The paradigm shift

Three core areas of the financial services industry were fundamentally changed by the global financial crisis of 2008. Firstly, the Cost-to-income Ratio (CIR) for most financial companies continues to be higher than the industry benchmark, creating a need for structural adjustments to global operations and IT models to drive cost reduction strategies. Secondly, customer expectations have increased, as customers demand a “know me” experience, something which requires continuous innovation in customer experience management financial solutions for faster time-to-relationship. And thirdly, new, stringent regulatory and compliance guidelines are forcing companies to alter their behaviour. Judiciously adopting new age technologies and investing in continuous innovation is the only route to differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage.

Why HCL Technologies?

HCL offers a unique and evolved financial IT services portfolio to help financial companies stay ahead. The global IT services firm works with 40 of the 69 F500 financial services companies and the top two retail banks across each geography. HCL’s IT solutions for financial services rationalise and converge IT and operations across regions and business divisions, to optimise cost and bring agility, with renewed focus on regulatory compliance and customer centricity. Its financial services technology consulting can also help financial companies transform their business processes.

HCL drives success through five key areas within financial services:

• Growing through innovative approaches

HCL’s clients — from Fortune 500 corporations right through to regional financial services companies that are a lifeline for their local communities — partner with it to discover innovative ways to adapt to shifting regulations, achieve continuous simplification of IT and operations, improve their customer experience and gain access to new products and markets.

• Leveraging the eco-system

Co-innovation is key for technology: both parties should work together to identify end-user insights and develop ideas for a joint go-to-market. HCL undertakes co-development with partners: best-in-class products and systems integration capabilities are developed with the ambition to reduce risk and accelerate time to market. HCL also co-creates thought leadership, engaging analysts, advisors, and influencers to create business value from IT.

• Nurturing the value chain

HCL’s business-aligned IT offers seamless integration of business processes, applications and infrastructure, to fully serve customers. HCL’s cost-structure transformation unlocks capital from best-in-class Run The Business (RTB) processes and reinvests the savings into a transformational agenda for customers. Front-office transformation should also be added to the mix: HCL Helps banks and financial services companies address the evolving needs of the connected-customer community.

• Expanding the business model

HCL’s joint ventures and special-purpose vehicles deliver financial value beyond traditional finance and accounting outsourcing benchmarks. Convenient models such as Day 1 Committed Cost Savings and Gain share models mean pricing is constructed to suit the customer. Customers also choose HCL for its collaborative sourcing, customer-need-based commercial structuring, benchmarked predictable SLAs, continuous reportage, and process innovation.

• A Valuable Partner

Traditional finance and accounting outsourcing models are beginning to disintegrate in the “new normal”. CIOs and vendor management offices now seek partners who can assist them with financial services technology consulting, and financial services software and strategies that help reduce supplier fragmentation, align with business objectives, leverage outcome-based models, and seek innovation and value addition beyond the contract. This model also provides global service delivery and delivery excellence, along with simplified engagement governance.

Getting down to business

Below those higher level benefits, on the ground there are five key actions HCL takes with financial services organisations to deliver a unique value proposition:

1. Streamlining operations:HCL helps clients achieve greater balance by enabling savings in ‘Run-the-Bank’ activities to be channelled into ‘Change-the-Bank’ initiatives. These can include front-to-back integration (Vertical Systems Integration), Creation of Shared Services and Utilities through proprietary frameworks, such as ALT ASM™ for application maintenance utility, and Enterprise Functions as a Service (EFaaS™) for shared services, and reducing total cost of ownership through carve outs and asset monetisation.
2. Engaging customers: HCL helps transform customer interaction touch points and processes through a focused Customer Experience Managementvalue proposition for financial services companies, which enables seamless integration across distribution channels. This helps to derive actionable business insights to chart a customer’s journey through up-sell/cross-sell opportunities and industrialised digital marketing.
3. Innovating to stay ahead of competition: In today’s business economy, efficiency and innovation are big competitive advantages, enabling higher margins and wider play for product prices. HCL helps clients innovate while leveraging technology to deliver business impact through Front-end transformation, Platform-led transformation,and Data and Analytics led- transformation. A lot of these initiatives are brought to life in HCL’s client-specific Co-Innovation Labs as well as at HCL’s celebrated grassroots level value creation initiative – Value Portal.
4. Managing risk: Effective data management and process discipline are the first steps toward risk control, monitoring and compliance. HCL enables this through a centralised risk governance framework. HCL helps leading financial services firms across the globe comply with the changing regulations, efficiently manage data and establish an overarching governance and risk framework through a dedicated Risk and Compliance management practice.
5. Partnerships:HCL unlocks value and synergies for customers through multiple alliance models backed by decades of strategic partnership experience with the top Global 500 firms. These alliance models have in-built variable pricing structures and can help rationalise a bank’s balance sheets to meet regulatory and end-client requirements.

For more information, please visit www.HCLTech.com