Finnovex Southern Africa Summit: agile digital disruption strategies for banks and FIs
Microsoft, Smartstream, Oracle, Backbase, Network International, Zentity, Freshworks and Sybrin joined the virtual edition of the 2nd Annual Finnovex Southern Africa Summit to foster the development of strategies for steering the digital disruption era of the banking and financial services industry of the region with sturdy agility.
The summit took place on 27-28 July 2021 with 300+ CEOs, CDOs, COOs, CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, CROs, VPs and senior VPs, directors, and heads of departments from the banking and financial services industry in attendance.
It was organised by Exibex and took place virtually as a part of the Finnovex Global Series in its recently concluded 7th edition.
This year’s edition was themed Adapting Reinvention to a Rapidly Changed World to reiterate the requirement for banks to build up their digital identity by leveraging technologies to stay relevant in the current digitalisation era.
The conference chair, Cornel Dixon, head of Africa at Backbase, highlighted how timely the conversation was in relation to his regional experience and the current digital disruption era.
In alignment with the event theme, Servaas Venter, sales director, financial services at Microsoft, highlighted how we have seen ten years of digital transformation in the past two years. He also laid emphasis on how new intelligent and open technologies are transforming the industry via artificial intelligence (AI), big data, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain amongst others.
In leveraging AI for the overall future of finance, Roland Brandli, strategic product manager at SmartStream Technologies, talked about the how to use AI to check data to ensure the quality is correct. He also discussed how AI plays an important role in transforming the entire banking and financial services industry.
The summit format consisted of speaker presentations and panel discussions, among the panel was the Deep Dive CXO Panel, which was moderated by Karabo Moloko, CEO at Sybrin. The panel deliberated on how banking and financial institutions are evolving and their adaptation to digital disruption.
Hamish Houston, regional president – Southern Africa at Network International, echoed the impact of modern technology in accelerating digital payments within the African context. He also highlighted how every payment needs to be connected and completely seamless.
Milan Malenak, head of delivery – African region at Zentity, demonstrated the effectiveness of collaboration between fintechs and banking institutions in resolving digital banking challenges by making a duo-presentation with Ravi Moodley, head of product, pricing and channels for Africa at Nedbank.
An active member of the Future Focus Panel discussing innovation and the overall financial services system was David Adams, SVP, acceptance and digital solutions at Network International.
Aarti Mohan, director business development ERP – ECEMEA Oracle, highlighted how Oracle Enterprise Performance Management helps organisations become more agile.
