The Exciting New Times

By Shefali Khera, Business Head, Agile Financial Technologies at TFS, USA

 
These are times like never before as they present a unique combination of rebounding markets prompting focus back on aggressive business acquisition (before competition does) whilst the freshness of the crisis begs cautious approach and more prudence than ever before.

Adding to the heady mix is the undeniable fact that in the last 5 years, the customer has changed. Whilst institutional finance & technology had slowed down, individual technology reached a feverish pitch with smart phones, tablets, phablets, surfaces et al, arming the individual with self-serve or “selfie” powers.  We are now dealing with a target base that has become increasingly technology oriented and won’t expect any less from its banker.

Hence the financial institutions have to do a quick yet cautious catch-up to get the first mover’s advantage over their peers.

Expected Contribution from Fintech companies

While the financial institutions focus on their core business, they turn to pioneering technology companies to help them scale up with avant-garde platforms with strong security that meet internal and regulatory compliance norms.

The Agile Difference

Agile Financial Technologies is one such leader in the provisioning of breakthrough Banking & Financial technologies. Continuous research and innovation has won it many accolades such as the “Red Herring” Award, “Best Support Partner for Finance Companies” Award among others.

It sets out to bring cutting edge technologies to empower Bankers and Financial Services professionals with integrated data, smart analytics and Customer 360 degree relationship management through social media and mobile apps while also constantly adhering to changing regulatory reforms and guidelines.

Agile FT caters to the entire financial ecosystem with a rich portfolio of niche solutions such as:

Niche Software Solutions

•          Agilis Investment Management Suite (Wealth, Fund Management)
•          Agilis Bancassurance
•          Agilis Lending (Origination, Management, Collections)
•          Agilis Credit Monitoring System
•          Agilis Credit Union Solution (Core Banking)
•          Agilis DoorStep Banking
•          Agilis Financial Inclusion Suite (Microfinance)
•          Agilis General Insurance (P&C)
•          Agilis Life Insurance (Individual & Group)
•          Agilis Pensions & Annuities
•          Agilis Health Insurance
•          Agilis Insurance Broking

The Agilis solutions have won many awards such as the “Best Asset Management Award” and been recognized by IBS, Gartner etc. The most recent accolade being from Celent that highly rated Agilis Life Insurance, Pensions & Annuities solutions, last month.

Deployment Approach 

Each of the solutions is modular enabling the financial institution to scale up to meet its needs. The deployment can be rapid plain vanilla or customised to meet specific requirements.

Enabling the De Novos

The current uptick is once again encouraging new players to get licensed and enter the banking and financial services space. So in addition to helping leading and seasoned financial institutions, Agile FT has devised provisioning strategies to enable new entrants as well. Agilis software can be provided on a SaaS model while many of its applications are already hosted on Amazon. Pricing models can be provided to match the financial institutions’ capital and revenue plans.

Technology Services

The exciting new times are inspiring financial institutions to come up new innovative products, income streams and ingenious platforms. This is where Agile FT’s technology services practice comes in to help build bespoke systems. These can be completely custom-built to customer specs by Agile FT’s teams that boast of functional gurus and technical architects. Clients can also opt to have their own dedicated Offshore Development Centre (ODC) under Agile FT’s purview.

The People

Agile FT is led by seasoned professionals, who have built a reputation of creating and building successful, scalable enterprises by defining and converting corporate vision into strategic intent and coordinated action.

Shefali Khera, the author, is one of the core team members of the organization and is working with Touchstone in the US to broaden the portfolio and deepen the product functionality.