The world is starting to see how much data is available to it. From social media interaction to payments to location, all forms of data can be used to help the consumer. With open banking, it is becoming even more accessible, but how can a company go through it all? Patrick Brusnahan speaks to Amazon Web Services to find out
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a technology firm, part of Amazon.com, that provides on-demand cloud computing solutions to a variety of customers, from institutions to governments.
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AWS focuses on the ability of the cloud to solve the majority of financial institutions’ problems and considers it to have a wealth of potential.
Speaking to EPI, Gavin Jackson, head of UK/EMEA at AWS, says: “Cloud is the entirety of our business. We’re finding that the cloud has been incredibly disruptive to the monolithic technology types of the last decade or so. These sorts of areas are ripe for rethinking and that’s where the cloud has really come to the fore.
“AWS has now built an $18.3bn business on that back of that in just over 11 years. It’s popular with customers and we’re particularly keen on the cloud being the epicentre of what we do, including opportunities around PSD2 and open banking in general.
“All of these things tend to converge in the cloud. Rarely now do you see a company built up with their own data centres.”
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With PSD2 on the horizon, many are wondering who it will benefit, if it even succeeds. Are banks set to gain? Are start-ups thanks to the wealth of data now present to them?
“The reason PSD2 is coming out at all is to benefit customers,” Jackson explains. “We always believe, in the end, the customers inform what we do. That’s ultimately what happens.
“We see that across all of Amazon, successful by being customer-obsessed from the get go. Customers always inform what service providers provide. It doesn’t matter if it’s an incumbent or a disrupter or somewhere between the two, if the customer is getting what they want, then they are being successful.
“If not, then you need to create new value propositions and new customer experiences using data. Data is going to spawn a lot of progress in the market and really help consumers. PSD2 has already proved to be an area where ideas have spawned. The customer experience continues to be challenged and improved.”
Incumbents
One of the struggles that long-established banks often come across is legacy infrastructure. A firm with a long history has more data, as well as more dated systems, making it hard to utilise resources as well as needed.
Jackson says: “Inevitably, the more established you are and the more systems you have, there’s a lot of unpicking. It’s not as simple as throwing out the old and ushering in the new.
“Unpicking legacy is challenging but we find that customers tend to have robust plans. We have a lot of experience to draw on now from customers across the world, do there are a lot of blueprints that we’ve established over the years.”
Banks have some of the largest collections of data on consumers imaginable, yet they are reluctant, or perhaps in some cases, incapable of utilising it. Why is this?
“There is the realism that long established institutions, banks might be a good example, have so much data over so long a period of time, in some many locations, it’s difficult to see the wood from the trees,” states Jackson.
He continues: “The first step is to take an inventory of what you have. The other thing is that it is difficult to analyse historical data if you’re analysing a long period of time and you have to harvest that data from a number of different locations. It’s also costly.
“That’s really where the cloud comes in by putting the data into one form factor. If you can get it into one place where even your oldest data is referable and part of a larger data set, you can ask the better and bigger questions. It’s hard to do that with a lot of data and antiquated systems. You can’t move as fast.”
Do customers want their data out in the open though? While it can lead to personalised offers and a more individual customer experience, it can seem like an invasion of privacy. However, this mindset is quickly changing. Is now the right time for data to shine?
Jackson concludes: “My personal view is that if it is good for consumers, progress happens. I enjoy those things personally. 95% of what we do is down to direct feedback from our customers. Customers are very vocal about what they need.
“I think, overall, because we are so close with that customers want now, we don’t tend to suffer when predicting what comes next.”
