On June 28, SME Banking Club, together with Q-Lana, held a webinar on a digitization strategy.
Olena Gryniuk (SME Banking Club) started the webinar with an overview of the current state of the digitization of banking processes for SMEs in the CEE region. Thus, 80% of the banks digitalized main daily banking operations (checking the current account history, transfers in LCY & FCY); 60% of the banks implemented FX modules in their digital channels; 30% of the banks implemented fully digital customer onboarding; Finally, 10% of the financial institutions implemented a fully digital and paperless lending process.
After that, Christian Ruehmer (Q-Lana) noted that nowadays digitization is necessary, but every financial institution should have a clearly defined digitization strategy to implement digitalization smartly. The absence of the strategy results in the implementation of expensive and unintegrated solutions that do not create the expected benefit and leave the staff irritated and demotivated.
Then, Christian Ruehmer cited the three main components of a digitization strategy:
1. Understanding the value of qualitative and quantitative knowledge about the customers, the sectors, and the market.
2. Strong customer focus through multiple channels of interaction including, were reasonable human interaction. Staff, using technology will be your asset to create business opportunities.
3. A digital platform needs to adjust to the needs and character of an institution, allowing it to open the era of digital banking, without dropping core values. Allows evolving as a business grows.
Consequently, Christian Ruehmer presented four success factors for digital SME Banking:
1. Qualitative information. Banks generate valuable information, but it is difficult to collect!
2. Performance data. Loans create a lot of data. Core Banking Software is not focused on storing or analytics.
3. Monitoring/EWS. The focus is on pre-disbursement assessment. No loan defaults before disbursement.
4. Implementation. Changing staff to a digital mindset can take years. Obstacles and pitfalls in the process are expected.
After that, Christian compared the digitization process to a journey that should start from digitizing existing processes, after those lessons learned and insights should be derived, and after that goes the development of the advanced version.
Moreover, during the webinar Christian Ruehmer presented information about the Q-Lana platform – modular and based on a low code technology platform, flexible to adjust to the specific needs of each institution. During the webinar, Bharath Kumar (Q-Lana) demonstrated the functionality of the Q-Lana platform.
To learn more details, watch the full webinar below:
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