Cloud solutions the choice for financial entities – Finastra

Despite the current macroeconomic difficulties, financial services software company Finastra sees great opportunities in Latin America for the digital transformation of financial institutions, especially in relation to the use of cloud solutions.

"Although innovation is happening with customer-facing aspects, it also has to happen and is happening in the internal processes of banks," Ignacio Sánchez, head of the treasury, capital markets & enterprise risk area of Finastra, told BNamericas.

In particular, the company sees growing interest for wealth management solutions in the region, driven by regulatory pressures regarding access to information and money laundering.

Financial entities choose these types of solutions in the cloud modality and as a service, which allows them to be more dynamic, rapid to implement and cost-efficient.

"The market isn't that favorable for institutions to make large-scale investments or disruptive projects (what we call big bang)," said Sánchez. For this reason, they prefer cloud solutions, which give them greater flexibility and the possibility of scaling.

In addition, the projects that these entities implemented are carried out in stages.

“All of the last few projects we've worked on have been progressive projects. Although the initial approach is still the transformation that entails all the requirements, what's done is a phased process,” he explained.

This type of mechanism allows evolutionary projects to be created because the result of the first phase determines how the project is continued in the subsequent phase.

Finastra is one of the leading providers of banking software in the world and is also a promoter of open banking.

Asked about the maturity of the open banking market, Sánchez said that "without a doubt, the steps will be taken for this to happen," but while some financial entities are moving faster towards open banking, others remain more reticent at the moment, with regulatory difficulties also hindering advances in certain markets.

PARTNERS

One of Finastra's 2023 objectives is to add new partners in the region that join its FusionStore platform. This allows financial institutions to expand their access to fintech and other service providers.

The online store currently has 240 applications available, which include services related to different stages of the life cycle of financial entities, such as anti-laundering and market or credit risk management.

"We are looking for more fintechs, applications that can be added to this ecosystem," Sánchez said.

The platform is in the cloud and hosted on Microsoft Azure.