Edwin Bautista, president and CEO of UnionBank, described how technology, culture and people play important roles in the bank’s digital transformation, and showcased the data centre network and Smart Innovation Campus deployed with technology partner Huawei

Red Hat's Arvind Swami, and Richard Harmon discussed how payment transactions have grown significantly during the pandemic and how cloud technology gain traction among financial institutions.

Radha Pillay, regional head for Asia Pacific at Smartsream, cautions against being too reliant on a single provider or technology, particularly for cloud solutions where very few platforms dominate the entire market.

Enno Burghard Weitzel, senior vice president of strategy and business development, Surecomp highlighted the importance of collaboration, and exploring multiple ideas and solutions before deciding.

Arvind Vohra, country head of retail branch banking at HDFC Bank explained how the bank’s service-first culture and analytics-led value proposition is driving growth.

In this RadioFinance session, Emmanuel Daniel spoke with Bikram Chaudhury, a veteran in investment banking, about his current initiative to run a startup which aims to expand credit facilities to inclusive borrowers and the base of the pyramid populations through its proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) lending platform. He clearly explained the issues of the microfinance industry and the significant movements of different players during the pandemic in both developed and emerging markets today.

Mick Fennell, business line director for payments at Temenos discussed how they grow and address issues in the payments business and how the pandemic accelerate the movement towards contactless processing. With the digitisation of the payment process, Temenos sees the rise of instant payments straight to people's accounts. Fennell sees positive growth in their client’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) products so they are putting a huge amount of investment into it. Fennell said: “BNPL is a particular product that they want to launch and do. We're seeing a great appetite within the market in our client base for these consumable services driven by cloud infrastructures".

Faisal Ameen, Managing Director, Head, Asia Pacific and Japan, Global Transaction Services, Bank of America Merill Lynch, shares the challenges and opportunities in trade, and the role adaptive technology will play in the future.

Georg Schneider, head of financial engineering at Digital Asset, spoke about the difficulties in creating and digitising assets into tokens, and how Digital Asset is able to make this process easier for their clients.

Hari Janakiraman, head of industry and innovation, transaction banking at ANZ talked about three distinct but interlinked areas that are needed to futureproof the bank. He discussed how emerging payment technologies can create platforms or ecosystems. He shared the latest trends such as the use of digital assets, tokens and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to bridge opportunities.

Kai Fehr, global head of trade and working capital, Standard Chartered Bank talked about trade platforms and how marketplaces are transforming supply chain finance for clients and partners. He shared that channelling financing in the supply chain industry is critical, amid liquidity and credit crunch. He sees that the ASEAN markets will be the largest winner in the changes that are happening in the global supply chain. “Our friends in Vietnam did an amazing job to attract business. And they are accelerating that path. You have other countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, as well as Thailand, benefiting from it,” Fehr said. StandChart also announced the launch of Trade Track-It, a one-stop digital trade transaction portal that offers its clients end-to-end visibility of their trade transaction status globally. “Capitalising on the digital advances that we've made in the pandemic era, we, as an industry and as a bank, got an amazing amount of unique opportunities ahead of us. Whether it’s using technology such as distributed ledgers, working with central banks on building digital currency capability, whether it's working with interconnected networks to create a seamless frictionless cross-border payment experience for a corporate client and the consumers out there,” he said.

Barry Rodrigues, Finastra discusses how consumers’ and corporates’ access to financial services through multiple channels in addition to banks’ own channels is driving evolution in Banking as a Service. “Capitalising on the digital advances that we've made in the pandemic era, we, as an industry and as a bank, got an amazing amount of unique opportunities ahead of us. Whether it’s using technology such as distributed ledgers, working with central banks on building digital currency capability, whether it's working with interconnected networks to create a seamless frictionless cross-border payment experience for a corporate client and the consumers out there,” he said.

Philip Panaino, global head of cash management of Standard Chartered talked about the opportunities in the banking industry in this digital world. In a post-COVID era, he felt excited about the use of technology and working within the ecosystem to add value to the customer’s payment journey. “Capitalising on the digital advances that we've made in the pandemic era, we, as an industry and as a bank, got an amazing amount of unique opportunities ahead of us. Whether it’s using technology such as distributed ledgers, working with central banks on building digital currency capability, whether it's working with interconnected networks to create a seamless frictionless cross-border payment experience for a corporate client and the consumers out there,” he said.

Travers Clarke-Walker, chief marketing officer of Thought Machine, talks about the company's involvement in the growth of digital banks in the region and how these institutions can take advantages of new technology to diversify product offerings.

Parv Aggarwal, head of partnerships at WadzPay, talks about the company's mission to integrate payments between the physical currency world and the metaverse via cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, and CBDCs on its distributed ledger and blockchain-based Atlytica payment engine.