With banks and their customers expecting advanced and secure digital interactions, Avaloq’s services bring both efficiency and agility. CEO Jürg Hunziker speaks to Briony Richter about the successful introduction of the Avaloq platform to Raiffeisen banks and branches
At the beginning of this year, Avaloq announced that all Raiffeisen banks at 900 sites in Switzerland were live on its platform.
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In total, 253 banks will now operate on one seamless platform, which is available to all 11,000 employees at 900 separate Raiffeisen sites throughout Switzerland. Today, as consumer demands drive bank innovation, the Avaloq platform ensures that banks no longer need to worry about managing extremely complex IT and processing operations.
The project – the largest of its type in Europe, with a total cost amounting to CHF500m ($504m) – went far beyond embedding a new IT platform: it was a complete digital transformation that revolutionised Raiffeisen’s technology procedures.
All 253 Raiffeisen banks are independent and operate as part of a co-operative network. During the whole project, Avaloq stayed in constant contact with the regulator to report on the project’s progress.
Speaking to RBI, Jürg Hunziker describes what the project represents. “What is interesting is that we created a new user experience, especially for the front workplace,” he explains. “So the entire look and feel has been transformed. The work flow, the user interaction and the user experience are completely designed from scratch. It is all browser-based.
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By GlobalData“The bank was looking for a future-proof solution, and that is exactly what we offer. The difficulty for humankind is predicting the future, but what we have proved is that, over the past 25 years, we have been constantly innovating to make our customers future-proof. That future migration path is important for banks, and many of our customers have been using our platforms for 20 years.”
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Smart digital banking solutions will unlock a wave of new opportunities, innovation and revenue streams for banks in an increasingly evolving landscape.
It has come to a point where banks need to be able to understand what customers want without having to seek direct feedback; this is a tough task that requires digitisation in both the back and front ends.
To reach that goal, it is essential that banks invest in technological capabilities that allow them to become more intelligent and cater to all digital needs.
“The biggest hurdle is moving forward with digitisation,” Hunziker notes.
“A bank can only be as good as the kind of data you can access. A bank can provide an incredible user experience on the digital journey, but if it cannot access the data in a consistent way, then the services delivered may not be exactly what that customer is looking for.
“Banks now have to review their entire operating model, because they have legacy systems that cannot keep up with their digital aspirations they have in the front office.”
Hunziker adds: “Banks have to ensure that they can deliver all data in a consolidated view with multiple channels. For customers of a bank, I think one of the most annoying things to experience is when the digital front end gives you more information than the banker.”
As the biggest retail project in Europe, Avaloq proves again its scalability and reliability. “We can scale up and down, in unlimited terms,” Hunziker explains. “We can start from very small stages and now go all the way through to facilitating all aspects of the financial life cycle.”
During the project, Avaloq had one delay that lasted only nine months. Hunziker highlights that any delay in Switzerland can be interpreted as an issue, but given the complexity and size of the project, it was not a significant amount of time.
Avaloq and Raiffeissen have a long-standing and committed relationship. Regardless of the financial and political environment, the pair continue to work towards full transformation. Hunziker adds that Brexit is not a massive concern for them.
“The expansion for us is international,” he says. “We have expanded in the UK with an Edinburgh office and brand new offices in London, and we are also expanding in Asia. That’s why we are relaxed with Brexit: Switzerland is not part of the EU, and there is already a relationship between Switzerland and UK that has been built.”
Hunziker continues: “It’s almost an advantage. We are ready, one way or the other. Passporting for employees is the only thing that will need to be sorted, but we are not worried. We hope it works out for everyone, but we’ll see. The only possible chance of it impacting us is if Brexit has a negative effect on the economy.”
Looking to the future, Avaloq aims to stand out from the crowd through its innovative technology and software services that will enable its clients to build scale and grow into new markets.
