Faster Forward Through Innovation
By: Pete Cherecwich
Tags: Featured Stories, Innovation, Financial Services, Technology

Innovation of great magnitude is often sparked by a single new idea.

When Alexander Graham Bell patented his design for a telephone, he couldn’t have imagined how his invention would evolve over time. Telephones, once a luxury of wealthy individuals and large corporations, required operators to control their networks until the 1920s. Today, there are over 6 billion people on the planet with smartphones. What started as a device that could merely transmit speech evolved into a digital wallet, online shopping portal, state of the art camera, and much more.

And that’s just one obvious example. You really don’t have to look too far these days to see the ways in which innovation is positively impacting our lives, often resulting in simplification, reduced costs and greater choice to us as consumers.

Of course, the innovations in a business that primarily services other large institutions will generally not be as well publicized; however, they can be equally disruptive or even ground-breaking.

While the examples of innovation in the business where I’ve spent my whole career — securities servicing and administration — may not be as exciting as consumer products, the point is that even in a very traditional, non-glamorous business like mine, we are all looking at ways to take that next leap forward because we know the world isn’t stopping for anyone. What underpins these sea changes is equally fascinating. I’ve included below some examples of recent innovations in my world.

Select Your Best Team

It starts and ends here as far as I’m concerned. Ideas, and the ability to execute on them, come from people.

As you may know, I’m a huge soccer fan. The coaches of some of the best teams to ever play the game weren’t great players themselves; they probably weren’t even great coaches in the purest sense of the word. They had other people to do that. But what they did have was an ability to assess strengths and weaknesses within their own set-up — to bring in specialists to plug the gaps and to buy players to bring something unique to the team.

When we were looking to start a brand new business a couple of years ago, we needed to approach things differently too because we weren’t up against our traditional competitors, so we went straight to the source and hired a visionary from one of our clients. Who’s going to know what clients really want better than client themselves, right? Since then we’ve continued to hire the talent to drive that business forward — people who may not have considered the financial services industry before as a career choice; there has to be room for talent like that these days, even in banking. That business is now a roaring success. Innovation often comes from diversity of thought — and that probably means people who’ve had different work and life experiences.

Evolve the Culture

Okay, so you’ve hired the right people. What you don’t do next is put them in an environment that shackles their creativity — because they’ll be gone as quickly as you found them.

Of course, there are parameters. We still work for a bank with important financial and regulatory considerations. But evolving the culture is a necessity so that ideas can be brought forward freely; where you can test and trial concepts quickly; where radical candor and challenge are embraced and encouraged, along with collaboration and team work — and that starts from the top. As teams witness their leaders, managers and line supervisors living that out in practice on a daily basis, the culture of the organization moves forward and ideas start to pop up all over the place.

For example, last year, as the pandemic kicked in, our teams in India had very little time to set themselves up for what they thought would be a “temporary” lockdown. As time passed, we started hearing stories of people struggling to get access to basic food and medical supplies. At a corporate level, we took a number of steps to help out but one of the most effective solutions was developed by a small team on the ground.

Using Google Maps, the team built an app that enabled them to see where other team members were located around the city. As a result, they were able to stay connected, get supplies to those in need, and look out for each other, whether they were working or not.

This wasn’t a corporate initiative or a management suggestion — it was a team on the ground saying, “We’ve got a problem; we feel empowered enough to do something about it; we’re going to build a phone app.” That’s a culture of true innovation.

Keep Pushing Boundaries

I’ve always believed that with the right people and the right culture you can pretty much do anything. That’s not to say you’re ever done in those areas — you have to keep evolving and moving forward or you can get complacent. But with those building blocks in place, things start to happen.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen us launch this industry’s first deployment of blockchain technology for the private equity market in the Channel Islands; and partner with BondEvalue in Singapore to complete the world’s first blockchain-based bond trade. I’ve witnessed teams come together to create a brand new collection of front office capabilities called Investment Data Science — effectively inventing a whole new market segment. And most recently, partnered with Standard Chartered to launch Zodia, a cryptocurrency custodian for institutional investors. And the innovative ideas continue to flow!

Keep looking outwards — that is the key. Inspiration may come from unexpected places.

To that end, I would encourage anyone — leaders and managers in particular — to make a concerted effort to engage with people from outside their industry. Don’t just attend your regular industry conference events, try something adjacent, or even completely left field. There are so many commonalities in the challenges faced by what you think may be unrelated industries: the further integration and deployment of technology to boost productivity, ways to improve the client experience, and so on.

We can all learn and take things from each other — and the good news is that no one has cracked it yet. There is still plenty of room for everyone to play.