Intellect Design Arena Ltd. is a leading global financial technology company specialising in intelligent, composable solutions for financial institutions across 57 countries, currently expressing interest in the Sri Lankan market.
With its innovative platform, eMACH.ai, Intellect empowers banks and insurance companies to create future-ready digital solutions, enhancing their competitive edge. Leveraging decades of domain expertise, the company offers a wide range of banking and insurance technology products through its Global Consumer Banking, Global Transaction Banking, IntellectAI, and Digital Technology for Commerce divisions, supported by a team of domain experts and solution architects.
Intellect Design Arena Chief Executive Officer (CEO) India and South Asia Ramanan S.V. spoke to The Sunday Morning Business on the company’s aspirations to expand into the Sri Lankan market. Ramanan brings 25 years of experience in diverse roles spanning general management, Six Sigma, and project management, having worked with several prominent organisations such as Siemens, GE, Accenture, and Bharti Airtel.
Following are excerpts:
How do you perceive the significance of the development of fintech solutions in the current business ecosystem?
We’ve seen significant growth in fintech over the last few years, not just in South Asia but globally as well.
Fintech addresses a crucial aspect of business, which is faster customer onboarding. Whether it’s a savings account, a loan, a wealth management platform, or insurance, fintech solutions focus on expediting the customer onboarding process through mobile and other digital technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI).
However, from a financial institution’s perspective, onboarding is only part of the customer journey. There is still a lot of work to be done after onboarding. We have not kept pace with the technological advancements required.
As regulatory entities, financial institutions are expected to maintain a safe and secure technology platform, especially given the increasing number of cyberattacks. It’s crucial to ensure robust IT infrastructure. Therefore, I believe there is a need for enterprise-grade technology.
While fintech has facilitated faster growth, it should not come at the expense of compromising technology infrastructure security. While fintech focuses on faster growth, ‘techfin’ – technology companies that help financial institutions achieve similar objectives securely – also plays a significant role.
In that context, Intellect Design Arena is a techfin company as we enable banks and financial institutions to operate more efficiently through what we call ‘Transform Enterprise, Transform Experience, and Transform Operations’ via technology.
Fintech is definitely beneficial and banks must collaborate with fintech. At the same time, they should prioritise security, or else, they can work with techfin companies that can help achieve the same objectives securely.
How does Intellect Design Arena design customer desirability-based solutions?
Banks cater to various customer segments. Retail customers may have savings or loan accounts, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) require financing for business growth, corporate customers need access to excess funds and investment guidance, and global Multinational Corporations (MNCs) look to move money across geographies.
I believe SMEs are the most critical aspect of any economy, yet they may not always receive sufficient attention from financial institutions. When a retail customer logs into a personal bank account, based on the preferences and usage patterns, the bank offers loans and other facilities tailored to the user needs to demonstrate that it understands the customer.
However, when an SME needs a working capital loan, it is required to submit many documents. The same SME seeking equipment finance must provide the same set of documents, often to another team within the same bank. Banks often lack a proper understanding of the SME sector.
If there is already a working capital relationship and an SME later requires equipment finance, the bank should only need the equipment documents, not the entire set of documents again. We have implemented a concept with a leading private sector bank in India, enabling a faster understanding of SME customers, quicker underwriting for decision-making, and allowing SMEs to manage these processes themselves from their offices rather than having to visit multiple places.
Similarly, on the retail side, we aim for customers to become wealth management clients. Based on the surplus funds in their accounts, our AI tool provides not just basic investment suggestions like equities or mutual funds but more tailored advice as well, allowing retail customers to make informed decisions.
For MNCs, if they have funds in one country that need to be transferred to another, we offer liquidity management solutions that help manage funds across multinational operations. Any surplus funds available in one country can be shared, which is also known as inter-corporate loans. This approach minimises the need for borrowing in different countries.
These solutions are all derived from a deep understanding of customer needs, allowing us to provide tailored services.
Could you elaborate on the first principles thinking approach?
First principles thinking involves understanding customer needs and building solutions based on those needs. It requires a deep understanding of customer requirements and translating that understanding into technology that meets those needs, whether from a banking or end-customer perspective.
First principles thinking starts with understanding customer needs, breaking them down into smaller elements, and solving these elements step by step. This approach helps identify priority areas.
We also use design thinking and have patented our approach, which we call ‘Design the Thinking’. There are three laws of design thinking. One is the ‘last 2% is 200%’. The difference between a four-star hotel and a five-star hotel lies in that last 2%. That small difference can create significant value.
Therefore, it is crucial to prioritise activities that create the most impact. We refer to this prioritisation method as the ‘10, 100, and 1,000 grammes’ rule, which clarifies what holds more priority when expressed in smaller, more tangible units.
How does your company use AI to facilitate enterprises?
The real advancements happening in AI today have roots going back decades. Intellect has been investing in AI for the past 7-8 years.
In the insurance sector, for example, brokers typically submit numerous documents to underwriters for review before a decision is made. Previously, brokers would need to manually submit these documents to the manufacturer via email. Our AI email bot automates this process by reading the documents, understanding the content, extracting necessary information, identifying missing elements, and performing third-party validations where possible. The bot then presents a complete case to the underwriter.
What usually takes 5-6 days is reduced to 60 minutes, significantly boosting productivity. After implementing this for insurance in North American markets, we recognised AI’s horizontal capability across various sectors. One of the largest sovereign funds in the world uses such AI capability to analyse the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) scores of 2,000 companies it invests in globally.
How does eMACH.ai help banks transform growth?
Banking has evolved beyond physical, time-based transactions as customers can now conduct transactions anytime. This transformation requires technological advancements. The need for eMACH.ai in banking arises from changing customer expectations, which can only be met when technology matures to meet these needs.
Many of our global competitors are still operating on legacy systems. We aim to introduce eMACH.ai-based products to the Sri Lankan market, which we believe is ready for growth, supporting sectors like retail, SMEs, and corporate banking.
Could you elaborate on the mini-services you offer?
eMACH Sigma is a reporting tool designed to collect data from multiple sources to generate comprehensive reports. While there are larger players in the market, they may not address specific needs as efficiently.
Another service, iTumeric, a name developed in response to the Covid-19 era, facilitates faster integration of various systems, a vital process for ensuring connectivity among different products and sectors.
These solutions help optimise total operational costs. For example, AI can replace human efforts in areas like data entry and document processing. When investing in technology, it is important to consider the costs that are eliminated, which can result in a 20-30% reduction in operational expenses.
What are the challenges you see in the market and how can they be addressed?
In growing economies like South Asia, the SME sector’s growth and valuation are critical. Our market solutions focus on identifying these issues.
We offer products that facilitate government incentives to be paid to farmers in remote villages, enabling subsidy payments. We provide solutions for every layer of the ecosystem, whether it’s for a farmer, the manufacturing industry, or a retail customer.
The key is to develop a future-oriented technology architecture that can support the needs and aspirations of the market up to 2030 and beyond. Before systems like LankaPay, people relied heavily on cash. But now, banks have significantly advanced in technology.
How do your solutions simplify these sectors in Sri Lanka, aligned with the main challenges that the country faces when it comes to this technology?
We have been active in the market for over a decade. One of the products that can be identified as being in advanced stages with private sector banks is Supply Chain Finance.
Supply Chain Finance funds the needs of different stakeholders such as vendors and dealers. This concept is quite new to the Sri Lankan market and is a technology we are introducing.
What are your insights regarding expanding into the Sri Lankan market?
We are a company registered in Chennai, India and we are very close to Colombo. We are committed to the Sri Lankan market. We are engaging with leaders in the banking industry and holding discussions with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL).
We currently support 14 central banks globally with our products and believe we have the right technology for the Sri Lankan market. We are confident in the growth prospects of the Sri Lankan economy and look forward to partnering with financial institutions in the country.