied as well as Software Developers and Software Administrators to improve operations.  Back office roles can be filled quickly and cost-effectively so that the maximum amount of resources can be dedicated to high value front-line positions and strategic roles.

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Heat Maps for Banking and Financial Services Sector Processes

Many processes lend themselves to automation in the Financial Institutions Sector.  Please find the following Heat Maps highlighting the Customer Support and IT areas that are often the best places to start with automation and digital transformation in this space. 

Customer Support

IT Processes

Automation and AI in the Banking and Financial Institutions Sector

AI-Banking-Finance

The Banking and Financial Services Sector has been at the forefront of adopting new technology and this has been no different with RPA. Financial Institutions have been one of the earliest adopters of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) across various business lines.

Be it customer service, Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) compliance, loans, credit cards, personal banking, mobile banking, corporate banking, private banking, financial planning, wealth management, insurance, and much more, RPA has been successfully deployed in each of these functions across organizations globally. 

Automation works great at scale and the Financial Services Sector operates on a massive one … therefore they see significant ROI by using RPA.  With rising competition in this space, firms that put RPA to good use can redeploy their human workforce to more creative and innovative projects that can increase revenue, client engagement, and satisfaction.

The Banking and Financial Services Sector can also see the following gains from leveraging RPA, ML and AI. 

Increase operational efficiencies
AI technologies including the use of bots dramatically increase outputs, reduce errors and streamline outcomes; and provide cost savings.

Enhance the customer journey
Accelerate access to customer data, gathering data at speed in real-time, and resolving request resolutions faster.

Reshape the employee experience
Refocus employees on high-value tasks, allowing robots and automation to handle data collection, discover patterns, sort through data, analyze risk, populate the CRM, ERP and much more.

Minimize compliance risk
Improve KYC and AML reporting with automated systems monitoring databases, watchlists and other external sources.  Leverage AI and machine learning to find gaps, match relationships, and discover unidentified risks.

Use Cases for AI in Banking and Finance

Please find the below Table highlighting The Most Commonly Used AI Application in Investment Banking Worldwide 2020, by Type

banking-finance

The table states that ML or Machine Learning was the most commonly used artificial intelligence (AI) application among investment banks worldwide as of 2020. Predictive analytics and virtual assistant technologies followed, with 60 and 58 percent of the respondents respectively.

Insights for the Banking and Financial Institutions Sector

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How Can Midsized Companies Benefit from Staff Augmentation

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How Can Midsized Companies Benefit from Digital Marketing

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How Can Midsized Companies Benefit from Digital Transformation

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How Can SMB’s benefit from
Consulting services

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Top Conversational AI Use Cases Valenta & OneReach.ai

Find a Partner

The Banking and Financial Institutions space can benefit from Valenta services. We have partners and staff onboard who understand this sector and who have experience in it. Everything we do at Valenta is about helping companies focus on and have time for what they do best and their core mission. We do this through process consulting, digital transformation, the automation of tasks, and by providing staff augmentation. Valenta is focused exclusively on SMB clients, typically enterprise customers with 10-1,000 employees. We have Managing Partners located in cities across the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, and Australia. Our Managing Partners work with other onshore consultants, plus offshore consultants, developers, and managers of outsourced staff to deliver the best services to our clients.  Please reach out here to locate a Managing Partner in your area.

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