The threat landscape facing banks has evolved dramatically, particularly with the integration of artificial intelligence into cyberattacks. Ravishankar Subramanian, Executive Vice President & Global Head of Banking Solutions, says: "With the advent of AI, these attacks have become very smart. 

“People are using the power of AI to actually hack into banks' networks, impersonate people and also impersonate transactions."

To combat these sophisticated threats, Hexaware has developed its Trust Framework, which goes beyond traditional security measures by monitoring behavioural patterns. The system creates personalised baselines for users, flagging unusual activity that might indicate compromise. 

Ravishankar notes: "If someone logs in and has the habit of checking their balance first every day and then go and do other transactions, but on a particular day they log in and skip the balance , choosing instead to do something else, that's a flag."

Managing round-the-clock banking operations requires sophisticated automation, which Hexaware addresses through its Tensai® framework. 

This digital-first approach eliminates the need for human intervention in routine monitoring tasks.

Ravishankar adds: "Systems are being watched by other systems and if there is an issue, an alert comes in, then appropriate actions are taken. Sometimes actions are taken by our agentic framework. Sometimes it is triggered to the human in the loop."

The system operates on a tiered escalation model, with different categories of alerts receiving automated responses, agent intervention or human oversight depending on their classification and severity.

Hexaware’s reputation as a market leader in core banking quality assurance stems from its autonomous testing capabilities. 

The company's testing framework continuously validates three critical areas: functional alignment between business requirements and system delivery, API integrations across banking systems and data migration integrity.

Sandip Ganguly, Vice President & Country Head for Australia and New Zealand, emphasises the comprehensive nature of the company’s approach: "The platform has three distinct components that takes care of all these three categories of assurance, if you may: functional alignment where bank users interact with the core system; API integration testing, so the core banking system can communicate with other bank systems and data migration integrity. 

“It's a very comprehensive platform that helps us facilitate core banking service delivery from a quality assurance perspective."

The results speak for themselves when it comes to process automation. In regulatory reporting alone, Hexaware has achieved remarkable efficiency gains. "What we are seeing now is that the infusion of generative and agentic AI has increased the efficiency of this process by close to 500%," Ravishankar says.

As well as the improvements in workflow automation, where traditional processes have been transformed entirely. "What used to take people around eight to 10 working days is now getting done in less than an hour," he adds.

Hexaware’s strategy focuses on establishing proof of value before securing longer-term relationships. "More often than not, we are happy to invest and establish value, and on the back of that we get a seat at the table," explains Sandip.

This approach resonates particularly well in the mid-market segment, where organisations seek maximum value from restricted budgets. "Therefore, our positioning is very, very different. As I said, in the mid-market, the way we try to align with our customers is that we want to be a full-service provider for the customer," Sandip concludes.

Hexaware’s AI-led, human intelligence-perfected solutions to businesses presents a compelling proposition in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Innovation and technical expertise are key to Nucleus’s success. The company provides a fully configurable, no-code low-code end-to-end lending solution through FinnOne Neo® . Designed to deliver agility while reducing costs, the platform helps the likes of Bank of Sydney launch products faster, accelerate growth and improve customer experience.

“When we began working with Bank of Sydney, we were struck by how many processes were still manual: credit policies were written on paper, manual fee and charges setups were leading to leakages, and document handling with minimal or no system integrations was presenting challenges,” Ashwani explains. “Our goal was to eliminate all of these pain points.”

Nucleus takes a collaborative approach to customer engagement, honed by years of experience globally and in the complex Australian sector, where it began working in 2013 enabling digital transformation at a tier-two bank and gaining valuable expertise in regulatory frameworks.

“It’s been a true partnership that began with continuous engagement to understand challenges and opportunities, and revolved around shared objectives,” Ashwani states.

“As a result of this collaboration, FinnOne Neo®  has helped the bank to integrate with broker systems, automate credit policies and reporting, apply rule-based fee and document management, embed serviceability calculators and enable seamless integration with third-party systems.”

A key component to this success is FinnOne Neo® ’s configurability, enabled by a flexible open-architecture design. This allows financial institutions to adapt quickly to evolving market dynamics and provide tailored loan products. “It’s a real strategic differentiator,” says Ashwani. “It allows us to meet changing regulatory needs quickly and roll out new products and services to satisfy customer demands.”

The results have been transformative for Bank of Sydney. “Our experience and technology made the implementation 40% faster. We’ve dramatically reduced manual touch time across the business, significantly reduced fee leakages and helped the bankruptcy team gain at least 40-50% efficiency.

“On top of that, they’ve been able to free up lender capacity to focus far more effectively on building customer relationships and driving improved customer experience.”

Partnerships like that with Bank of Sydney are crucial in Nucleus’ development. The company constantly updates its platforms – the next 8.5 version of FinnOne Neo® is due by end of year 2025. It is also exploring new innovations around AI and other technologies to further enhance outcomes.

“Our journey together continues, and now we’re collaborating on the upcoming FinnOne Neo®  GA version upgrade later this year,” Ashwani affirms. “The new version will deliver a major leap in UI/UX, transforming how end users interact with the system. We’re also partnering with several ANZ fintechs to deliver out-of-the-box integrations that will reduce manual processes - driving even greater efficiency and customer satisfaction”

Read the full story HERE.

An example of how AWS enables cloud-first and customer-centric transformations is its partnership with innovative pan-Asian firm FWD Insurance. Unlike many in what is still a traditional industry, FWD is a digital-first and technology-driven company with a vision to change the way people feel about insurance. 

“Technology is crucial to this,” says FWD’s Group Chief Technology and Operations Officer Sandeep Pandey. “We have a very clear strategy and AWS has been a key partner for our platform and architecture across the experience layer, process layer, integration layer and infrastructure.”

Chad points to three fundamental pillars that distinguish AWS in the market when working with partners like FWD: a very comprehensive solution portfolio that goes far beyond cloud to power everything from customer service to risk, proven experience and a strong culture of innovation.

FWD began its cloud-first strategy in 2020. The company announced a five-year agreement with AWS in 2024, focused on driving FWD’s AI and ML programmes, improving data-driven decision making, and customer-focused innovation. 

“There are three core areas where we’ve helped with FWD’s digital transformation,” Chad notes. “The first is FinOps, where we’ve delivered a centralised finance cloud hub that revolutionised financial data management, enabled faster closing periods, brought significant operational efficiencies and improved ROI through streamlined processes.

“On customer experience, we’re powering FWD’s Omne app, which enhances customer engagement through Gen AI features like digital avatars, BI dashboards and automation,” he notes. “Thirdly, for digital innovation, we’ve supported FWD’s Cloud Academy training solution, helping more than 600 employees.”

AWS has also enabled operations and risk management through FWD’s Shared Service Centre. “Results include 60% faster new product release, test cycles reduced from 30 days to one week, 50% increase in the frequency of IT releases and 30% cost savings,” Chad reports. 

AWS will continue to support FWD’s transformation. “Our partnership demonstrates how our comprehensive capabilities drive meaningful transformation and help set new standards for operational excellence and customer experience, which is where FWD is focused.

“Building on what we’ve already developed, AI and agentic solutions will rise in prominence,” says Chad, “particularly Gen AI implementation into different areas like intelligent call centres or ‘generative business intelligence,’ which gives a more holistic view of customers, markets, risk and more. Technology is technology. For us it’s about how we bring new capabilities into the business, its processes and infrastructure, and the customer experience. It has to be meaningful.”

Tradu approached Gehtsoft to create a SuperApp combining forex, CFDs, stock trading, cryptocurrency and wallet functionality.

With Tradu’s goals set on delivering a unified SuperApp to the market, the biggest technical challenge was engineering a seamless, fluid user experience across everything Tradu have to offer (stocks, crypto, Forex, CFDs, wallets) with features like silent login and instant fund transfers across various asset classes, while ensuring reliable performance at every critical point of the transaction flow. 

This was followed by resolving compatibility and reliability challenges, eliminating vendor sprawl, and bringing unique features to the market.

By taking a solutions-first approach and creating a custom, cutting-edge solution, Gehtsoft enabled Tradu to bring an exceptional user experience to the market, driving engagement and long-term growth.

With 88% of Tradu’s customer base accessing its services via mobile application, it was essential for Gehtsoft to develop the platform with mobile-specific features, as Google and Apple typically reject pure web implementations. 

“We built a hybrid solution combining the speed and cost-effectiveness of web development with the compliance needed for app store approvals,” Ivan explains.

The solution uses native wrappers to deliver enterprise-grade mobile performance while maintaining multi-platform affordability.

Biometric authentication requires custom engineering, since standard hybrid frameworks don’t support it reliably across platforms. 

To tackle this challenge, Gehtsoft created a native bridge combining component-based development speed with custom code precision.

The mobile app achieved a 4.8+ rating across app stores and generated over 200,000 downloads.

Gehtsoft’s approach as a technology partner rather than a traditional vendor affected the entire development strategy.

Instead of focusing narrowly on coding, the company took ownership of fragmented architecture and aligned multiple vendors and stakeholders.

“This work encompasses administrative, organisational and technological dimensions,” Ivan continues. “It's more than just development work.”

The approach incorporated focusing on long-term goals, including performance, security and scalability, from project inception. And this success was supported by the company’s quarter-century of fintech experience that has built strong engineering standards and security practices successfully audited by trusted cybersecurity firms.

One of Tradu’s most innovative features allows users to trade and spend in real-world transactions seamlessly.

This sell-and-spend capability required engineering coordination across nearly every platform component.

“What looks like a simple tap for a user triggers a series of tightly coordinated backend operations,” Ivan explains. The team applied distributed transaction management and resilience patterns to ensure end-to-end reliability.

Each system component was treated as mission-critical since any failure would compromise the entire user experience.

Paul Sutherland, Chief Information Officer at Tradu, adds: “For over two decades, our partnership with Gehtsoft has been built on trust, innovation, and engineering excellence.

“Tradu’s multi-asset, multi-channel platform builds on that foundation—delivering the tools and technology that drive our customer-first global trading experience. We’re excited to continue this transformative collaboration into the next phase of growth.”

Ivan believes the super app model represents the future of fintech platforms.

User expectations increasingly demand convenience, simplicity and frictionless fund movement without switching between applications.

“Despite the complex backend spanning multiple platforms, we were able to deliver a unified high-performance experience through smart integrations, thoughtful architecture and strong focus on user-centric design,” he says.

The success demonstrates that architectural complexity doesn't require compromising control, compliance or stability. The super app model supports rapid innovation with operational reliability.

“User expectations are absolutely clear,” Ivan concludes. “They want convenience, simplicity, a single login, unified access to all their assets and the ability to move and use funds without friction.”

To read the full story, click HERE.

Emma Warrick is the Global Head of Real Time Payments at Visa Direct, where she oversees RTP programme activities from both a strategic and execution lens, playing a pivotal role in delivering Visa’s expansion strategy.  

Emma previously served as the Global Head of Immediate Payments at Barclays Corporate Bank where she was responsible for immediate payment products such as the UK’s Faster Payments Service and the DCNSP proposition. 

Before Barclays, Emma spent more than 12 years at KPMG in its payments strategy consulting practice which saw her in key leadership and major change transformation roles across the financial sector.

Here we speak to Emma ahead of her taking part in the Payment Technology Forum at FinTech LIVE London 2025.