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Episode 18 Firdaus Bhathena, Chief Technology Officer at FIS

41m 3s

Episode 18 Firdaus Bhathena, Chief Technology Officer at FIS

In this podcast interview, Ferdos Batina, CTO of FIS, discusses his career journey from software startups to healthcare and now financial services, highlighting that a relentless focus on understanding and solving customer needs is a universal principle across industries. He explains that under CEO Stephanie Ferris, FIS is driven to become a top-tier technology company, emphasizing innovation and customer-centricity while modernizing its significant legacy infrastructure. Batina notes that bank customers now expect seamless, integrated financial services in everyday life and seek FIS as a strategic partner to solve future problems collaboratively. Internally, FIS promotes innovation through initiatives like "Future Forward," which allows any employee to propose ideas, and approaches technology transformation by treating cloud, data, and AI as a unified continuum with strong governance. He advises bank leaders to prioritize investing in their people's education and development to effectively harness new technologies, stressing that a bank's deep institutional knowledge of its customers is its greatest asset in achieving meaningful digital transformation and maintaining core promises of knowing, valuing, and advising clients.

Transcription

6500 Words, 35672 Characters

English
(upbeat music) Hello everybody, and welcome to the Banking on Innovation podcast. I'm so pleased to welcome, as our guest today, Ferdos Batina. Ferdos serves as FIS's chief technology officer. As you're all aware, FIS is a $10 billion banking platform provider serving thousands of banks, and really is a critical part of advancing the entire banking industry. And Ferdos is responsible for developing the company's technology and infrastructure initiatives across the enterprise. And he's also the primary lead in FIS's own digital transformation and the focus on innovation and governance and standardization. So Ferdos, welcome to the Banking on Innovation podcast. - Thank you, Jody. It's a real pleasure to be here. - Great. So Ferdos, you've had a very diverse industry background. In fact, for the audience to say, you spent several time, several amount of your career, actually, in both early stages, as well as mature companies in the healthcare industry. So share with our audience, if you will. How is this cross industry background better prepared you for the role that you're in today? - Yeah, thanks, Jody. So I spent a lot of time in the first half of my professional life in the world of venture-back software startups, right? And, you know, very different world than it is today, different technologies, but some of the most basic principles were the same, which is you lived or died by how you were able to satisfy your customer's needs. Whether those needs were expressed overtly, or whether you were working on what people tend to call latent needs, you know, there wasn't a lot of room for error in the world of startups, where everything banked on you being able to win over those early adopters and then move to, you know, the next segment of customers and then so on and so forth. And so that was a trial by fire, if you will. And, you know, I had about a 50% hit rate, which I thought was pretty okay. And really enjoyed being on the front lines, doing, you know, all of the things that you need to do to make a get a start up to, you know, get beyond its early days. And that's not just, you know, building product, but really deeply trying to understand customers' needs and then translating them into things that the product organization brings to market. I never thought I would work for a big company, but then ended up meeting the, you know, senior leadership at Etna. And first had up my reaction was, why would I go to a company that, you know, has been around for almost 200 years, by the way? But then it was a fantastic opportunity to take everything I had learned in the world of tech and apply it to an industry that I care deeply about. My wife is a physician. I've seen her struggle with the challenges in the healthcare industry and I felt that it was a good place to spend a chunk of time, you know, in my professional life, multiple years, both at Etna and CVS Health, developing digital capabilities that, you know, that industry sorely needs. And once again, it came down to, and I think I discovered that, you know, there are certainly lots of differences between the world of, you know, smaller startups, nimble, fast-moving companies and large companies, but there's one thing that goes across all of them. And that is, if you don't understand your customer well enough, if you don't live in their shoes, if you're not able to translate their needs into product and achieve what the industry has called product market fit for a long time, it's hard to really make any meaningful progress. And that's, those are learnings that, you know, have really helped me as I came to FIS. And, you know, meeting Stephanie Ferris about two years ago, it struck me that, boy, there's this whole set of technology that supports everything we do in the world of finance. And I know relatively little about it, but I know that we can bring people like myself and bring the perspective that we've learned across multiple industries, having seen different movies, as I say, and understanding, you know, to some extent, at least, you know, what is needed from a technology standpoint to transform an industry and take it to the next level. And we'll talk more about that as we go through the podcast. But I'm really excited to be where I am, because I've always enjoyed working on things that impact the lives of millions of people. Healthcare was like that. And now, of course, you know, the financial industry is like that. You know, if it's your family, it's your health, and then it's financial security that people care about in their daily lives. - Thank you for sharing those insights, really useful. You talked about meeting Stephanie and the impact that she had. In fact, I just connected with her just last month, actually, at a bank CEO event. She's so highly regarded from the bank CEOs that were present there. Tell me, how has she, in the last two years, in her role as CEO, how has she imparted a sense of greater, it was called, innovation and customer centricity in the organization? - So first of all, you know, Stephanie comes from the world of finance, so she deeply understands the industry, right? She started her career working at a bank, and then at a tech company that became world pay, and then came to FIS. So she's deeply ingrained. And as, you know, a former CFO, she knows exactly what, you know, you need to do to get, you know, a business to work well. What has impressed me about Stephanie is that, even though she's not a technologist, she really gets the disruptive and transformative power of technology. And she has been very vocal and forthright in her desire to continue to transform FIS into a very high performing software technology organization. And so that's what we talk about all the time. We talk about not how we can be better than what FIS was yesterday, but how we can be as good or better than the best technology companies in the world today. That's a very inspiring mission. Like when I met Stephanie and we first talked about that, I thought, wow, what an opportunity, right? Like, you know, this is a company that's been around for more than 50 years. There's not a lot of tech companies that stick around that long. So that's a lot of credit to the people at FIS who brought it to where it is today. But with that comes a lot of legacy, legacy infrastructure, lots of data centers, legacy technology, that a lot of us still depend upon, not knowing that our banking runs on some really old systems out there. And so this is an area that is ripe for transformation and this B2B2C space, which is kind of where we live, is exactly where I want to be. So I'm not surprised you felt that Stephanie was sort of the right leader for here. It, I'm not easy to please when it comes to who I want to work for and I'm delighted to be at FIS. - I'm a little bit jealous at this event where Stephanie and FIS was getting called out. So it was nice to see in a positive way. So let's talk about this transition. I mean FIS has such strong penetration across right on the entire banking industry. It allows you to really have your finger on the pulse of the most pressing industry issues. So for us, what are you hearing now from customers in terms of their expectations of a banking platform provider like FIS versus just a few years ago? - You know, I think the biggest change and you'll probably hear me talk about this all through this podcast is how do you become a part of your customer's life in a seamless, non-destructive, unobtrusive way? You know, gone out the days when people say, I'm gonna go do some banking at my local bank. And you know, my father-in-law, God bless him, you know, was doing that, right? Like he would be like, I'm off to the bank and I would take his past book, his checkbook and you know, you'd be off to his bank branch and do whatever he needed to do there, which was mostly probably, you know, chatting around with a lot of other people there. These days, financial transactions, banking, investing, managing your money, that's all part of everyday life. It's been described in many ways by people a lot smarter than me, you know, finance has moved to the point of transaction or banking has moved to the point of transaction. How do you personalize those experiences and make them part of somebody's everyday life in a way that doesn't cause disruption or have them go out of their way, but like just seamlessly fits in. And so gone are the days when you compartmentalized your life into I'm going to go, you know, it's very similar to what we used to say in healthcare. Healthcare, 99% of healthcare happens in everyday life. And the financial industry is just the same. Most of what we do from a financial perspective, whether I'm haranging one of my kids because I saw something on their, you know, bank transactions that was concerning to me, or whether they're asking me for a vote. advice on what should I invest in, should I go use this product or that product. Those are all things that are just becoming seamlessly integrated into everyday life. And I think our customers see that. And what they want is for partners like ourselves to help solve those problems. I mean, one thing I'm increasingly seeing is customers aren't coming to us and saying, what are your products and what can we buy from you? They view us as a strategic partner. To me, the difference between a software vendor and a strategic partner is when your customer comes to you and says, here's a problem I have. Help me solve it together. It doesn't matter what software I use or what technology I bring to bear. And I know we're going to talk about data and AI because no conversation about technology could complete without that. And that's one of the big areas. So I think uniting with our customers to actually understand the problems of the future and solving them is what customers are coming to us for more and more. I'm sure this podcast will be replaced by two very smart avatars sometime in the future. For sure. So speaking of strategic partners, one of the things that clients will typically look for in a strategic partner is innovation. They place a premium on innovation. So tell me for a second, how has FIS evolved its operating model and its delivery model to spur greater innovation and what kind of changes have you implemented to better deliver on that? So first of all, one of the things we believe here is that innovation can happen everywhere and anywhere. Innovation is not the domain of a few chosen people who are put into a center of innovation or a center of excellence for innovation. And that's where innovation happens and everybody else is, you know, as we like to say, the CAU business is usual. That's not the approach FIS takes. So we started this, I'm very proud of this. I can't take any credit for it, but it was one of the things that actually attracted me to FIS. We started this program called Future Forward. You might have heard of it. It's something we have talked about in our investor calls, things like that. And what Future Forward did is it created a structured mechanism by which anyone in the company could bring forward an initiative to drive change, to create improvement and get a fair shake. Now a fair shake might mean you get told this didn't meet the bar to actually raise funds and move forward into the next phase of execution. But you were never ignored. Many of us who have worked for large companies, at least for part of our careers, the frustration you feel when I know what to do better, but I don't know how to go about doing it. I think Future Forward created this mechanism within FIS. And it still exists, of course, that anyone who came to me with an idea, I could say to them, I promise you your voice will be heard. I promise you you'll get a fair shake. You will be your concept will be evaluated. They will be a rigorous set of ROI metrics applied to it. You will be part of that process so you learn more as you go through it. And that really spurred a tremendous amount of innovation all across the company. Process innovation, technology innovation, people innovation all across the board. The other thing we're doing, and when you think about innovation, most people thinking I'm a tech guy, he's thinking about AI. I actually don't. AI is definitely very important. When I look at all of technology and I look at process and I look at what people are doing to educate themselves all as innovation across the board. But when it comes to AI, we actually did an enterprise AI week to create that rising tide that lifts all boats and get everybody excited about AI. It doesn't matter if you're in finance. My financial partner is one of the most avid, ardent, active users of AI at this company. Probably more so than many of the tech partners we have, or tech people we have. And so that's really exciting when you see that energy and passion across the company because we've given them the tools to bring their ideas and their creativity to life. So for now, you not only are playing an instrumental role in FIS, its own digital transformation, but I know you also put yourself in the shoes of your customers and many of them are undertaking some kind of data transformation, digital transformation, core transformation, and FIS is oftentimes a part of that as well. So what advice do you have for executives and leaders that are leading digital transformations within the bank? So first of all, when we say digital transformation, and I think you do mean it this way, we meet it in more of a holistic enterprise wide sense. Sometimes when people say digital, they tend to mean digital assets or digital experiences. We actually look at digital as more than that, as a technology transformation across FIS and across our banks. One of the sentences, my colleagues at FIS often hear me say is, we're solving a lot of the problems that our customers want to solve too. And the way we look at it, so the first piece of advice I would say is, don't look at areas of technology in silos. Look at it as a continuum. So for example at FIS, we look at cloud data and AI as a continuum. If you haven't made the investments in cloud-based technologies, private or public cloud, I'm not playing favorites here, or I have my opinions, but I think right tool for the right job, if you're not investing in data platforms where you have rock solid governance, cleansing, lineage, understanding of where the data is coming from. And if you're not investing in the risk and compliance side of being able to use data for AI in a responsible manner, you're only solving half of the problem. And so one of the first things we did when we embarked on our AI journey is we set up an enterprise AI governance council. And we brought leaders in from across the enterprise, definitely from our risk and compliance team, which we're very lucky to have a very competent team there, but also from the technology and the business units as well. And what we did is we set very clear guidelines on what we can and cannot do. That eliminates confusion that minimizes churn within the organization. People who educate themselves on what we're doing in all of these areas as a continuum are able to then self-govern and decide whether they want to take something forward or not. So I would say that setting, creating, enabling platforms in a hub and spoke model is, I would never say one model fits everybody. But for us, that's working extremely well. So we call it foundations. We're building foundational capabilities in cloud data and AI cloud. We're furthest ahead. We lead the industry in that data. Everyone is improving what we're doing with our data platforms. We work with some of the best in the business. And then of course with AI. And I think once you create those enabling platforms that create pathways for the rest of the organization to take advantage of these technologies, you then ignite innovation in a way that you wouldn't if you did everything piecemeal in silos. I see. So you're talking about really developing and improving the foundational capabilities so you can let's say kind of unleash the creativity around application and use cases. That's exactly right. Because if you're trying to develop an application or use case and you need to start from scratch every time, it becomes too daunting. It becomes too slow. You may not feel like you have the ability to get the funding. It's all about what you put in money where your mouth is. What's most important gets funded. And if we've made that core investment in these foundational platform enabling platform capabilities, then we accelerate people's ability across the whole. And we're 50,000 people. We've got a lot of people who want to do a lot of great things. If you don't unlock that and make it so that they don't have to worry about all the basics we just talked about and they can focus on what is it that I need to do with these technologies to solve the user problem that I'm closest to. Then we're missing the boat if we don't do that. Such a salient point. So from the bank's perspective, what else can you share about how they should be capitalizing on the latest advancements in data and availability and cleanliness and also the AI applications on top of that? I would say that first of all, invest in your people. And I know I'm being a little, shall we say, provocative here. But I think it's not like we have everybody across our technology industry knows what the latest advances are in tech. It moves too fast. So it's funny, people forget that investing in your people with a learning and development program that enables the people you already have and who best understand your systems and your customers. more importantly is probably the right place to start. And as a techie, you probably think I would say, go out and invest in these platforms and invest in technology and buy all these products that everyone's trying to throw at us today. But I really think it starts with your people. And making sure that you're empowering them to truly understand what these tools can do and then use their knowledge of your customers to be able to use those tools to create the right product market fit, the right solutions for them. No nobody in tech can tell you better than you as a bank. I spoke to a bank the other day that had been in business for 121 years. Nobody from tech who's been doing AI for a couple of years is going to understand their customer base better than that bank does. That's institutional knowledge that is extremely powerful. And I would challenge our customers to say, bring that to bear. You know, a good carpenter knows his or her tools and knows what tool to use for the job at hand. What's the right tool for the right job? That hasn't changed in the world of tech, even with all the innovation that's happening out there. So educating our people as we are doing aggressively across the entire enterprise on what these new tools do, what the constraints are, what the advantages are, what are the platforms you need to move fast. Those are some of the things that I think will really change, help you transform your organization for the future. And have a lasting impact. You know, another thing that hasn't changed, even despite all of the advancements and there have been such, such acceleration in terms of data capabilities, analytics, then of course AI, all still intending though to deliver on the bank's promise to customers, which is to to know me, value me and advise me. Those are still the fundamental tenets that banks are trying to deliver. But now we have all of these advancements and capabilities and technologies to better deliver on that purpose. That as you've said, that's been ingrained in terms of the industry, in terms of what the purpose and the focus of the bank should be to help their customers better deliver on their banking needs. Absolutely, Jody. And you know, I'm shocked at myself sometimes. And like how many financial products I actually use. And you know, when I was, when I was just coming out of college, I had a bank account. And that was about it. And you know, I did the usual checking and savings thing. And now, you know, today I look at my kids. I have my little research lab in my family. I have three kids between the ages of 20 and 26. What are their gen Z now, I think? For Gen X, I forget now. But you know, I look at how they engage with the world of finance. And it's so interesting. And there's big differences between, you know, my 26 year old and my 20 year old too, in levels of sophistication and understanding in the tools they use. And so I think, you know, our mandate as an industry is to fit into the lives of this next generation of customers as opposed to forcing them into modifying their behaviors into the world that we come from. And that's, for many companies, that's a sea change in how they approach their customers. And I think, but it's exciting. It's really exciting. And, and things that you see in the world of, you know, tech software really start to apply things like, you know, UX research and, you know, design systems and UI development that goes beyond what banks have done in the past. You know, for example, one thing I learned in healthcare in my, in my journey through healthcare was when it comes to a digital experience, your average consumer doesn't compare you to others like you. They compare you to the best digital experience they've most recently had. So, when the tech companies are constantly pushing the envelope on delivering a great digital user experience, we cannot afford to fall behind. We have to exceed that. You know, so, Port House, you brought up this, this notion of personalizing the experience, really understanding even how different segments and groups want to do their banking and what they need to be able to help solve that. So, FIS and Personatics, of course, have a pretty robust partnership now. It's pretty expansive, capable of delivering personalized insights, data enrichment, and also savings journeys. And all of this together is intended to help the bank's customers better manage their day-to-day banking. In fact, we just had an executive from the Bank of Hawaii talk about on a consumer bank association webinar, how they're just rolling out the FIS spending insights and how optimistic they are in terms of how it will be embraced by customers. So, tell me, how are these capabilities around data enrichment and cleansing, creating personalized insights, tailoring, savings journeys? How are these of strategic importance for FIS customers? >>Jody, first of all, I'm delighted that you use the word journeys because it is a journey. And again, I just look at my kids and their friends around me and they're just getting started on this journey through life where they will have to make so many decisions about exactly the kinds of things you're talking about. How do I say for the future? What investments do I make? How do I access the financial tools and resources that make the most sense for me? How do I even know what makes the most sense for me? And so, if you are going to make a difference in the lives of your customer today, really truly understanding them in a highly personalized manner is not optional anymore. If we can do it in retail, where as you browse the web, it shows you ads for things you might have looked at just yesterday, we absolutely need to do a better job of that in finance. And that transformation is the next big change that is going to happen. And it will use data, it will use AI, it will use platforms. But most importantly, it will tie together different parts of a consumer's life. You know, I have a bank that I do a lot with in my personal life, but I don't do everything financial with that bank. I also have financial relationships with a bunch of other vendors too as a consumer. More and more people are like that. And so, how do you stitch that all together and build a picture that you can then use to help me make decisions that are for the better? And the ones who will really win here, I think, are the ones who not only do that, but are able to explain to the consumer what the why behind the recommendations that are being made. Right? You know, it's one thing to be told, hey, based on what you did yesterday, here are the three things I'm going to recommend to you. It's a different thing to say, like, we believe you, this is the phase of life you're in. This is the journey you're in. We see that in things you're doing across the spectrum. And here are three or four things that could make your life better. And here's why that deeper understanding, almost like having a friendly advisor with you all the time, doing that at scale with technology is one of the new frontiers that I'm most excited about. >> But now, so I have to say, I'm quite impressed that in your role as CTA, CTO, you are able to be so, let's say empathetic and project, here's what the head of the retail bank should be striving to achieve for the customers. So I would just want to acknowledge that. And it's actually quite similar to how we think about things as well. For instance, there are elements that banks should be able to provide to customers to take action on right now because they see something. Let's say for instance, you may have an extra $5,000 to put away in your savings or the alternate which is that you may have a cash flow issue in 10 days. Okay, that's something that you should take action on right now. And let me advise you of that. But I also recognize that you, let's say as one of your 20-something-year-old children, is trying to get a better handle on managing their spending. Or they're trying to save for their first home. That's not something I just do in one day. That journey or that job to be done is a two-year, is a three-year job to be done. So how can I put together the right set of content, advice, tools, and products, and also progression in terms of milestone tracking to help you accomplish that goal over time? So it's both having this very near term, like what should the customer take action on right now, but also what journey are they on? And how can I help them with that? Both of which require a real strong foundational understanding of customer data. And then evidence that what I'm sharing with you as a customer, it will personally benefit you. And that also requires the right kind of data to be able to explain why I'm delivering this piece of advice or content or tools or product to you. - Yeah, Jody, I love those examples because they don't just get to figuring out what to do, but they also talk about how to do it. Look, not too long ago, and even today for many banks, in that example you gave where you've got $5,000 sitting in your account and you wanna do something useful with that money in the short term, how often did we get a notice from our bank saying, "Hey, would you like to speak to one of our financial advisors?" You know what's gonna happen if you ask my son, my 26 year old son to speak to a financial advisor, he's just never gonna do that. Now, if it was $500,000 and it's sitting in the account of somebody who has worked for 30 years of their life, they might very well be willing and in fact want to speak to a human being about it. And so it's not just developing the insight but also how you then make it actionable. So, you know, in the moment giving people the ability to act on it in a way that relates most to them, that's personalization too, by the way. That's a big part of what we hope we can do with personetics where we say, you know, depending on who this person is, what the, you know, demographic sort of, you know, segment they belong to, we might engage with them differently. In healthcare, we called it, you know, next best actions. What is the next best action you want somebody to take to make things better? Can you explain it to them? Can you make it easy to act on? And can you tie it into their long term journey? - Yeah, what's exciting here, even though we are, you know, attempting to really innovate in this space, there's so much more room to improve. Like the ambition we just discussed is one which, I think it sets a higher bar for what FIS and personetics and other platform providers as well, what they should be striving to do to support the banking industry in better serving customers. - Absolutely, and I think, you know, getting that real time feedback loop with customers too is vitally important. Out of good news is, you know, digital technology makes it possible to do that. It still surprises me though how few people do it well. And I think that's another big area for improvement. This isn't just about, you know, shooting you an email after you had an interaction with somebody saying, "How'd we do?" There's so many of those coming at us today that like we can't, we'd be spending half our day just filling out those surveys, right? - Yeah, I know. - Right, but it's the actions you take without being asked your feedback that really governed, you know, how your engagement with that enterprise went, with that brand went. You know, I used to know someone who ran the customer experience team at Zappos, the shoe seller. And one of the things he had told me, which at that time surprised me, but in hindsight, shouldn't surprise anybody, is that when Zappos actually sent the wrong shoe to a customer by mistake, the way they solved their problem made it so that that customer was 40% more likely to be a repeat purchaser from Zappos than not. Think about that. - Yeah. - The way you handled your mistakes, your screw ups brought that customer back. They didn't have to ask that customer, how did we do? They observed that customer coming back and buying at a much higher rate than customers who got the correct order. That's what I mean by closing that feedback loop in ways that are sort of under the water line and that are always on. - Yeah, that's a great story. So finally, for the house, what do you think customers will expect from the banking industry in the next three to five years for which the industry is not well prepared? - I think they're going to expect that you will have an integrated view. And I will have an integrated view and so will my banking, my financial providers of everything that I'm doing that is relevant to my business or to my personal finances if I'm an individual customer. And we're not set up well to do that. My bank doesn't know what I'm doing with my credit card and my credit card doesn't know what I'm doing with my mortgage provider, what I'm doing with my investment manager or my financial advisor. And I think some people have tried to create a data hub much like Mint back in the day where you can see all of your financial data in one place. It kind of works well but not great. But I think that consumers are going to be more and more eager to work with organizations that don't have a sort of siloed myopic view of them but actually understand them in their entirety and the trick is going to be how do we do that without being creepy? How do we do that in a way that consumers don't get turned off but actually understand that we're doing this because we're trying to help you. Again, huge parallel with healthcare. Siloed healthcare is one of the reasons why people get into trouble with their health. Our body is not a set of independent organisms that don't connect to each other. My financial picture is very much the same. It's an ecosystem. It's a lot of different things that I'm doing. I want it more real time. I want it more personalized. I want it to be responsive to my needs as opposed to pushing products on me that I don't even understand why I should be interested. And so I feel like that next wave is going to be cut across these silos. Much like FIS's journey as a company, we came together, we grew very rapidly. This is before I got here but I've heard all the stories acquiring a bunch of companies and one of the things Stephanie has really pushed on and if you look at that little circle that we show a lot, it says client-centricity, simplicity and innovation. And all three go hand in hand. So we're staying very focused on the client. They want to see one FIS, not a bunch of silos. We need to make it simple to work with us and make our product simpler too. And then of course as a leading tech provider, we need to continue pushing the boundaries and innovation. I think that's very similar to what consumers are going to expect from their financial institutions. Very well said. Well, you know, there's so much more to come that it'll be good to reconnect in a couple of years. Hopefully at that point, there'll be tremendous traction but also we'll be seeing how much the industry is advanced around some of these topics we've discussed and see if we've actually been able to deliver on what our ambitions have stated. Yeah, I'd be happy to do that, Jody. And it's going to take all of us, right? This is an effort to move the whole industry forward. I don't think any one company can make all the change that's required. But if we truly lock arms and progress the industry, that rising tide will lift all of our boats. Yeah. Just to that point, you know what I've seen in this industry, I think really follows suit. It really takes strong leaders to say that even without all the empirical evidence, and now there's just growing empirical evidence around how some of these capabilities can really deliver. But to take a stand around, we have to have a better foundation to understand our customers. They are going to expect more from the bank in terms of more than just delivering products to really, to delivering really personalized advice and evidence as to why that's going to benefit from, benefit me. And then back to this idea that you, that you've, that you talked about, which is to do those things well, whatever that might be, whatever those use cases might be, you have to have, have laid the right kind of foundation of data analytics, AI capabilities. And then of course it needs to fit within the overall business model. It's not just a digital interaction. There's, you know, the banker also needs to become more intelligent. Marketing needs to become more precise and more informed and targeted as well. So, you know, it's exciting in terms of what's left to be done, but it's, it's also rewarding to have some very strong banking industry leaders, which we both have the benefit of working with to help lead the charge. - Yeah, that's very well said. And, you know, I will say that I often think, and I hear from, from people who may be starting out in their financial journeys, everybody needs guidance at some point. Everybody needs, needs personalized advice. That shouldn't just be the domain of people who can afford to hire a financial advisor or have a certain amount of money in the bank. We need to-- we will change the world for the better when people are able to make financial decisions being better informed with the right tools, with the right guidance and advice. And with their best interests in mind, which is paramount for all of us. Great. Well, for that was-- but, Nina, thank you so much for joining us on the Banking on Innovation Podcast. I know the audience enjoyed your perspective. And thank you again. Thank you, Jody, for the real pleasure being here. And we'll talk soon. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for joining another episode of Banking on Innovation. Make sure you subscribe to get future podcast episodes. Please follow us on LinkedIn and at personatics.com. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Ferdos Batina's diverse background in startups and healthcare emphasized the universal importance of deep customer understanding and achieving product-market fit, which he now applies at FIS.
  2. Under CEO Stephanie Ferris, FIS is transforming into a high-performing technology organization focused on innovation, customer-centricity, and modernizing legacy systems.
  3. Customer expectations have shifted towards seamless, integrated financial experiences in daily life, viewing FIS as a strategic problem-solving partner rather than just a software vendor.
  4. FIS fosters innovation through company-wide programs like "Future Forward" and treats cloud, data, and AI as an interconnected continuum, supported by strong governance and foundational platforms.
  5. Successful digital transformation in banking requires investing first in people—empowering them with knowledge of new tools—and leveraging institutional customer knowledge alongside technology.

Summary:

In this podcast interview, Ferdos Batina, CTO of FIS, discusses his career journey from software startups to healthcare and now financial services, highlighting that a relentless focus on understanding and solving customer needs is a universal principle across industries. He explains that under CEO Stephanie Ferris, FIS is driven to become a top-tier technology company, emphasizing innovation and customer-centricity while modernizing its significant legacy infrastructure. Batina notes that bank customers now expect seamless, integrated financial services in everyday life and seek FIS as a strategic partner to solve future problems collaboratively.

Internally, FIS promotes innovation through initiatives like "Future Forward," which allows any employee to propose ideas, and approaches technology transformation by treating cloud, data, and AI as a unified continuum with strong governance. He advises bank leaders to prioritize investing in their people's education and development to effectively harness new technologies, stressing that a bank's deep institutional knowledge of its customers is its greatest asset in achieving meaningful digital transformation and maintaining core promises of knowing, valuing, and advising clients.

FAQs

Ferdos Batina serves as the Chief Technology Officer at FIS, responsible for developing the company's technology and infrastructure initiatives, and leading its digital transformation with a focus on innovation, governance, and standardization.

His experience in venture-backed startups and healthcare taught him the importance of understanding customer needs deeply and achieving product-market fit, principles that are crucial for driving innovation and transformation in the financial industry.

Stephanie Ferris has emphasized transforming FIS into a high-performing technology organization, inspiring a mission to compete with the best tech companies globally and fostering a culture focused on customer-centric innovation.

Customers now expect seamless, personalized financial experiences integrated into everyday life and view providers as strategic partners who collaboratively solve problems, rather than just software vendors selling products.

FIS promotes innovation through programs like Future Forward, which allows any employee to propose and evaluate initiatives, and by fostering widespread engagement with technologies like AI across all departments, not just in isolated innovation centers.

He advises viewing technology as a continuum—integrating cloud, data, and AI investments with strong governance—and building foundational platforms to enable innovation and avoid siloed, piecemeal approaches.

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