PROFILE
the local banks. The transactions between
the banks are supervised and overseen by
us because the central bank is a regulator.
It’s crucial for us to reinvent ourselves. We
are moving towards more and more being a
24/7 central bank.
Do you think having someone in
charge of digital strategy is a must
for organisations?
Exactly. This position is starting to become
not just ‘nice to have’ but a ‘must’. Having
somebody within financial institutions help
navigate these changes, and have to adapt
technology and increase user acceptance
within their organisation, is very crucial. I
came from an IT background and now this
has become a ‘must’ in this position as a
CDO because during your education as a
CIO you have been introduced to problem
solving skills and techniques.
On the business side they are not aware of
this – the techniques and principles that we
are using. Today with the evolution of agile
methodology, digital design thinking and the
Innovation Lab principle, these are tools as
a CDO that we have in our hands in order to
transform an organisation.
You need somebody in the organisation that
can speak the business language as well as
the IT language.
Can I ask you how the central bank is
investing in analytics and Big Data?
This is something that every central bank is
moving towards. This has been labelled as
a SupTech or Supervising Technology and
the foundation for that is analytics. Once
you have the right data, and the validity and
THERE IS A HUGE
AMOUNT OF
PROMISE FOR AI
IN THE FINANCIAL
SECTOR .
privacy of that data is checked, then we can
deploy multiple tools on it in order to make
it meaningful information. We can be ahead
of the curve instead of looking backwards
through the mirror of what happened
yesterday or the week or quarter before in
order to make a prediction about the future. the economies of every country. From our
perspective as the Central Bank of Kuwait,
we want to see a healthy FinTech ecosystem
running in Kuwait.
Analytics isn’t only going to be one tool. It’s
going to be multiple tools. Every central bank
is struggling to have a consolidated view of
all of their financial indexes in one place on
one dashboard. This is a technology that is promising a
lot but we would like to be very cautious.
We would like to see how it is being
implemented as the impact on the person
using Blockchain is likely to be huge.
The software market today is not mature
enough to provide the central banks around
the globe with the technology needed to
do this. Whatever is written in the block cannot
be rewritten. If there was a mistake and a
transaction needs to be reversed it cannot
be reversed in Blockchain. A person’s credit
history could be ruined for life.
How important will the use of AI
and Blockchain be for the future
of the bank?
There is a huge amount of promise for AI in
the financial sector, especially for detecting
fraud. AI will be the pinnacle of fraud
investigation from now on.
There is another side of AI for the financial
sector which is empowering the consumer.
Today in the market we are seeing this
happening with something called Personal
Finance Management.
This will tell you how to better spend your
money, how to better save your money and
how to do whatever goal you are going to
put into place.
Today with AI and Personal Finance
Management, this information will be
accessible for the masses; whereas before it
was only accessible for the high net-worth
and done by face to face consultation.
What can you tell us about the
explosion of FinTech in Kuwait?
We are seeing a lot of traction of FinTechs
in Kuwait. Some of these became regional
powers as they spread from Kuwait all
the way to Oman, and some of them
beyond the GCC. We also saw an influx of
international investors investing in these
newly established Fintechs.
Going forward, FinTechs and the FinTech
ecosystem are going to play a vital role in
www.intelligentcio.com
What is the future of Blockchain in
the financial sector?
So we are very cautious about this
technology although we believe in it and we
believe it will transform the banking sector
but we have to be cautious to see how it will
be implemented.
How is the banking sector serving
young people?
There is a big disconnect from the
expectations of young people and what the
current financial systems are providing to
them. They cannot comprehend why they
need to go into a bank and take in a small
piece of paper and sit down for half an hour
to have somebody serve them. They are very
‘digital native’.
They know how to use a computer.
They know how to type. They have
been feeding themselves and clothing
themselves using their mobile. They have
been communicating to their friends
through digital means. This is not just a
phenomenon in Kuwait. There is this huge
disconnect globally.
They want the same consumer grade of
flexibility that they use to feed themselves,
clothe themselves and do everything they
need to do. They want the same thing to
apply to their financials through their mobiles.
Some of the smaller banks are more agile and
more youth-orientated and they are gaining
market share. Some of the bigger banks are a
little bit slower attending to these needs and
are maybe more conservative. n
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