CTO & Chief Data Officer, Bank Leumi
Interview with Ilan Buganim, CTO and CDO at Bank Leumi, Israel
At Money 20/20 2017 in Las Vegas, we sat down with Ilan Buganim, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Digital Officer at Bank Leumi, Israel to talk about the digital transformation of the banking industry
About Ilan Buganim
Ilan Buganim, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Officer at Bank Leumi, spoke at the DLD 2019 conference about the use of data in banking. He stated that 73% of Millennials in the United States would consider consuming banking services from non-bank companies such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook, viewing them as trusted providers. Buganim also discussed the Cambridge Analytica incident, saying that Facebook exposed open APIs and that data was subsequently sold and used to manipulate elections in America, which he described as an example of the power and misuse of data. In a 2017 interview at Money 20/20, Buganim said that Bank Leumi aimed to be "the Google and the Facebook of the financial industry" with the launch of its mobile-only bank, Pepper. He described the bank's digital transformation as moving from branch-based services to mobile and internet platforms, emphasizing the need for proactive, real-time banking with less friction. Buganim noted that "data is king" and that organizations believe data will help solve problems and reduce customer friction.
Transcript (9 segments)
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Vanessa0:06
We are here at Money 2020 Las Vegas. My name is Vanessa and I run financial services marketing for VMware globally, and I'm based in Palo Alto. We have with us today Mr. Ilan Buganim, the Chief Technology Officer and the Chief Digital Officer of Bank Leumi. So Ilan, welcome and thank you for your time. So earlier this year, Bank Leumi launched Pepper, a mobile-only bank. What was the journey like and how has the customer response been so far?
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Ilan Buganim0:41
So the journey was definitely very exciting, and all the team felt that they are part of something very big, very special. We set ourselves very high targets and we said that we want to be the Google and the Facebook of the financial industry. In order to be there, what we wanted is to create a mobile banking focusing on the Millennials and provide those customers more transparency, speak with them with a very simple language, and provide services in real time and also very innovative services. So we actually launched so far two applications: the Pepper Pay and Pepper Banking. Pepper Pay for payments and Pepper Banking to provide the basic banking services like deposit, loans, current account. And we are very happy with the results. We see they have very strong and constant, sustainable growth of customers that are joining us, and they also given us a very good feedback. Very happy with the result, with the personalization that we are providing with a total new way and total new language of banking that Pepper is providing to them.
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Vanessa2:02
Pepper's core banking processes are run on the Temenos core banking platform on top of VMware cloud infrastructure. So today we announced a collaboration between our three companies to bring this advanced digital platform to banks globally based on what was developed for Pepper. So can you talk a little bit about this collaboration and what we are hoping to achieve together?
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Ilan Buganim2:28
So Pepper is definitely a very innovative technological and banking product which actually encompasses a broad knowledge and experience at Bank Leumi, locally and also globally. It runs on Temenos core banking and VMware infrastructure and cloud that enables Pepper to be much more flexible with a very much better time to market. That actually gives Pepper the ability to provide new features and needs to the customer in a very short time. So we think that Pepper is actually maybe the bank that is the most ready, that has the highest readiness to the digital era challenges. Today when we are looking globally, we see that many organizations and institutions, either financial or not financial, want to build a mobile banking or to enter this financial marketing world. We think that we can be an accelerator to them using this platform. We can bring this platform and together with them introduce a platform that is adapted to their needs and to their markets.
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Vanessa3:47
So we are at an event today at Money 2020 where we're seeing the application of some great emerging technologies in our industry. What are some of the emerging technologies that you are most excited about and why?
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Ilan Buganim4:03
Definitely just the start of the conference, so I didn't see all the technologies. But what I see is a very strong trend in which the data is very dominant in it. We see that there are lots of investment in data and that all the organizations believe that the data will solve actually yesterday's problems and will help to reduce the friction with the customer, which is basic and very important to the new innovative banking. Like they say in banking, and that's applicable to every industry as well, no, data is king.
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Vanessa4:40
So moving on to the next question. So in your opinion, you know, what's next when it comes to digital transformation in our industry?
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Ilan Buganim4:51
So we see actually that most of the banks are moving from providing most of the services in branches to internet or mobile, and they need to strengthen their differentiation. In order to do that, they need to be much more proactive, to provide a much more proactive banking in real time with less friction with the customer, and to change their language in order to make it much easier on the customers. If yesterday when a customer wants to speak with the bank, you need to understand what is a bank and what are the channels and the communication channels that the bank is providing him, tomorrow the bank will need to learn what is easier to the customer, where the customer resides, and if it's easier for him to communicate with the banks in WhatsApp or in Messenger, that's the way we will do it. And it will be much with less friction. The authentication will be biometrics. So I believe that the banking will be much simpler to the customer and will make the life of the banks much more difficult because every bank will need to build a digital differentiator, and it will be done only with innovation.
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Vanessa6:08
Truly a bank of the future and some excellent insights from Ilan. Thank you for your time, Ilan. Appreciate it.