Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Arun Tanksali, Co-founder & CTO, Nearex
- Mr. Sudhish Sudhakaran, Head of Enterprise Architecture and Applications, Commercial Bank of Dubai
- Mr. Narayan Rao, Chief Services Officer, Suryoday Small Finance Bank
- Mr. Sharad Goklani, CTO at Equitas Small Finance Bank
- Mr. Harveer Singh, former Head- Digital Solutions for India & South Asia, Mastercard
- Mr. Rajiv Rai, former Chief Digital Officer, Edelweiss Financial Services
- Mr. R Bhaskaran, Strategic Training Advisor in Banking & Finance
- Mr. Ruchir Inamdar, Strategist, Jumper.ai
- Mr. Kamonasish Aayush Mazumdar, Founder & CEO at Foodieverse
- Mr. Roopesh Chandran, Director, Business Development, Visa Inc
- Mr. Piush Kothari, Head of Business Operation, Walt Disney Direct to Consumer & International
- Mr. Hitesh Thakkar, Fintech Consultant- Self-Service Automation
- Mr. Ishan Vaish, India Partnership Manager- Worldwide Developer Relations, Apple
- Mr. Mohammad Hassan, Project Manager, All State Financial Service Pvt Ltd
- Mr. Fareed Jawad, VP-Product Development, Spreedly
- Mr. Shreejith Menon, Senior Director, IDFC FIRST Bank
- Mr. Hemal Shah, former Technical Product Manager, Mastercard
- Mr. Rana Sinha Ray, Head Technology, TimesofMoney
- Mr. Alok Karkera, Head – India Public Sector & North India Financial Institutions Group, Corporate Banking at Citi
- Mr. Prasad Likhite, Director Sales, ACI Worldwide
- Ms. Aishwarya Jaishankar, former SVP – Digital Products & Platforms, HSBC
- Mr. Abhishek Mody, former Associate Director-Payment & Digital Initiatives, IDFC FIRST Bank
- Mr. Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
- Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous
Here goes a problem statement put forth by a CXO Banker, he says “I have 23 years of experience in banking and successfully managed branch operations. Recently got promoted to head office in the Digital initiative department. I am facing a lot of issues from millennial staff as they have more information on technical aspects of electronic products, technology system, etc. During the review meetings, I am getting exposed as tech vendors are using jargon that I am not aware of. And every meeting I hear new jargon. It becomes embarrassing.” So, what advice can be given to this CXO?
Let’s check some personal advice given by the FIAKS community members:
- A member says, “He will get exposed only if he is hiding something. The reason why he is managing digital payments is that he understands customers and payments due to his rich experience. The juniors in his team who understand the tech jargon do not understand banking and the key skill here is banking. Any vendor can provide technical solutions but only an experienced banker can apply them to solve a problem. So, he should not pretend that he understands this jargon and ask for clarification whenever needed. That said, he needs to over the next few months familiarise himself with the digital world and all that it can do and enable. This will make him a better leader and also help his earn the respect of his team and vendors.”
- Another member states, “I would personally advise the CXO to trust his or her experience and subject matter expertise he or she has learned. It always helps in the conversion of manual processes to the best digital experience a customer can get. Jargons are just fancy words used by many to show that they understand the subject however small they may know or depending on the technology being used for the solution. Apart from that over a period of weeks, all the repeatedly used jargon will be known. If a process can be explained or put down in paper in a detailed manner, this can be digitalized by focusing on the pain points and finding alternate solutions. These alternate solutions would still need to be validated by the CXO based on the previous experience. A combination of experience and the latest technology can only provide the best of breed digital solutions to customers.” In the end, your biggest strength is knowing your customers’ needs and wants and creating solutions for that via experiences that customers love. Implementing that via technology is the how. Focus on the why and what.
- Yet another member opines, “Be open and transparent. Don’t be afraid and most importantly, don’t give the impression you are ashamed. Communicate up front that your strengths lie elsewhere – in the functional domain. Work with the team to build complementary skillsets. This would set the expectations both in the internal team and the external partners. In parallel, learn the ropes – it is not rocket science.”
- The above-mentioned problem statement is a fascinating question! Given that this person was recently promoted to a role in the Digital Initiative department, that someone believes in their capability to pick up the needed skills. That should give pause to the self-doubt and let them focus on learning.
- The fact that this question has been asked shows a fair amount of self-awareness – which is a rare commodity in general and rarer in people with that kind of experience. Bodes well for doing something about the problem faced. Take this as an opportunity to learn something new (that too such an interesting topic) at the company’s cost – how many of us get such an opportunity! Tech is not something that a person can’t understand if he starts asking the right questions. Just be open about it and make an effort to ask and understand every aspect unaware of
- Well, this also explains why bankers fear technology and are not letting free markets operate. However, all this makes the space absolutely perfect for disruption over time.
- Also what people forget in their job roles is that their job roles also have societal roles. Somebody’s wrong fitment becomes a national problem over time.
A member shares a similar personal experience, “I had a similar challenge with people throwing jargon at me. I had absolutely no shame in telling them that I don’t understand, so could we do this in English, please! Ultimately if I have to sign off on something, the onus is on them to make me understand right? It also is a great way to figure if the guys spewing jargon are hiding their ignorance behind the jargon! Oftentimes I have found that vendors, when pressed to explain further, invariably say that they will get their technical teams to clarify! I always used to have a lot of fun as a newbie CTO for a digital payments company when people tried to impress, stymie, bamboozle, or generally do time pass with me by throwing jargon and buzzwords. The trick is to keep saying, sorry I don’t understand! It also helps if you have a decent solution architect type of guy who can draw flows and explain by whiteboarding or paper diagrams. Once you have got the flows, the parties, and the inter-relations sorted out, it is a breeze! Take it from someone who, while being in technology, switched domains and tech platforms every 7-8 years and made the transition seamlessly. When I started my current role, I was informed about so many things using buzzwords that my mind just boggled. But I had an excellent deputy, who understood my strengths and made me understand in plain English first. I in turn mapped it to similar things I had done in the past for a similar problem statement. Thereafter it stuck. I also brought in an outsider’s perspective to the role, forcing people to think rather than talk to me about limitations of design patterns and whatnot. I also realized that the more things change, the more they remain the same.”
- Well, the fundamentals have remained the same for a long time! Today everyone talks about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning but no one talks about the algorithms or the statistics behind them which are still of the late sixties or early seventies.
- People talk about cloud, forgetting that the mainframes were the first computing environments to treat computing as a utility. Ask people to draw the flows, and ask them what problems the digital environment is solving,
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