Speaking to the media in Singapore, OCBC Chief Executive Samuel Tsien was keen to emphasise the ongoing commitment to welcoming and strengthening the adoption of financial technology at his bank.
Tsien was on hand to meet with the final eight start-ups who had come through the OCBC Fintech Accelerator Programme. This year’s start-up cohort was selected from over 200 global applications.
Three of the eight start-ups namely, Fincast, BondIT and CogniCor, completed successful proof-of-concepts for new solutions in wealth management and virtual customer assistance, and will now move to pilot test their innovations with OCBC Bank and the Bank of Singapore.
Exploring Collaborations
The pilot tests involve wealth management and artificial intelligence solutions, which are two key pillars of innovation for The Open Vault at OCBC, OCBC Bank’s «Fintech and Innovation Lab».
The pilot tests will begin in the fourth quarter of this year, and will last for three months. OCBC Bank continues to explore opportunities to collaborate with the other five start-ups from the accelerator programme: ChromaWay, Coins.ph, Onelyst, Quantifeed and WealthObjects.
Falling Back on Traditional Strength
«To me, the much talked-about disruptive power of fintech lies in how it can deliver «exponentially» enhanced experience value that is much beyond the expectation of our customers, and not just incremental improvements,» Tsien said.
And: «Banks have so far been countering the onset of fintech by falling back on our traditional strength, which is the high level of trust that customers place in us. However, that is no longer adequate. We too must disrupt to deliver outsized value that we can then marry to our trust advantage.»
