While legacy infrastructure is being edged out by cloud computing, optimal customer experience also requires the edge to give banks ‘da-edge’…
When more than half of the world went online, so did the growth of data on the edge.
To be more precise: intelligent data could empower digital wallet companies, financial institutions and banks to know more about their customers through the power of AI and big data combined.
Our digital footprint — including all the trail of data we leave behind while using online commerce for spending — is easily accessible to these companies, with them keeping a close tab on our when, what, how, where etc.
With this same data, banks can suggest and take informed decisions on our behalf as to where our next investment should be, renew our insurance based on the last contract, and if possible, suggest a better premium, offer more lifestyle discounts for loyalty, and so on.
Data and edge are going to be a new phenomenon in banking: if I had the liberty to coin a new word, I would call it “da-edge”’ (pronounced ‘the-edge’).
Gaining da-edge
In the banking industry, edge services will be an important component for mission-critical infrastructure that will be even more powerful when combined with AI, cloud computing, and 5G.
Although the banking sector is invested heavily in legacy infrastructure for reasons we all know best, the industry is also known for being an early adopter of next-gen technologies including Cloud, AI, ML blockchain and more. Many banks are now moving out of their legacy infrastructure to tap the new phenomenon and provide a better customer experience every day.
With the ability to put infrastructure and applications at the edge, banks can speed up their real-time alerts by deriving insights to create a genuinely on-demand customer experience. Imagine you are at an offline store buying a pair of shoes. At the cashier you do not want to enter your passcode, but instead use the banking app on your smartphone which then becomes your swiping machine. With just your good-looking selfie, the payment is done.
This means AI-based real-time video analytics needs to be executed to connect to your bank, make an informed decision to approve the payment based on validation of the selfie (by choice or forced) and account balance to pay the store. The combination of edge computing and cloud will help banks utilize these distributed systems by processing data on the edge location and sending relevant data to the cloud to be processed and saved.
Egging India to da-edge
Merging data and edge computing to offer unprecedented positive customer experience will be the first step in the right direction, by enabling new ways of interacting with customers while strengthening branding.
Cloud and edge technology can enable Indian banks to adopt a new paradigm for delivering creative channels, reducing time-to-market of new offerings, satisfying customer expectations, and complying with country specific regulatory compliance at a cheaper cost.
In terms of cybersecurity, there are solutions that protect customer data proactively. Whether the data is in cloud, at the edge or in-transit, Secure Access Service Edge-based solutions can provide end-to-end security on cloud platforms with centralized visibility.
Furthermore, da-edge holds strong potential for banking institutions in different ways that have not been fully addressed yet. Speed has become paramount to securing a competitive advantage on cloud within the banking industry to boost growth and resilience.
Finally, IDC predicts that by 2024, 80% of banks in India will run trade finance and treasury workloads as SaaS or on PaaS architectures. Banks that do not move away from proprietary and customized applications running on legacy hardware will become obsolete.
