In today's episode, we pose the question: How is technology revolutionizing the traditional banking sector? Join us as we dive deep into this topic with Norris Koppel, the visionary Founder and CEO of Monese Bank, the UK's pioneering mobile app alternative to traditional banks. In 2023, Monese has once again disrupted the banking landscape with the launch of XYB, an innovative 'coreless' banking platform provider that promises to redefine the industry.
Norris will share insights into how XYB, in a significant shift from the centralized systems of core banking providers, enables banks and non-banking financial institutions to swiftly access new financial services solutions. By leveraging highly flexible decentralized microservices, XYB overcomes the limitations imposed by traditional core banking systems. This breakthrough means that businesses can now deliver the financial products and services their customers need, exactly when and where they're needed.
A cornerstone of our discussion will be XYB's groundbreaking partnership with Google Cloud, integrating generative AI and machine learning tools into its platform. This collaboration is not just a technological leap but a transformation in how financial products are conceptualized, developed, and delivered. Norris will elucidate on how this partnership empowers banks, non-bank financial institutions, and fintech companies to create cutting-edge products with ease and speed, paving the way for hyper-personalized customer experiences and a new era of industry-wide innovation.
Imagine a world where financial products are tailored to individual spending habits, where customer inquiries and complaints are resolved without human intervention, significantly reducing operational costs. Norris will discuss how XYB's strategic embrace of generative AI through its partnership with Google Cloud represents a bold step towards such a future, breaking free from conventional constraints to foster innovation in the financial services sector.
As we explore the transformative potential of XYB and its coreless banking platform, we'll also delve into the broader implications for the banking industry.
[00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of the Tech Talks Daily Podcast.
[00:00:05] I'm your host, Neil.
[00:00:06] And today we're going to be diving into the fascinating world of financial technology,
[00:00:11] or FinTech, which is a realm where innovation and digital transformation are not just buzzwords,
[00:00:17] but critical elements that are reshaping the landscape of banking and finance right now.
[00:00:23] And have you ever wondered how the integration of Tech Talks daily and in today's digital age where data breaches are all too common, securing sensitive information has never been more critical, right? Well, enter KiteWorks, a pinnacle of Managed File Transfer Security or MFT security. This isn't just about meeting standards though, it's about exceeding them, ensuring your data safety within
[00:01:42] your organization while streamlining compliance processes that Moniz makes customers, gives basically customers much better and much more access to cost effective banking services. And we believe that we do this in a much better way than mainstream banks.
[00:03:01] And Moniz itself has been a technology company in its heart.
[00:04:06] of a feel that we are able to break down the barriers that right now call traditional banking systems have.
[00:04:08] And banks can go as light or as heavy as they want with us.
[00:04:12] And we are really enabling them to move fast and also be cost efficient when they do so,
[00:04:21] when they try to basically become more modern when it comes to their technology. service and international banking service from the ground up over a number of years, I think it was a pretty good insight of the struggles that the banks are facing. When we started Moniz, we didn't have good technology available to us that would give us the tools and the reach we required.
[00:05:40] Keep in mind that the typical bank is a very domestic institution.
[00:05:43] It doesn't really scale internationally that well. is they could take the risk and the cost of migrating their core banking solution, which is like a rip and replace approach, or they could create a new bank using a completely new solution. And of course, these limitations and challenges associated with a core banking system
[00:07:00] have paved the way for a paradigm shift towards coreless banking. So it's been very successful and I think this is also much more sort of not only cost effective, but also it's less risky for our clients and banks. And you know, such an approach will really change in the past in these legacy transformations we believe with least risk and then when we look at AI and, you know, AI definitely helps. So the integration of AI within our own XYB platform, we feel is a great way for our clients not to launch a separate project around AI. So they don't basically need to reinvent the wheel
[00:09:42] so they can help, we can help them to leverage
[00:09:45] such technology out of the box. on two specific use cases. So one that I feel, again, as a founder of a neobank, things like helping agents who are working on we and basically our, let's say, Moniz is also XYB's client these days, right? Let's say a client like Moniz using XYB's platform data
[00:12:24] is able to basically clients. And the second component is natural language risk rules. So this is very cool and I think we are in the very early days of this at the moment. So what that basically means is, and again we are relying on our experience as a neo-bank ourselves, is that today when banks risk
[00:14:46] really to deploying your risk scores in a no-code, low-code way. And from the outside looking in, it seems that one of the key benefits of XYB is
[00:14:50] that ability to offer hyper-personalized financial products.
[00:14:54] How do you see that impacting the customer experience and are there any
[00:14:57] examples of how that personalization might manifest
[00:15:00] in everyday banking just for people listening?
[00:15:03] Yeah, of course. To demonstrate the potential of call- habits. So we feel that hyper personalization is really the key to enhanced customer experiences. So for example, with, let's imagine dynamic features such as, you know, if you land in a new country,
[00:16:20] your app tells you that what the rates are
[00:16:23] or understands that you're in a certain place
[00:16:26] and that offers you specific FX rates cost reduction through AI-driven customer service solutions. But to expand on that, can you delve into how all this works and what kind of efficiencies banks and financial institutions can expect from this? Yeah, of course. So, AI has been around before all this became a really big hype around AI.
[00:17:40] So, it all started with chatbots many years ago.
[00:17:44] All the neo-banks started putting chatbots into their apps and so on.
[00:18:46] banks like Vonnies to reduce their cost base and provide better satisfaction. So today we improve our operational cost using the latest technologies. So again
[00:18:51] we have been working on basically Google AI regarding assisted investigation, the
[00:18:59] stuff that I mentioned before, and we have seen really significant return ROI number of contacts made by direct humans. So human interaction has been reduced, things have been dealt with by the bots. So and also handling time is something that we consider as a reduction. And now what I told you was coming from
[00:20:22] Moniz, but we anticipated similar an issue that we need to work on. And one of the key principles we are driving with our XYB, Coreless Banking Platform,
[00:21:40] is kind of a low code, no code,
[00:21:43] which will help and support the banking users security and privacy of customer data, especially in the context of personalized banking services, because it's quite a balance. I suspect it's a question you get asked a lot, right? Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure my data security team could spend hours talking about this, but again I'm trying to be relatively straightforward and keep it short here. So, from the simplest
[00:23:05] viewpoint perspective, it roughly boils down to the right to be forgotten remains hassle-free. We are also investigating taking our encryption even further, and we are providing a platform that has no untokenized data at all. So the token is only decrypting data where necessary,
[00:24:22] within applications, for example.
[00:24:24] And XYB doesn't own any client data,
[00:25:26] And having said that, I think we are at the very beginning of this change and this, let's call it a revolution. And it will take us a number of years, let's say maybe five years or so to mature and to be adopted as a mainstream banking technology.
[00:25:34] So it will take some time.
[00:25:36] And I believe this change is not rapid.
[00:25:39] So we're talking about 15 years right now. I think my words of wisdom or my pearls that I have is I said financial service is a different beast. So sometimes I'm thinking you know maybe I should have stayed just in a tech business center because financial services is different because you need to really be worrying about not just the data privacy obviously but all these changing regulations.
[00:28:04] a hugely successful career. But if I was to ask you to look back and reflect on your own career, none of us are able to achieve any degree of success without a little help along the way. So
[00:28:09] is there a particular person that you're grateful towards, maybe helped you get you where you are
[00:28:13] today, saw something in you, invested a little time? Who would that person be? Maybe we can
[00:28:17] give them a little shout out today. Yeah, I'm sure every person, every entrepreneur,
[00:29:25] and said whatever happens you're going to be okay then then I think I need to name my my my wife basically who was being there with me from day one and I think that's this is my biggest
[00:29:35] she's my biggest pillar of support I think. That's a beautiful answer and hopefully she gets to hear
[00:29:41] this and just how much you appreciate that support that It's just one of the many examples of the steps you're taking towards this. But more than anything, just a big thank you for taking the time to come down and have this conversation with me today, demystify the industry, talk about it in a language that everybody can understand, and hopefully in doing so increase adoption. So
[00:31:00] thanks for joining me today. Thanks, Neil. Have a good day. I think it is clear that the banking