AE Stories

Financial services are surfing the wave of digital transformation that has been engulfing the business world for several years now. Operating in a time when technological evolution is speeding up exponentially, most financial organizations are quick to seize the many great opportunities for innovation that come along. But they also find themselves facing numerous organizational and human challenges. The adaptability of employees only increasing at a linear rate, there is a growing skill gap that must be reckoned with.

When the AE team flew to Barcelona to attend the Gartner Symposium, we could not help but feel a nerdy giddiness thinking of all the technological marvels, forecasts and hacks the yearly summit would likely have in store for us. Indeed, Gartner did not disappoint.

Early October, I had the pleasure of providing a keynote at the kick-off summit of the Financial Forum in West Flanders. I was in good company with representative speakers from Eubelius, Febelfin, Capgemini and KBC. All the banking buzzwords did pass by, with one central theme: “Put the customer and the value we create for the customer at the heart of everything we do”.

Dreaming of a way to deploy technology to let children cycle to school safely, BAM Belgium and AE recently joined forces. The result of this interesting collaboration? Read all about Allride, an innovative platform that allows youngsters to map their route to school by means of a smart bicycle lamp and/or an app.

The challenges in the financial sector are substantial: new tech-driven challengers in FinTech are putting pressure on well-established players. Changes in regulation like GDPR or PSD2 are forcing companies to take a long, hard look at their own processes and supporting technologies. And finally, the new customer is a digital native, expecting financial services to be so as well.

It’s time to evolve into a digital, data-driven organisation, a message that many companies are embracing right now. But while the financial sector was changing, so was the software industry.