During 2004, banks in Asia will integrate legacy applications with Web-based systems to save costs and improve overall performance, while increasing their IT spending by 4 to 5 per cent, according to Unisys. Banks in the region see business process outsourcing (BPO) and Web services as ways to improve their business agility and core competencies while achieving greater flexibility. Unisys also predicts more Asia-Pacific banks to appoint payment ‘czars’ and councils to reduce overlap in payment streams such as checking, credit and debit cards, and electronic channels, as their US counterparts are doing.
Changes are expected in check-processing activities in the Asia-Pacific region, with Unisys identifying outsourcing and imaging as priorities for banks following the global shift to electronic check processing. For greater scale in daily processes, the region’s banks are also expected to share costs by pooling their check processing and insurance policy administration, given the decline in paper check volumes. In this respect, business process outsourcing will move up the banking agenda as financial institutions look to technology to integrate and re-engineer their daily IT and business operations for greater efficiency.
New industry mandates for risk management and compliance are also driving proactive banks to consider the near-real time monitoring of transaction data across multiple channels to more easily identify suspect transactions and verify customers. Essentially, banks in Asia want to improve their flexibility in making business decisions, managing risk, improving operations and integrating their systems to cut costs, and have learned from mistakes made in past technical implementations, Unisys concludes.