Chamalie Serasinghe, the Chief Technology and Operations Officer of Standard Chartered Sri Lanka, shares insights into the significance of technology to banking. The bank has developed a technology strategy centred around three key pillars: technology, data and information cybersecurity, and adopted a standard technology architecture, leveraging automated controls and straight-through processing to provide client-centric solutions and enhance efficiency. Chamalie begins this interview by telling us about Standard Chartered Sri Lanka’s technology strategy and how it aligns with its overall business goals and objectives:

In the last few years, there have been overwhelming changes in the market landscape and for the customers.

Technology development made numerous choices of channels or modes available to clients. That shifted the customer’s needs and expectations, making digital technology integral to the client experience and a solid digital foundation the key to achieving business goals.

At Standard Chartered, we believe that strengthening the three cornerstones, technology, data, and information cybersecurity, will give us a steady digital foundation. Our technology strategy is to create globally consistent standardise architecture capable of delivering client-centric solutions and moving away from manual-intensive processes to APIdriven architecture for automated controls and straight-through processing. Keeping to the technology strategy, Standard Chartered became the first Sri Lankan bank to move its core banking system to the cloud in 2022, harmonizing the various versions across markets. Furthermore, any technology infrastructure’s consistency and stability remain essential to maintaining customer confidence and sustaining a resilient and stable platform remains a high priority.

How is Standard Chartered Sri Lanka leveraging digital transformation to enhance customer experience and improve operational efficiency?

Customers’ expectations are evolving with time. The new technology developments have empowered customers to gain real-time access to banking instead of traditional banking with time restrictions. In this era, resources are costly; hence, all organizations aim for efficiency, and digital transformation made this a reality.

At Standard Chartered, we have used our digital platforms to give this flexibility to our clients. We are incredibly proud that over 99% of our corporate clients’ payments get routed through our electronic platform Straight2Bank (S2B), where clients can connect their host system via the S2B platform, improving efficiencies for our customers and the bank. Furthermore, the channel provides real-time access to customers’ accounts and complete visibility of their payments.

What are some of the digital transformation initiatives that Standard Chartered Sri Lanka has undertaken in recent years, and what impact have these had on banking operations and customer experience as the country grapples with an economic crisis?

On the path to a robust digital foundation, the most significant milestone is migrating our core banking application to Cloud 2022, harmonizing the various versions of core banking across Standard Chartered markets to reduce the overall application development, support and maintenance cost, and seamless deployment of upgrades across Standard Chartered markets, and most importantly, leveraging cloud hosting to replace the high capital costs of on-premise servers to support a core banking system. Cloud computing assures high availability of the systems across customer-facing channels and will ensure no outages during planned maintenance for core banking applications, increasing application stability.

Covid-19 made us realize the importance of the ability to function away from the designated office without impacting the level of customer experience. We have created the technological possibility for our staff to work from home and office on a split operating model for a prolonged period without compromising the customer experience or governance requirements of the bank.

Our progressive approach to digitizing the transaction landscape enabled an over 99% electronic payment ratio for corporates and an approximate 40% electronic transaction ratio for trade, creating efficient resource utilization. Also, availing flexibility for the clients by eliminating the requirement to have wet signatures on hard copy paper.

How is Standard Chartered Sri Lanka addressing the challenges and risks associated with digital transformation, such as cybersecurity threats and data privacy concerns?

Cybersecurity and data, including data privacy, are integral to a solid digital foundation. Standard Chartered has created the Data Privacy Transformation Programme (DPTP) in line with the General Data Protection Regulation UK. The governance framework set by DPTP defines the personal data identification, retention, deletion, and all other relevant controls associated with it to address data privacy concerns and challenges.

The bank identifies Information Cyber Security (ICS) as a clear and present threat. We are committed to proactively strengthening our ICS maturity commensurate with the cyber threat environment and developed an ICS Transformation and Remediation Portfolio to track ICS risks identified for closure.

Our Cyber Threat Intelligence team continues to assess threats to the bank and the broader financial market ecosystem, frequently sharing threat intelligence to raise awareness and advance defence efforts of the financial ecosystem. In addition, the Technology Risk Management and Resilience Standards of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka further mitigate the ICS risk and we continue the training and awareness-building for all staff to create a more robust human firewall.

What are Standard Chartered Sri Lanka’s plans and priorities for its technology strategy and digital transformation efforts, and how will the bank continue to innovate and stay ahead of the curve in an ever-evolving digital landscape?

We will continue to execute our strategy for a more robust digital foundation by focusing on technology, data, and cyber information security areas. With the support and commitment secured from all key stakeholders, teams deployed for each task will continue to work towards the committed timelines. Whilst we continue to assess the progress of our technology strategy execution, we are also mindful of the new technology evolutions. Most compelling digital experiences start with the customer, and customer expectations are also changing