Creating value together: Strategic partnerships in the age of GCCs

Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to fstech's special podcast series exploring the evolving landscape of financial services technology. I'm Jonathan Easton, editor of fstech and today marks the final episode of our, uh, three part series with HCL Tech examining how financial institutions are navigating digital transformation in an increasingly complex technological environment. Over the past two episodes we've explored the challenges and opportunities facing banks as they modernize their operations, embrace new technologies and reimagine their relationships with both customers and technology partners. Today we're diving deep into a topic that sits at the heart of modern banking strategy. Creating Value Together the relevance of strategic partnerships in the age of global capability centers. To explore this topic, um, I'm delighted to be joined by two distinguished guests who bring unique perspectives from both sides of the partnership equation. First we have Balka Hoving, Global CIO of Wholesale banking at ING Bank. Balka has been a driving force behind ING Bank's innovation and transformation journey, leading the bank's efforts to strengthen its product foundation while advancing its digital strategy across key markets including Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Under his leadership, ING bank has embraced a customer centric approach to transformation, leveraging strategic partnerships to scale its ambitions in lending, financial markets and um, transaction services. Joining Balka is Sudip Lahiri, Executive Vice President and Head of Europe and UK and Ireland Financial Services at HCL Tech. SUDEEP brings extensive experience as a long term strategic partner to global banks, supporting their journeys across digital transformation, regulatory resilience and operational efficiency. Today, Balka and SUDEEP will share insights on how banks and their strategic partners are co creating value through hybrid models that combine the best of captive centers and global partnerships. We'll explore how organisations are balancing in house capabilities with partner expertise, the evolving role of talent in this new paradigm and the key enablers for driving transformation across AI, cloud and core modernization. So let's dive in and discover how strategic partnerships are um, shaping the future of banking in the age of global capability centers.

Speaker B: Thank you very much for being here today. Uh, Barker, you've been a driving force behind ING Bank's wholesale banking innovation and transformation journey. What role have strategic partners played in helping you reach this milestone? And how to ensure alignment and impact as you collaborate with partners such as HCL Tech.

Speaker C: Yeah, thank you uh, first of all for uh, having me. It's a uh, pleasure being here today. And before I answer the question, I think good to put IHG wholesale, uh, a bit into context. Absolutely. And also did appreciate during my dales in retail where I was CEO of the uh retail franchise is that we found a model where we complement each other and uh, there's hardly any competition uh between our captive centers and our partner locations. We've unified the way of working uh, uh across the location and found a very successful way of driving the transformation hand in hand.

Speaker B: Before we get into that SUDIP HDL Tech's been a long term partner to several global banks including ing. Um can you share a bit more about your journey specifically with ING and the kind of impact that you've been able to co create together.

Speaker D: Well firstly Jonathan thank you for having me. Uh it's an honor and also it's an honour to be in the same stage with BEAUC as well. Well I think ING bank um is very well known in the industry as one of the innovative banks uh leveraging technology to create superior customer value. Uh so what makes this partnership is very unique and try to create value for customers for the business of ING bank and I think um, uh as ING bank has uh decided to expand into Global Capability center we see a unique opportunity to expand the partnership uh bringing our capability to sort of create value uh not just for the business but also to enable the Global Capability center uh uh to be able to deliver um what is expected by the business I mentioned.

Speaker B: Balka uh we'd come back to this topic of uh global Capability Centers and it's definitely one of the um most emerging areas of focus in the financial sector. Um you know and that's been a lot of talk around shifts of this kind of rise of the Global Capability center uh, is ING also taking the same approach and where do you see the need and value for strategic partners when it comes to this area?

Speaker C: Yeah we definitely see this uh as one of the important pillars uh attack strategy uh and at that sense uh well we share our passion for technology with HCL tech and I uh like very much how Sudeep spoke about the virtual extension uh of our uh engineering workforce because when I spoke about well our 10 important locations uh a way to somehow plot this uh issue if you put them on the team topologies uh book where engineering teams are divided in on the one hand what I like to call feature uh teams and I think the book calls them slightly different value aligned teams or so. Uh but and on the other hand platform uh teams and enabling uh uh teams those teams have a different uh purpose and the feature teams need to uh sit very close and work very closely with the business. And therefore for example some of our financial markets teams are based here out of London working Hand in hand with the quants on alcohol trading. But not all the teams need to be uh uh working uh so close to the business. If you think about our hardcore ah technology uh teams working on uh building out scalable platforms serving many many markets around uh uh the world. Uh there's an ideal opportunity for these teams to be located in markets where there's uh uh an easy access to large talent pools and sometimes we tap into those talent pools ourselves in particular in markets uh where we are known uh for digital and being one of the uh uh pioneering uh banks under the ing uh direct brand. So we're known for digital in Poland, uh Romania, Turkey and we used to have a retail franchise uh in uh the Philippines. So there we're building out global capability centers ourselves and we've done so for more than a decade so we're used to this uh model. But obviously to Sudeep's point uh there's also huge value ah of uh partners uh in that mix working ah on the principle of a uh virtual extension and because partners have access to other talent pools where we lack the brand awareness uh India is a great uh example or we lack the scale uh of a technology partnership. HCL tech can bring to uh bring to the table. For example uh Pega where we've also worked very closely uh on a partnership in uh uh the Philippines. But at the same time we see a lot of innovation in our global capability centers for example on uh data management or core banking uh uh in our captive location in Romania uh but equally so in uh Bangalore had the CICD pipeline uh to a large extent has been developed out of our uh partner location in uh in Bangalore.

Speaker B: Thank you very much. Really uh interesting to hear about the kind of emergence of the global uh capability center um Sudeep, you know we talked about the kind of talent cross pollination um specifically in Bangalore. You're saying about how you know HL tech stuff have adopted a kind of an ING mindset and you've brought that expertise uh to the bank. Um from your experience how are organizations balancing the roles of in house teams and strategic partners to unlock maximum value?

Speaker D: See I think uh the Global Capability center um or GCC as people call it has um has become a strategic asset for many organizations. Um while although the different organizations are different maturity level uh typically we see the evolution into three phases. So phase one is where organizations just want to supplement some capability, technical capability for either access to talent or for labor arbitrage and for those kind of purpose um and then the Second phase where organizations try to um do the innovation um and try to have a better business alignment and try to deliver more transformation uh oriented work through the Global Capability Center. And the third phase is primarily uh where uh business complexities and business capability which organizations want to develop within the Global Capability center and um to kind of allow the bank to be a future ready right uh now if you look at the third phase um, I think it's quite um difficult uh for a large bank to do it themselves. They need a strategic partner uh who would bring in their best practices, who would bring in their business knowledge, uh the framework to deliver such kind of complex programs. Uh at the end of the day they would be able to help create those um capabilities and transfer that uh back to the organizations. The unique example we uh have in the industry is our partnership with State street where we ran that uh captive or the joint venture for 10 years and eventually we transfer the entire capability back to them. So uh, we see GCC as a strategic uh asset for the banks and it's an evolving trend. Uh but the banks do realize that they have to work with a strategic partner like HCL Tech who have a very established framework to allow uh to kind of enable the banks to kind of create uh establish that capability which would deliver complex transformative uh programs to the banks ultimately uh deliver superior value to the business.

Speaker B: So the banks have this kind of deep institutional knowledge, the vision, the kind of uh this is what we want to achieve. How do we achieve it? And that's where like HL Tech bringing the um operational know how and the uh domain expertise indeed and Gen AI

Speaker D: coming in and becoming core of delivery uh for a lot of these transformation programs. Um I think ING Bank I must uh compliment uh they took a strategy quite few years back for technology refresh in every 18 months. Uh I remember that when the world was talking about adopting Angular they were already talking about moving to Polymar. I um think ING bank is one of the unique examples of how you can make sure you keep your technical debt under check and you continuously um have a process uh to kind of keep on refreshing your uh technology and be ahead uh in terms of technology adoption. And uh, we are very proud that we played a very important role in creating some of those factories to enable those kind of technology transformations. So yes I think we have um industry leading frameworks um um and I'm quite proud that uh there have been lot of learning also through our engagement with ING bank. Um um and that is a place where we play a very Important role to create value for our customers.

Speaker B: Fascinating the combination of people and technology. Uh Balko, what are your thoughts?

Speaker C: Yeah we obviously have let's say the benefit ah that we have a strong brand in many of our uh markets so it's relatively easy uh to attract people.

Speaker B: Always want to work uh a lot

Speaker C: of people uh a lot of people do in many uh many markets uh obviously but then you still need to retain them. So the topic is of immense uh immense importance uh and I think if I look at our overall head talent uh or people strategy I'd like to call out four uh uh items and the first one uh is our purpose and uh the fact that uh we really are passionate about technology. We share that passion with uh uh HCL Tech. We like to talk about engineering for uh impact. In my retail days we could even take this uh one step further where one of our advertisements was well if you can't properly sing at least at IG you can code for 40 million people. Well uh, that's obviously what I can't say anymore in wholesale but you can code for customers in 35 markets which is also very very uh exciting. But this whole notion of we're building scalable platforms is resonating very well uh uh with tablet. Secondly career path uh incredibly important also uh ties back a bit to the maturity stages sleep you were referring uh uh to because if you stick a bit to let's say maturity level one where you only bring work to global capability uh centers at a certain moment in time well these people wonder how they will ever take up the more senior roles because then these senior roles are only done uh out of other uh locations. So at this stage we are very committed to provide equal career path opportunities and regardless the uh location. So more and more senior roles we also hire for in our club capability uh centers uh and also the engineering leads in the partner locations take up more and more responsibility which is anyway a more effective model but also very motivating for the staff on that location because they see that talent is ultimately then also being rewarded by a promotion to the more senior roles. Then thirdly the learning path uh were well we are also strongly committed to offering learning opportunities uh to our talents but equally uh so uh allowing them to spend time on this online or in classroom sessions. Try also to get to some cross pollination uh with our partners where we can benefit from the approach of HCL tech, for example Opega. But equally so when we are training all our engineers globally on topics such as reliability and uh our well architected reliability framework we'd like to, uh, make not a single difference. Ah. From which location you work, regardless of whether that's a partner or an, uh, uh, IG location.