Podcast: Envestnet D&A Group President Farouk Ferchichi on hyper-personalization

Whitney McDonald 0:09
Hello, and welcome to the buzz of bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the editor of bank automation news. Joining me today is president of investment Farukh for Chi Chi. He’s here to discuss the importance of harnessing the power of data through technology for added efficiencies and better understanding of the target audience.Farouk Ferchichi 0:29
Yeah, first of all, hi, Whitney. Very good to see you. Again. For the listening audience, my name is food for cheeky and I am the president of investment data analytics line of business, also known to many of your listeners as Yodlee. Or like we’d like to joke internally and say, it’s usually to point out, and we serve globally, the banking tech and wealth industry with an alternative data and AI powered bank as a service platform that brings together candidate data connectivity, that data intelligence, and hyper personalized digital money management experiences in one integrated ecosystem.Whitney McDonald 1:15
Now, I know that investment has been busy, definitely for the past six months or so can you talk through some of the latest upgrades and newest offerings that investment has been working on?Farouk Ferchichi 1:29
Yeah, I mean, investment generally has had a lot of new things going on. And particularly here in the investment DNA line of business, a lot has happened over the past 18 months. For example, in wealth management. We we launched our wealth data platform, or as our clients know it as w DP. And the focus there has been on driving and measuring growth for our clients and their end clients that are investors. In the banking, retail banking space, we have a lot going on, we moved from a pure aggregation to a leading open banking and alternative data value providers. We invested more in the AI and machine learning and data and AI governance, in addition to kind of grow in our open banking footprint here in North America and abroad. And as a result, we were able to launch kind of a new alternative data solutions. We were actually our alternative credit, credit data solutions, our small business solution, and continue to kind of improve our customer facing digital experiences, taking kind of PFM, or the personal financial management experiences to the next level growing from what is used to be just a money discovery tool, to more of a planning and execution of your money management experiences, like tokenization, for verification and identity check, goal setting savings, and subscription management to name few, of course, all of powered by our unique set of alternative data, database, as well as the analytical capability we have behind.Whitney McDonald 3:14
Now with these recent launches in mind and new products in mind. And of course, being in the business of data. I’d love to start things off by talking about really just the importance of harnessing data and analytics for financial institutions. Can you talk us through that?Farouk Ferchichi 3:29
Yes, Whitney. When you think about this, going to generally speaking about the socio political and economic challenges that are facing us in the world. Financial institutions are obviously not immune, and are seeking a stable business that can overcome these headwinds, and the way they do that is balancing the risk management side of the business and the growth side of the business. And more importantly, in these days with a finite number of resources available to them. So as such, we see the the weight and the importance put into harnessing the power of data is essential. It is a great tool, especially these days to enable automation and productivity on one hand, enabling faster and cheaper development and augmentation of risk management processes, while enabling at the same time, deeper sales and product and marketing, segmentation. Enabling them truly to differentiate product offering with a higher degree of targeting.

Whitney McDonald 4:53
Now getting into the how behind that, really, how can FIS approach this stuff? Energy of harnessing data, and maybe you can talk through where the technology element comes in. Yeah,

Farouk Ferchichi 5:07
as we listen as we constantly are listening and talking to our clients and at the same time finding ways to respond and serve their needs, we see data, AI, and technology harness in delivering, particularly the hyper personalized services to the employees in the back office, to do their job better and of course, the front office to their clients to achieve their financial needs. Focusing on the employee and the back office, we see it in risk management improvements of existing like credit risk management processes for decisioning. Around 40, decision a credit decisioning, loss forecasting or even collection, as well as in the operation risk management processes side automation, we spend improvement and augmentation, we see it in that including like fraud detection, security monitoring, as well as augmenting anti money laundering capabilities. We see also an emerging an emergence at scale of deploying data and AI in the product planning aspect, understanding the lifetime needs of existing clients and build that personalized roadmap of what and when a given a product can be offered at what price to a given customer. We also see marketing segments become segmentation becoming more refined, allowing the organization frankly to meet the needs of their clients in a more hyper personalized way. And again, hyper personalized not to fall but at the right time, using the right omni channel that is preferred by the clients. But But honestly, Whitney for this data, AI and analytics harnessing to be deployed effectively. We see companies who are the most effective at this have laid the foundation of a cultural change around quote unquote, data and artificial and machine learning artificial intelligence and machine learning literacy. The second area where we see is laying the foundation of data governance as well as model governance processes, and then data and AI infrastructure, preferably in the cloud. When you have these type of technical prerequisites, I like to say, they will enable a faster and more effective and efficient deployment of the data AI and technology combined. Obviously, we preach this to our clients all the time, different clients and advisors at different stages of their maturities. But all three areas are our areas we are actively consulting at no additional cost to our clients because for them to take the to get the most return that to achieve the most return from our products and services. We work with them in laying that prerequisite foundation.

Whitney McDonald 8:43
Now speaking of that foundation, and I know you touched a little bit on some of the areas where you can see the benefits coming through the back end, the front end, maybe we could dive a little bit deeper into some of those benefits that a financial institution might see from leveraging their data and analytics.

Farouk Ferchichi 9:02
Yeah, absolutely. We do. We do believe the benefit to end consumers or clients is access to the promise of open finance powered by open banking. And that promise needs to be featured with this hyper personalized product options that they have access to that they don’t today at a competitive price at the right time. On the flip side, for the financial institution, the benefits are to grow and be more productive. And when I say grow, I mean via higher client retention, and more holistic kind of lifetime relationship and value from from the customers they managed today. Above and beyond. They’re onboarding new clients and prospects. And then when I say productivity, I mean the ability to scale and differentiate back office processes around product management, servicing and marketing plans and strategies at a lower cost.

Whitney McDonald 10:07
Now wondering if you can discuss or give an example of a bank or client that’s doing this? Well, what data has brought to a certain financial institution or client? May we talk through what some of those time savings, or monetary savings might look like?

Farouk Ferchichi 10:29
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of my favorite topics with me because, well, while whether internally within our organization, or more importantly, with our clients, we like to talk a lot about value captured. Because we as a business to business to the end client kind of provider, we want our, we want to make sure that our products and services are adding measurable value. And without naming names. As you know, many of our clients are using our open banking and value add data, AI and digital technology services. And I want to share with you a couple, a couple of examples, one of our one from one of our large ePHI clients, where the customer retention across multiple product line and segments has improved incrementally because customer considering another firm, maintain their accounts and respective fee revenue. For the composite organization or this organization, I’m talking about the total risk adjusted operating profit increased due to this improved client retention, believe it or not by 24 million over a three year period of time. And then another client of ours who’s a little bit smaller mid size, regional FYI client, increase their wallet chair. And that’s due to more efficient reliable aggregation of financial data of their customer and supporting behind the scenes, the intelligence and the analytical services that we provide customers account managers get increased visibility into the assets, they do not actively managed with their client, which allow them to put the programs together to compare services of external assets and design internally products and solution to bring those assets in house leading to fundamentally an increase in revenue to the new due to the new asset and their management, the composite three year risk adjusted, which is the value metric that we use with our clients and confidence, profit increase for this FY with the effect of this wallet share program to a total of $15 million.

Whitney McDonald 12:58
Yeah, when you put it into those quantifiable measures, and I know that you said of course there’s the value capture and value add it really the the times the money savings, the time savings at all, it all adds up. And that’s exactly what you guys are working toward anything that we didn’t hit on that you wanted to be sure to. Yeah.

Farouk Ferchichi 13:25
If I may, I know everyone speaks about Chad GPT, and AI and generative AI and all of that. And a couple things I’d like to share are three things one, it is reality, you cannot run from it, it is coming. We invest in it in general and DNA. In particular data analytics line of business in particular, we’ve been using generative AI for years right now. It is our core IP behind the scenes, we just didn’t advertise it because it was not something that people talk about. It’s too technical. But we do now, the second thing I would say the best application that we see and we invest in it of how to implement charge GPT it is going to be on the back office to gain back credibility with the employees with the organization. It will be focused on automation creating content at scale, and so on. And then finally, I would say for charge GPT to be accepted and rollout at scale that has to be a deliberate effort around AI literacy as well as AI governance and openly discussing the AI ethics and The Good, the Bad and the audio that comes with it.

Whitney McDonald 14:52
You’ve been listening to the buzz a bank automation news podcast please follow us on LinkedIn and as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on Your platform of choice thank you for your time and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com For more automation news

Whitney McDonald 0:09
Hello, and welcome to the buzz of bank automation news podcast. My name is Whitney McDonald and I’m the editor of bank automation news. Joining me today is president of investment Farukh for Chi Chi. He’s here to discuss the importance of harnessing the power of data through technology for added efficiencies and better understanding of the target audience.Farouk Ferchichi 0:29
Yeah, first of all, hi, Whitney. Very good to see you. Again. For the listening audience, my name is food for cheeky and I am the president of investment data analytics line of business, also known to many of your listeners as Yodlee. Or like we’d like to joke internally and say, it’s usually to point out, and we serve globally, the banking tech and wealth industry with an alternative data and AI powered bank as a service platform that brings together candidate data connectivity, that data intelligence, and hyper personalized digital money management experiences in one integrated ecosystem.Whitney McDonald 1:15
Now, I know that investment has been busy, definitely for the past six months or so can you talk through some of the latest upgrades and newest offerings that investment has been working on?Farouk Ferchichi 1:29
Yeah, I mean, investment generally has had a lot of new things going on. And particularly here in the investment DNA line of business, a lot has happened over the past 18 months. For example, in wealth management. We we launched our wealth data platform, or as our clients know it as w DP. And the focus there has been on driving and measuring growth for our clients and their end clients that are investors. In the banking, retail banking space, we have a lot going on, we moved from a pure aggregation to a leading open banking and alternative data value providers. We invested more in the AI and machine learning and data and AI governance, in addition to kind of grow in our open banking footprint here in North America and abroad. And as a result, we were able to launch kind of a new alternative data solutions. We were actually our alternative credit, credit data solutions, our small business solution, and continue to kind of improve our customer facing digital experiences, taking kind of PFM, or the personal financial management experiences to the next level growing from what is used to be just a money discovery tool, to more of a planning and execution of your money management experiences, like tokenization, for verification and identity check, goal setting savings, and subscription management to name few, of course, all of powered by our unique set of alternative data, database, as well as the analytical capability we have behind.Whitney McDonald 3:14
Now with these recent launches in mind and new products in mind. And of course, being in the business of data. I’d love to start things off by talking about really just the importance of harnessing data and analytics for financial institutions. Can you talk us through that?Farouk Ferchichi 3:29
Yes, Whitney. When you think about this, going to generally speaking about the socio political and economic challenges that are facing us in the world. Financial institutions are obviously not immune, and are seeking a stable business that can overcome these headwinds, and the way they do that is balancing the risk management side of the business and the growth side of the business. And more importantly, in these days with a finite number of resources available to them. So as such, we see the the weight and the importance put into harnessing the power of data is essential. It is a great tool, especially these days to enable automation and productivity on one hand, enabling faster and cheaper development and augmentation of risk management processes, while enabling at the same time, deeper sales and product and marketing, segmentation. Enabling them truly to differentiate product offering with a higher degree of targeting.

Whitney McDonald 4:53
Now getting into the how behind that, really, how can FIS approach this stuff? Energy of harnessing data, and maybe you can talk through where the technology element comes in. Yeah,

Farouk Ferchichi 5:07
as we listen as we constantly are listening and talking to our clients and at the same time finding ways to respond and serve their needs, we see data, AI, and technology harness in delivering, particularly the hyper personalized services to the employees in the back office, to do their job better and of course, the front office to their clients to achieve their financial needs. Focusing on the employee and the back office, we see it in risk management improvements of existing like credit risk management processes for decisioning. Around 40, decision a credit decisioning, loss forecasting or even collection, as well as in the operation risk management processes side automation, we spend improvement and augmentation, we see it in that including like fraud detection, security monitoring, as well as augmenting anti money laundering capabilities. We see also an emerging an emergence at scale of deploying data and AI in the product planning aspect, understanding the lifetime needs of existing clients and build that personalized roadmap of what and when a given a product can be offered at what price to a given customer. We also see marketing segments become segmentation becoming more refined, allowing the organization frankly to meet the needs of their clients in a more hyper personalized way. And again, hyper personalized not to fall but at the right time, using the right omni channel that is preferred by the clients. But But honestly, Whitney for this data, AI and analytics harnessing to be deployed effectively. We see companies who are the most effective at this have laid the foundation of a cultural change around quote unquote, data and artificial and machine learning artificial intelligence and machine learning literacy. The second area where we see is laying the foundation of data governance as well as model governance processes, and then data and AI infrastructure, preferably in the cloud. When you have these type of technical prerequisites, I like to say, they will enable a faster and more effective and efficient deployment of the data AI and technology combined. Obviously, we preach this to our clients all the time, different clients and advisors at different stages of their maturities. But all three areas are our areas we are actively consulting at no additional cost to our clients because for them to take the to get the most return that to achieve the most return from our products and services. We work with them in laying that prerequisite foundation.

Whitney McDonald 8:43
Now speaking of that foundation, and I know you touched a little bit on some of the areas where you can see the benefits coming through the back end, the front end, maybe we could dive a little bit deeper into some of those benefits that a financial institution might see from leveraging their data and analytics.

Farouk Ferchichi 9:02
Yeah, absolutely. We do. We do believe the benefit to end consumers or clients is access to the promise of open finance powered by open banking. And that promise needs to be featured with this hyper personalized product options that they have access to that they don’t today at a competitive price at the right time. On the flip side, for the financial institution, the benefits are to grow and be more productive. And when I say grow, I mean via higher client retention, and more holistic kind of lifetime relationship and value from from the customers they managed today. Above and beyond. They’re onboarding new clients and prospects. And then when I say productivity, I mean the ability to scale and differentiate back office processes around product management, servicing and marketing plans and strategies at a lower cost.

Whitney McDonald 10:07
Now wondering if you can discuss or give an example of a bank or client that’s doing this? Well, what data has brought to a certain financial institution or client? May we talk through what some of those time savings, or monetary savings might look like?

Farouk Ferchichi 10:29
Yeah, absolutely. This is one of my favorite topics with me because, well, while whether internally within our organization, or more importantly, with our clients, we like to talk a lot about value captured. Because we as a business to business to the end client kind of provider, we want our, we want to make sure that our products and services are adding measurable value. And without naming names. As you know, many of our clients are using our open banking and value add data, AI and digital technology services. And I want to share with you a couple, a couple of examples, one of our one from one of our large ePHI clients, where the customer retention across multiple product line and segments has improved incrementally because customer considering another firm, maintain their accounts and respective fee revenue. For the composite organization or this organization, I’m talking about the total risk adjusted operating profit increased due to this improved client retention, believe it or not by 24 million over a three year period of time. And then another client of ours who’s a little bit smaller mid size, regional FYI client, increase their wallet chair. And that’s due to more efficient reliable aggregation of financial data of their customer and supporting behind the scenes, the intelligence and the analytical services that we provide customers account managers get increased visibility into the assets, they do not actively managed with their client, which allow them to put the programs together to compare services of external assets and design internally products and solution to bring those assets in house leading to fundamentally an increase in revenue to the new due to the new asset and their management, the composite three year risk adjusted, which is the value metric that we use with our clients and confidence, profit increase for this FY with the effect of this wallet share program to a total of $15 million.

Whitney McDonald 12:58
Yeah, when you put it into those quantifiable measures, and I know that you said of course there’s the value capture and value add it really the the times the money savings, the time savings at all, it all adds up. And that’s exactly what you guys are working toward anything that we didn’t hit on that you wanted to be sure to. Yeah.

Farouk Ferchichi 13:25
If I may, I know everyone speaks about Chad GPT, and AI and generative AI and all of that. And a couple things I’d like to share are three things one, it is reality, you cannot run from it, it is coming. We invest in it in general and DNA. In particular data analytics line of business in particular, we’ve been using generative AI for years right now. It is our core IP behind the scenes, we just didn’t advertise it because it was not something that people talk about. It’s too technical. But we do now, the second thing I would say the best application that we see and we invest in it of how to implement charge GPT it is going to be on the back office to gain back credibility with the employees with the organization. It will be focused on automation creating content at scale, and so on. And then finally, I would say for charge GPT to be accepted and rollout at scale that has to be a deliberate effort around AI literacy as well as AI governance and openly discussing the AI ethics and The Good, the Bad and the audio that comes with it.

Whitney McDonald 14:52
You’ve been listening to the buzz a bank automation news podcast please follow us on LinkedIn and as a reminder, you can rate this podcast on Your platform of choice thank you for your time and be sure to visit us at Bank automation news.com For more automation news