4 April 2019
Cecabank held the seminar "Ck-lab, the challenges of the digital environment" today, through the innovation hub created by the bank in 2017 to promote digital transformation in the financial sector through open innovation.
The event was attended by nearly 200 professionals from banks, insurance companies, large companies, payment services companies, fintechs and consulting firms, among others.
During the conference, Agustín Márquez, General Director of the Technology Department at Cecabank who introduced the session, highlighted the fact that regulation must balance safety with convenience and innovation. This way, there will be no need to impose particular solutions between different channels such as face-to-face, unattended terminals and remote purchasing, which are already seeing their borders diluted; or between different payment instruments, to the extent that they tend to converge.
Three round tables
The Ck-lab event consisted of three panels discussing topics such as the importance of the use of data in the digital environment, the current situation of major stakeholders in e-commerce and the challenges posed to the financial system by the continuous digital transformation and the emergence of fintechs. The tables were made up of professionals from organisations such as AXA, Bankia, Global Strategy Solutions, Banco Sabadell, Mastercard, Euro6000, Caser, Amadeus IT Group, Qbitia, Servinform and Coindesk, as well as Cecabank experts in these fields.
In the data table the figure of the CDO (Chief Data Officer) was highlighted as a profile that is gaining more and more strength in organisations and its main challenge today is to extend the data culture within its entity; that is, to obtain information and knowledge so that companies can make decisions as quickly as possible and in a collaborative spirit. Another of the occupations mentioned is data ethics; that is, the way in which we collect, store, manage, use and dispose of data. It is necessary to have policies and procedures, such as GDPR, to ensure its proper use.
Implementation of the PSD2 directive
One of the topics of great interest at the Ck-lab seminar was the upcoming implementation of the PSD2 directive, and how it can affect customer payment processes. In this respect, Lourdes Cremades, General Director of Euro 6000 pointed out that “the main challenge of this regulation lies in e-commerce and in managing to provide a service immediately and without friction, meeting the needs of all those involved (the business, the customer and the bank)”.
Paloma Real, General Director of MasterCard Spain pointed out that “with online payments, entering your details and authentication are the two major friction points". On authentication, several participants agreed that biometric identification was the best solution for the future, although today only 40% of users use biometrics to access their online banking.
Cecabank made its online fraud monitoring and electronic mandate solutions available to banks and retailers.
Finally, the need for collaboration between banks and fintech as a way to improve customer services was also discussed. Some studies indicate that 40% of fintechs themselves are defined as complementary to the services provided by banks and 30% as collaborative.
