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Inlaks a leading system integrator in Sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with Temenos, a global banking software specialist and HID, an American manufacturer of secure identity solutions recently organized a forum for financial players in Accra, Ghana to highlight and proffer solutions to the changing trends in the banking industry.

The forum which was themed “Banking in the Digital Age”, brought together Executives from Commercial Banks, Savings and Loans Institutions, Regional Microfinance Institutions, and regulator of the industry, Bank of Ghana to discuss ways to connect and create the future of banking in Ghana. The forum also enabled decision makers from different institutions to build issues-management and digital crisis-response infrastructure to support their business operations and corporate objectives.

One key issue which was reviewed was how to protect customer funds and identity fraudsters and hackers especially in the digital space, as banking evolves from physical branches to virtual or online banking.

Kicking off the conference, the Executive Director, Business Transformation and Innovation at Inlaks Mr. Olufemi Muraino who spoke on Banking Trends said, there is already plenty of evidence that the cloud can be as secure as any private data center and the benefits of scalability, increased agility and variable costs are beginning to make the business cases for migration.

“The solution in a fast-changing banking terrain is for banks to rip out decades-old technologies and replace them with modern, real-time architectures capable of powering a digital customer experience. This is critical because customers expect to be able to sign up for new online services and their inability to achieve this brings about disappointment leading to an existential disruption in their organisations”, said Muraino.

“A lot is changing in the banking landscape –with regulation, technology, demographics, changing customer expectations, greater competition and issues with banks’ own legacy business and operating models. The challenges are clear, even if the ultimate endgame is not. Banks need to get ahead of these challenges and retool to win in 2020”, he continued.

Mr. Ondrej Valent, Senior Sales Manager Financial Services EMEA, IAMS at HID Global in his presentation on the capabilities of HID to protect the identities of bank customers said, it is critical for banks to deliver optimized customers’, user experience with data intelligence and driven authentication by leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“HID Global solutions reduce fraud and combats threats by adopting the latest big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence technics, combined with mobile and behavioural biometrics”, he added.

Commenting on why the three entities came together to organize the forum, he said, HID Global is a long-time partner of Temenos and Inlaks in Ghana and the number one choice for Temenos Digital Channels authentication and threat management solution.

He said, the three entities offer a rapidly deployable and easy to use pre-integrated solution which can be delivered on-premises or in the cloud.

Mr. Valent of HID Global, a global leader in Identity management also presented security solutions that addresses current and future needs to secure customer’s transactions of financial institutions.

Temenos a software specialist in banking and finance’s Bid Manager, Mr. Renato (Sam) Samaniego Jr. in his presentation called on players within the banking and finance industry to be concerned with their customers and ensure that, they deploy products which are robust and also user friendly.

In his presentation Mr Samaniego said, Temenos products are always updated and the company invests in all of its products to meet current markets trends. “With the vast clients spread in different markets in the world, customers can leverage on the experiences of the three organisations in order to solve any challenge that comes up.

Temenos which is headquartered in Geneva, is a market leading software provider, partnering with banks and other financial institutions to transform their businesses and stay ahead of a changing marketplace.

Other key speakers at the forum were Jim Hughes from Temenos who spoke on the topic Digital Channels, Lovemore Mandirahwe, speaking on Microfinance, Gokul Krsihnamoothy who also spoke on Temenos’ Wealth & Fund Management products amongst others.