SMEs are a famously diverse and changeable demographic – these entities face a unique set of challenges, from access to credit to integrating into the digital economy. The challenge for institutions is that technological changes often hit SMEs first, given their reduced cost to change and higher incentive to adapt to changing trends.
Banks serving these SMEs need to be able to adopt innovative strategies and products, while also balancing compliance with domestic regulatory environments and intense competition from both local and global players.
This has led to a different approach to banking technology from emerging markets banks when it comes to transformation. Legacy systems have worked off a ‘one size fits all’ approach, with broad brush functionality and limited flexibility. Any changes to these systems required extensive technical teams to revise and then maintain the functionality to suit customer needs.
Modern solutions are more collaborative, with vendors and banks taking on distinct roles. These platforms focus on providing a foundational technology layer on which banks can then iterate and launch their own services, using their own smaller, more agile development teams, based on the changing needs of their customers and market environment.
