TRANSFORMATION: LOW-CODE Data drop: Low/no-code gives non-IT specialists a way of building solutions quickly
Low and behold!
Low/no-code solutions are increasingly seen as a potential answer to IT prayers in all manner of business environments. Could ISO 20022 represent a defining moment for its adoption in finance? Elmar Handke of UBS and Nihit Ahuja from Volante Technologies think so The challenges banks face in transitioning from old and cumbersome legacy systems to the kinds of adaptable IT solutions needed to meet the demands of today’s customers and operating environment is not, as they say, ‘new news’. There is growing evidence that the world’s major institutions are waking up to the increasing urgency surrounding this agenda, including the most recent Lloyds Bank Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey, which points to an overall increase in technology investment, to 77 per cent in 2021, compared to 62 per cent the previous year – and all focussed on developing new products and services, improving customer experience and responding to ever-more-complex regulatory requirements. Now, it appears that a further catalyst for change could be coming from the imminent migration by key payment infrastructures to the ISO 20022 payment messaging standard. Or, more precisely, according to Elmar Handke, project manager for UBS bank, from the realisation by some institutions that the only way they will meet deadlines imposed in multiple markets for such a change, is by adopting low/no-code ffnews.com
programming solutions – characterised by drag-and-drop tools, pre-packaged code and reusable components. Nihit Ahuja from Volante Technologies, which partnered UBS on its low/no-code journey, also believes such an approach is the best and, for some, the only way they’ll make it in time, given that the implementation deadline for a switchover in the US, Europe and the UK – and globally for any institution plugged into SWIFT – looms in November 2022. This is because these plug-and-play offerings have the potential to supercharge time to market, without the need to carry the additional overhead of specialist in-house developers and programmers – if businesses can even recruit them. Quite apart from the skills shortage, the revenue challenges banks also face in an increasingly competitive and commoditised financial services marketplace, placed under additional pressure by the pandemic-related rise in high-volume, low-value payment transactions, makes low/no code an attractive, cost-efficient option. Low- and no-code have been seen by many industries as a way of releasing the IT logjam caused by a customer swing towards digital. A survey of IT decision-makers by customer relationship
management platform specialist Salesforce, carried out in May 2021, gives some idea of the scale of the challenge. Eighty-eight per cent said they’d seen their workloads increase over the previous 12 months, while 96 per cent said the demand they were experiencing for apps was not sustainable using traditional coding. As a result, more than 90 per cent had turned to low-code tools that general team members could use with appropriate training. In response, over the last 18 months, Salesforce has created a mind-boggling 1.4 million low-code apps. Among the list of major financial institutions adopting an app-based approach, according to the report, are RBC Wealth Management, Academy Bank and Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, for functions ranging from digitising account opening and loan application processes, to streamlining wealth management, trading and compliance services. Nihit Ahuja looks after Volante’s global financial messaging low and no-code platform offering, and has seen the same sudden shift in operating requirements. Volante was one of the first providers to offer companies a way of accelerating the software development lifecycle by enabling them to build solutions quickly without deep technical knowledge. Issue 23 | TheFintechMagazine
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