AiThority Interview with Amalia Avramov, Division President for Financial Services in Amdocs

Hi Amalia, welcome to our AiThority Interview Series. Can you walk us through your journey to becoming Division President for Financial Services at Amdocs?

I began my military service when I was 18 and with this came my first access to a STEM education. At the time, technology as a career was still a relatively new concept. Given this, I did not have what most would consider a traditional path into the field. I am not of the “digital native” generation – in fact, there wasn’t even a computer in my home growing up.

When I started in the military, I had the opportunity to join a prestigious technology program. I am someone who always seeks out opportunities for new and unexplored terrain and I saw this as just that – I challenged myself to be a part of this program, which served as a launching pad for my career.

I joined Amdocs as a programmer and progressed quickly to a designer, and eventually to team lead at Amdocs. As a woman, this required a lot of confidence and belief in my abilities – a challenge that I find often holds back many women from success because, especially at the start of our careers, we often lack confidence in our capabilities.

At Amdocs, after five years of working with some of the largest telecommunications names in the United States and during a huge merger for a client, I made the most of an incredible opportunity, which led to being promoted to General Manager.

Through almost 30 years at Amdocs, I continued to raise my hand and take on new challenges, ultimately leading to my current role focused on diversification, as Division President for Financial Services.

Amdocs is disrupting banks’ digital transformations.

Could you please highlight its unique selling point?

Amdocs has been the dominant player in the digital transformation of telecommunications firms for decades, working with the world’s leading brands like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Comcast. In fact, Amdocs was entrusted with the world’s largest cloud migration in 2019. Amdocs’ success in telco –a dominant market share – comes from a combination of factors. First, our unique business model includes accountability and long-term strategic partnerships with customers. We back that with leadership and technological innovation along with the ability to implement complex projects. We also adapt to the changing needs of customers with solutions and services. When it comes to digital transformation, we offer unmatched depth and breadth of experience. We bring that all to the financial services industry. Today, we’ve helped more than 50 banks create winning strategies for competing in today’s market.

As a company that has existed for four decades, we have a strong track record. We are not a new fintech startup. We focus on delivering IT agility with approaches that include AI and automation, with an end goal to drive better customer experiences.

Could you please explain what a next-gen banking platform is?

What are the challenges banks normally face with legacy core banking systems?

After years – or even decades – of hesitating, banks have now recognized the need to replace, upgrade, or outsource their core legacy systems or run the risk of falling far behind on their ability to meet the tailored banking demands of today’s customers. In fact, banks that continue to hold onto these legacy cores are seeing growing technology debt. These outdated systems turn what should be routine projects into slow, complex undertakings and this means that customers are left waiting for offerings that modern competitors are moving faster on.

A next-gen platform uses a modern code base and is cloud-based.

The cloud allows for greater agility, scalability, and resilience. As banks make this move, they need to tailor and scale their offerings to customers.

At Amdocs, we are supporting both core modernization and/or hollowing the core through products and services. An example of this is our Product & Pricing Catalog. This offering empowers banks with dynamic product personalization. What does that mean? It means banks can tailor products, pricing, and more to customers, who get customized products that meet their unique needs. Banks see higher retention rates because customers perceive that their bank understands them.

How is AI/ML playing a role in the future of banking?

AI and machine learning have the potential to personalize the banking experience in unprecedented ways. People can get more tailored advice, support, and recommendations. Banks can become more like financial coaches and assistants.

Just as crucially, AI and machine learning can boost productivity for bank employees. Imagine being able to use natural language to create and refine a new product.

Of course, there’s quite a bit of hype around AI at the moment. We’re helping banks and leaders in other industries to focus on use cases that can deliver near-term value.

A few key areas that we are helping banks explore the incredible potential of AI include underwriting, risk management, anti-fraud, code generation, marketing, customer assistance, and data generation.

We have developed use cases that showcase where banks can begin using AI to create a hyper-personalized experience for their customers. AI has the potential to quickly identify banking gaps for each individual customer, alert them to these, and create individualized offerings.

For example, a customer can use AI to help them monitor accounts they control for their children.

Or, AI can assist a business owner by predicting a cash flow issue and recommending a resolution.

These use cases take advantage of our genAI framework. It’s called amAIz. We engineered amAIz for highly regulated industries, especially communication services and banking. This AI tool uses open-source technology with large language models. Amdocs amAIz addresses industry-specific challenges of security, data privacy, scalability, and the complexity of data governance, all of which are essential for financial institutions.

There is no limit to what AI can help banks achieve – but implementing this safely and securely is key.

Working with a partner like Amdocs, where we can house all of this exploration and testing without risk for customers, is a good first step.

Why must banks embrace core modernization or be prepared to fall by the wayside? Could you please give illustrations?

The banking landscape is evolving quickly. Customers are smarter. They have the power to easily research their options.

Plus, there are no geographical limitations to banking. Competition comes not just from other traditional institutions but also from the neo-banks. What this means is that banks need to embrace transformation to gain the agility that comes with it, or risk losing the next generation of customers to the competition.

Consider everything banks get with core modernization. Think of enhanced agility, scalability, resilience, improved security, and regulatory compliance.

All of that enables the banking experiences and levels of personalization that customers want now – and will demand in the future.

When it comes to the brands they work with, from telecommunications to banking, customer personalization is no longer just a nice-to-have. This is why, according to research by Omdia, 23% of CIOs have ‘Personalized Customer Experience’ as the top IT project for this year.

But how can banks realistically embrace a digital transformation?

They already have a wealth of data about their customers they can use to achieve personalization goals. But, only if they can break down data silos, transform their core system and fully leverage this data. By modernizing their core, they can offer a hyper-personalized experience, offering everything from the right mortgage or credit card at the right time, to meeting evolving family needs, to creating the perfect offerings for a small business.

Could you talk about some of the other innovative banking/fintech platforms in the industry that according to you are set to be new game-changers?

This is an exciting time in the world of banking. You’re seeing incredible technology, transformation, and the convergence of traditional and digital banking capabilities.

AI ML Insights: Australians Rate AI Applications based on Trust, Friendliness, and Diversity

I recently had the opportunity to discuss with other industry experts the rise of neobanks, or digital banks, and their impact on the traditional banking landscape. Despite what many think, neobanks and traditional banks should not be enemies. In reality, traditional banks thrive alongside neobanks by embracing innovation and agility. Traditional banks will not be overshadowed by digital banks.

Instead, these digital banks will push the traditional banks to adapt, become more agile, and be part of the digital ecosystem.

A good example of a bank doing just that is Trust Bank, Singapore’s first digital bank. It’s backed by a traditional bank.

Amdocs was honored to be a Trust Bank partner as they took on the challenging task of launching Singapore’s first digital bank. Since Trust Bank started operating in September of last year, they have grown to 500,000 users, gaining a great foothold in the Southeast Asian financial market. This makes them one of the world’s fastest-growing digital banks.

So, we see traditional banks looking to the success of Trust Bank, and using this as the catalyst to launch their own innovations and digital brands.

What are some of your thoughts on how the current world situation will impact the use of the banking/fintech segment?

There’s no doubt that Generative AI (GAI) is one of the greatest technological forces impacting the world right now, and banks are already exploring how they can leverage it to improve productivity. It’s important that banks take a cautious, but proactive, approach to GenAI.

Recommended:

AiThority Interview with Kelly Eliyahu, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Salesforce

For instance, banks should view genAI as their employees’ new “superpower,” improving their productivity – not their unsupervised replacement. In the future, we see GenAI being used at every stage of the product-development cycle to significantly reduce time to market.

What is your smartest AI/ML-related shortcut or productivity hack?

My smartest, go-to AI/ML-related shortcut for productivity has been leveraging AI-powered virtual assistants like Siri and intelligent chatbots such as ChatGPT. Siri, with its voice recognition capabilities, allows me to seamlessly manage my schedule, send messages, and access quick information using voice commands. Additionally, ChatGPT serves as a valuable text-based assistant. I often use this to help draft emails, reports, and research documents more efficiently.

There is a great synergy between Siri and ChatGPT which has significantly enhanced my productivity as an executive, enabling me to navigate my daily tasks with ease and providing me the ability to give more of my focus to strategic endeavors.

Tag (mention/write about) the one person in the fintech industry whose answers to these questions you would love to read!

Chun Schiros, SVP and Head of Enterprise Data Science at Regions Bank has a compelling background and is at the forefront of one of our industry’s most exciting technologies – AI. She worked on a timely risk management project that detected which business customers were likely running out of money during the pandemic in order to proactively offer funding before their situations became dire. I’m also personally inspired by people who adapt to and seek change, which makes Chun’s story of shifting from an electrical engineer to a data scientist especially compelling.

Tell us about some of the top FinTech/Other B2B events that you’ll be participating in (as a speaker or guest) for 2023-24.

Our Amdocs team is looking forward to being at Money 20/20 USA in Las Vegas, where several of my colleagues will be speaking. Between our booth experience and the sessions we are a part of, I’m confident the show will be amazing. I had the honor to speak on two panels during Money 20/20 Europe and plan to attend again in the coming year.

Thank you, Amalia! That was fun and we hope to see you back on AiThority.com soon.

[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]