“Technology innovation is the key in winning the competition, however, we need to make sure that the technology offered is aligned with customers’ need to make it beneficial for them…”

FST Media: What are your business and digital priorities for the next 6 months?

Dutta: HSBC believes that the future of Banking is indeed digital. Therefore we focus on the development and deployment of our Digital Banking capabilities, both for retail and for corporate customers. We do have several milestones to achieve on digital banking in 2017, including introduction of the new Internet Banking and Mobile Banking platform.

Taking advantage of the big momentum of Bank Ekonomi integration, alongside it we will upgrade our core banking as well as improve several key features on our HSBC Internet Banking and Mobile Banking.

FST Media: What technology or innovation is proving to be the biggest game changer across financial services?

Dutta: Technology innovation is the key in winning the competition, however we need to make sure that the technology offered is aligned with customers’ need to make it beneficial for them. To achieve this, we use Analytics which help us identify the future trend that the banks need to focus on as well as to create digital services, based on customer behaviour.

FST Media: How are you leveraging big data and analytics to create customer-centric services, and how can banks and non-traditional financial services work towards innovation in the finance sector?

Dutta: We need to offer innovative, personable and relevant solution to customers’ need. For instance, as a bank that focuses among others on Wealth & Investment products, HSBC provides Wealth tools from our Digital Channel. Customer can subscribe to Mutual Fund, open Time Deposit, open Saving Account online and as part of Global network, customers can also access their overseas accounts using a single interface.

FST Media: What are the key challenges for banks as digitisation increases?

Dutta: The key challenge for banks going Digital is in changing customers’ behaviour from doing Conventional Banking to Digital Banking. For the case of Indonesia, many customers still prefer to meet and speak in person with the Banking staff vis-a-vis going digital.

FST Media: What is the next big thing for HSBC?

Dutta: HSBC has recently created a Digital Center of Excellence based in Hong Kong to support Digital aspiration for Asia Pacific markets. We aim to deliver the best digital tools in all our markets at the same time and reduce costs by creating one global online banking platform. HSBC markets work closely with one another and best practice sharing from each countries are encouraged regularly. Markets with the same characteristics will be able to work together with the help of regional team to deploy a digital solution and share the cost, hence making the Digital deployment faster and cheaper.