Co-founder and director of Maveric Systems, P.Venkatesh explain to TechGraph that “AI and ML have already transformed the way the financial industry seeks to prevent fraud. Thanks to these technologies, any suspicious transaction or intrusion is detected in real time.
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Could you help give an idea of how far Maveric Systems has come since its existence? From when it started to where it is now?
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Fr Venkatesh: Launched in 2000, Maverick systems is a niche, domain-led BankTech specialist that partners with global banks to solve their business challenges through emerging technology. Our 3,700+ specialists use proven solutions and frameworks to address the most pressing CXO challenges in customer experience, digital operations, connected heart, regulatory compliance, analytics, and cloud enablement. A spotless track record of playing a pivotal role in over 65 banking transformation engagements is true validation of our success.
Over the past 4 years, we have exponentially expanded our partnership with 4 of the top 10 global banks and several regional banking leaders through high-demand technology services in data, digital, core transformation as well as quality engineering. Our customer intimacy model, driven by insight, multi-level engagement and constant attention to delivery impact, has created strong customer trust and helped grow the team from 900 to more than 3700 associates.
Differentiated talent with layered skills – deep leadership in domain and emerging technology, backed by a culture of ownership, energy and commitment to customer success, further sets us apart from other industry players . Our global presence covers 15 countries with regional delivery capabilities in Bangalore, Chennai, Dubai, London, Poland, Pune, Riyadh and Singapore.
How is Maveric Systems using its industry expertise and technology to address the unresolved technology gap in Fintech & Banking?
Fr Venkatesh: There are foundations underlying the banking business that will remain in place as it is renewed with new technologies. Two of them are regulation and risk. In these areas, new data platforms are emerging with AI/ML and cloud capabilities so they can be real-time with the ability to scale quickly. Creating value in these areas requires sound banking knowledge, regulatory and risk skills, and the ability to adapt to new era technologies.
The drivers of revenue maximization and cost optimization would continue to be predominant in mature industries and banking is no exception. Through these, by combining our knowledge of the banking domain, the analysis of fintech solutions in various segments of the banking sector as well as the underlying technology, we bring solutions that would effectively meet the demands of the bank.
How is technology transforming the Fintech & Banking sector? Do you think the trend had set in even before the disruption caused by the pandemic?
Fr Venkatesh: Banking and financial services are increasingly streamlined and accessible thanks to fintech. Technology has played a leading role in institutionalizing this change. Accelerated adoption of digital banking has enabled fintechs and banks to reduce time to market for new products. Exponential improvements in the customer experience rather than being solely paperless and cashless have further changed the contours of banking.
New methods of aggregating, slicing, and slicing data for actionable analytics have enabled banks and Fintechs to hyper-personalize their offerings, focus more on product targeting, and effectively utilize a wide range channels frequented by customers.
The adoption of AI and ML-based technology stacks has further accelerated operational efficiency and enhanced the decision-making capability of banking players. Areas such as bot consulting and chatbots have relieved front office teams, allowing them to focus more on value-added initiatives.
Even in cases requiring human intervention, these emerging technologies can provide increased levels of analysis, exponentially improving the ability of customer-facing personnel to effectively address customer challenges.
The trend towards digital adoption was already underway before the pandemic. The pandemic has accelerated the trend. A study published by the deVerve group indicates that the pandemic has increased the use of Fintech applications by 72% in Europe.
What are the new trends in the Fintech & Banking sector?
Fr Venkatesh: Most fintech solutions integrate an app, AI/ML and analytics. Whereas in the past, these focused on a single service or a single function, they are moving towards a complete product. Buy now, pay later is an example. Banks are also preparing to adopt fintech solutions in their portfolio.
Although it is most prevalent on the origination side, it also becomes a staple when it comes to a new product or a new geography. Fintechs are also acquired by banking infrastructure providers like card or payment networks such as Mastercard and technology companies FAGMA.
With Blockchain adoption accelerating in banking, how will Maveric Systems take advantage of it?
Fr Venkatesh: Banks are adopting blockchain for specific use cases rather than a business segment. Contract management is one use case and is deployed on the capital market side where multiple parties are involved.
- Trade finance is another area where there is a need to aggregate and bring together documents involving multiple parties, and blockchain is being adopted here.
- Instant payments, especially cross-border payments, is another area where this is accelerating.
- Distributed ledger is useful in contexts where parties are geographically distributed and there are multiple such parties.
Maveric focuses on the retail banking, corporate and wealth management segments. Maveric tracks blockchain developments in payments, trade finance, and the securities side of wealth management. At this time, we are familiarizing ourselves with the tools and platforms available.
How do you see the technologies, namely artificial intelligence and machine learning, in terms of their relevance in finance and banking technologies? What does the future look like?
Fr Venkatesh: AI and ML have already transformed the way the financial industry seeks to prevent fraud. Thanks to these technologies, any suspicious transaction or intrusion is detected in real time. This allows financial institutions to take immediate action, helping to protect their customers.
Banks are using AI-driven bots to provide better customer service through automated responses to queries and are now even automating some banking operations. This drastically reduces human error, saving time and money.
Banking leaders have actively adopted AI/ML-based technologies in areas such as fraud detection, regulatory compliance, wealth management, personalization, and customer experience. AI adoption is also prevalent in advanced levels of analytics to drive new customer-centric and cost-effective products. Most of them were accelerated due to a pandemic. McKinsey estimates that AI has the potential to generate up to $1 trillion in additional value for the global banking industry each year.
Understanding the key role these technologies play in transforming the banking business, we have built our capabilities on new era BankTech stacks over the past 4 years. Our highly demanded technology services incorporating these technology stacks have been widely accepted by our strategic customers as well as our major banking customers. We have also actively embraced AI technologies in our accelerators and created breakthrough business solutions on leading industry platforms.
Maveric Systems has worked with various industry experts, banks and technology partners to strengthen its digital presence. In the future, do you see more such engagements?
Fr Venkatesh: Generally, most associations have been industry specific. Now, the ecosystem game between segments has become more relevant. At some level, instead of reacting to regulators, many have started to proactively participate to align and work on the future state. On another level, banking, fintech and technology players are coming together to partner on how they could work together. At the heart of every tech player’s entry into finance, whether payments or lending, is the banking aspect.
If the banking industry is moving in this direction, we as banking technology players need to be in this ecosystem to provide leadership and insights to our customers and at the same time learn and be ahead to understand how key players influence its future.
What is the roadmap for Maveric Systems in the future?
Fr Venkatesh: After investing in the right partnerships and building contextual solutions in key areas of customer experience, regulatory compliance, digital operations, connected heart and cloud enablement, we are now focused on building sales, consulting and nearshore delivery capabilities in Europe and the United States. . Acquiring new customers and driving transformational engagements with them will be critical for us this fiscal year.
In line with our growth, we are increasing our infrastructure capacity by an additional 1,400 seats throughout 2022 in Chennai and Bengaluru, and opening new delivery capacity in Pune.
We have grown at a CAGR of 35% over the past 2 years and will record revenue of 520 crore in FY22. We also expect to grow at a CAGR of 35% over the next 2 years. years, thanks to robust growth with our strategic and key customers (the top 10 global banks and regional banking leaders) who contribute 90% of our turnover.