SHARE

IBM Changes The Game For Financial Services

IBM has recently upped their game significantly in financial services. One of their most insightful moves was to put an executive with deep banking experience, Howard Boville, SVP of IBM Cloud on the effort. Howard was CTO at Bank of America, which has historically been one of the most aggressive users of technology in the […]

Written By

RE

Rob Enderle

Jul 24, 2020

Datamation content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More

IBM has recently upped their game significantly in financial services. One of their most insightful moves was to put an executive with deep banking experience, Howard Boville, SVP of IBM Cloud on the effort. Howard was CTO at Bank of America, which has historically been one of the most aggressive users of technology in the banking industry. Howard is arguably the most qualified person working in a technology company for a Financial Services effort period.

Under his guidance, IBM just launched the IBM Cloud For Financial Services, and it should be a game-changer.

IBM Cloud For Financial Services

Given Howard Boville’s leadership, this program is one of the very few services designed by a Financial Service for a Financial Service. In a way, this is how Amazon Web Services was born in that it started as a spin-out of capabilities Amazon itself needed; thus, it was designed by and for the people it would serve.

Given this is a Financial Service offered under IBM’s Cloud umbrella, much of the focus of the effort is on security and compliance in terms of capability. Because the Finance industry isn’t the tech industry, in terms of operations, the effort has been on making the service highly automated and easy to use.

I do think the COVID-19 event likely helped emphasize this need because, Financial Institutions, like every other industry, have to deal with the issues of short staffing and a workforce that, for safety reasons, is often remote.

You can see the impact of having an ex-Banking CTO at the helm because this effort seems to drill down on the three things that cause Financial Institutions to struggle. Balancing ease of use and security requirements for both users and employees, complying with an ever-growing number of regulations, and helping these institutions better focus their human IT resources on the critical future needs of the business rather than being tied up on just keeping the existing infrastructure working.

On balancing ease of use and security requirements, this is a top tier problem because hostile elements are actively going after both bank employees and customers to gain unauthorized access to financial information and bank accounts. The overworked IT departments in these institutions have to not only protect against outside attacks but attempts to turn customers and employees into unwilling accomplices. While that is far from an easy task, IBM had been dealing with it for decades and is one of the most knowledgeable in this area as a result.

Regulations for the Financial Industry concerning protecting customers and executive behavior have become far more diverse and challenging over time. And these institutions don’t just have to worry about local regulations either; the larger ones have to worry about international regulations as well. Besides, they don’t just have to comply with these regulations but have a way to demonstrate that compliance to pass regulatory audits.

Every company and industry wants to be able to focus on what they do and not feel they have to become a technology company to use that technology. This critical need is the often unmet promise of most solutions that target vertical markets. If every firm has to do it themselves, why use a solution provider like IBM at all? Answering this question is why having Howard Boville running the effort is so essential because this likely drove him nuts in his last job, motivating him to prioritize it in this one.

Wrapping Up: Best Practice

Putting aside this solution, having someone from a given industry help develop a solution for that industry has always been a best practice. Putting this person at the head of the effort is highly unusual. Still, it should be more effective because, when I’ve seen this done with a consultant, the consultant is often overridden for some critical issue. After all, executive management doesn’t see the problem. Given the person with the knowledge of the problem is spearheading this effort, that shouldn’t happen this time.

As a result, the IBM Cloud For Financial Services isn’t just a powerful solution for the Financial Industry; it is a template for how efforts like this should be run.

Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
Top 10 AIOps Companies

FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
What is Text Analysis?

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
Finding a Career Path in AI

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020

SEE ALL
APPLICATIONS ARTICLES

RE

Rob Enderle

As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to create credible dialogue with the market, target customer needs, create new business opportunities, anticipate technology changes, select vendors and products, and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.