Explore other IDC events

IDC Financial Services Congress 2023

The Adoption and Utilization of All Things Digital

Glenn wilkinson at IDC Financial Services Congress 2023

Today’s financial institutions are rethinking their businesses to transform and build the digital foundations required for future growth. Although digital transformation may sound like an overused term, it is the only process that will drive the forces of tomorrow in finance.


Overview
The idea of business as usual is no longer sustainable. The past few years have seen financial institutions in the region become more resilient as they adapt and rethink their business and operating models to keep up with rapid changes in behavior.

In line with the global industry trends, financial institutions across the Middle East have found themselves in the midst of a digitally fueled revolution that is reshaping the industry as we know it and ushering in a new ecosystem. From migrating to cloud-based infrastructures to creating hyper-personalized customer experiences, financial institutions are rethinking their operations, infrastructure, security, and work models.

In this increasingly hyper-connected world, customers are accessing more digital financial services, and more information on customer behavior is being generated. We are also seeing the rise of new digital banks and insurers challenging traditional financial institutions. These new digital players are efficiently leveraging data to better serve their customers through the introduction of innovative products and business models.

As such, yesterday's data and technology platforms are no longer able to meet today's need for innovation at speed. The exponential increase in data volumes has given rise to complexities in data management platforms, concerns around the safety of IT operations, and challenges around real-time access to data stored across multiple environments. Inadvertently, this is hampering the ability of financial institutions to innovate and deliver new products and services.

This change in organizational culture is in turn redefining trust, resiliency, transparency, sustainability, productivity, and efficiency for the digital-first BFSI organization. More importantly, these organizations understand that once each of these areas is transformed using digital solutions, profitability, growth, and enhanced customer and employee experiences will follow.

Why Attend?
The 2023 edition of the IDC Financial Services Congress will explore the latest technologies allowing BFSI organizations to implement and execute innovative operating principles at scale. Industry experts from around the world will explore proven best practices, emerging trends, and upcoming challenges as the region moves towards a new ecosystem.

Key Themes

• Open Banking Promises: Data Fabric and Orchestration
• Cloud Management: Cloud Migration, Operations, and Legacy Platform Risks
• AI/ML: Integration and Industrialization
• Digital Core Systems: A Multi-core Approach
• Innovation Excellence: Dev Ops as a Business Goal
• New Cybersecurity Risk Typologies
• Redefining Friction-less: Implementing a Seamless On-boarding Process
• Tackling Financial Well-being
• Greater Financial Inclusion: Digital Ecosystems and SMEs• Employee Empowerment• Trust and Customer Consent

Delegate Journey

Don't miss out on an extraordinary and unparallel experience at the IDC Financial Services Congress 2023

Agenda

Filter Topics

Tuesday June 13, 2023
8:00

Registration & Networking

9:00

Welcome Address

9:05

Opening Keynote

9:10

IDC Opening Keynote: Simplification in an Age of Complexity

9:40

Staying profitable in a hyper-regulated world

9:55

Q&A (Ask Questions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle)

10:00

Building Security Resilience in a Multicloud and Hybrid World

10:15

Q&A (Ask Questions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle)

10:20

Turbocharge Your Mobile Strategy

10:35

Q&A (Ask Questions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle)

10:40

Smooth Technology Navigation to All Things Digital

10:55

Q&A (Ask Questions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle)

11:00

Delivering Enterprise Resilience in Financial Services

11:15

Q&A (Ask Questions & Stand a Chance to Win a Raffle)

11:20

Tea / Coffee & Networking Break

11:45

Flying Drums Act

11:50

Gold Partner Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

12:40

How to Hack a Billion Dollar Bank

13:10

Silver Partner Tracks (Parallel Sessions)

14:30

Lunch

Speakers

Yash Pal Dogra

Associate Conference Director, Middle East and Africa

Cyrus Daruwala

Managing Director, IDC Financial Insights Asia/Pacific

Adrian Hobbs

Chief Platform Officer, G42 Cloud

Ljupcho Joshevski

Head of Security Engineering for SaaS, XDR & Service Providers (EMEA), Cisco

Tansu Yegen

CEO & Co-Founder, Appcircle

Nour Shurbaji

Solution Architect, VMware

Mike Plimsol

Industry Advisory Director (EMEA), Splunk

Sean Langton Show full profile linkedin

Sean Langton

Group Chief Information Officer, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB)

Saud Al Dhawyani

CTO, Emirates NBD

Mamoun Alhomssey

Group Technology Advisor, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB)

Thomas Cherian

CIO, Commercial Bank of Dubai

Dr. Joseph George

Group Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO), Doha Bank

Sumat Kumar

Senior Vice President & Head of IT Applications Support, RAK Bank

Evren Altiok

Chief Operating Officer, Commercial Bank International

Salil Ahuja

Head of Products, Portfolio & Value Proposition - First Abu Dhabi Bank

Muhammad Rashid

Chief Compliance & Risk Officer, Jingle Pay

Ahmad Alwazzan

EVP & Managing Director (UAE), Tap Payments

Rishi Saraswat

Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Al Hilal Bank

Noelia Romanillos Arribas

Head of Financial Services, GTM South Europe & UK, ServiceNow

Farid Najjar

Area Distribution Lead, EEMI (Eastern Europe, META, Iberia & LATAM), NetApp

Glenn Wilkinson

Ethical Hacker

Mohammad Abu Sinnah

Account Executive (Middle East), Appian Corporation

Ranjit Rajan

Vice President, Research (META), IDC

Tarique Abu Elhassan

Principal Enterprise Architect, Dell Technologies | Intel

Fred Lherault

Field CTO (EMEA & Emerging Markets), Pure Storage

Mohamad Rizk

Regional Sales Director ME & CIS, Veeam Software

Osama Mohsin

Associate Vice President - Pre-Sales, Bahwan CyberTek

Andy Marchenko

Enterprise Account Executive, Creatio

Somnath Sarkar

EVP & Group CISO, Mashreq Bank

Samy Massoud

VP of Technology Delivery, PayTabs

Dr. Devid Jegerson

Chief Operating Officer, Invest Bank

Mohammed Tarik Koubaa

Head of IT Business Management, Emirates NBD

Ayman Al Qudsi

Chief Information Officer, United Arab Bank

Ahmed Fouad

Sr. Sales Specialist Data Protection Solutions and Cyber Resiliency, Dell Technologies

View All Speakers

Partners

Supported by
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Platinum Partner
Gold Partner
Gold Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Silver Partner
Strategic Roundtable Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner
Media Partner

Photo Gallery

Venue

The Ritz-Carlton
DIFC, off - Sheikh Zayed Rd - Dubai

Knowledge Hub

CXO Spotlight
Partnering with Fintechs to Drive Innovation

Ahmad Alwazzan,
Executive Vice President & Managing Director, Tap Payments

In the fast-paced world of financial services, innovation plays a crucial role in maintaining a competitive edge. As financial technology (fintech) continues to disrupt traditional banking models, banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies (BFSIs) are now recognizing the potential of fintechs as partners for innovation rather than just competitors.

CXO Spotlight
Partnering with Fintechs to Drive Innovation

Ahmad Alwazzan,
Executive Vice President & Managing Director, Tap Payments


In the fast-paced world of financial services, innovation plays a crucial role in maintaining a competitive edge. As financial technology (fintech) continues to disrupt traditional banking models, banks, financial institutions, and insurance companies (BFSIs) are now recognizing the potential of fintechs as partners for innovation rather than just competitors.

The financial services industry is witnessing rapid transformation due to advancements in technology and the rise of fintech companies. Initially seen as a major threat to BFSIs, fintechs are now viewed as potential catalysts for innovation. This paradigm shift has paved the way for collaboration between traditional BFSIs and agile fintech start-ups, leading to the emergence of a dynamic and customer-centric financial services ecosystem.

The shift from perceiving fintechs solely as competitors to recognizing them as potential partners has opened up new avenues for innovation in the financial services industry. By leveraging the strengths of both entities, a symbiotic relationship can be fostered, resulting in the creation of a thriving financial services ecosystem that benefits customers, BFSIs, and fintechs alike. As the industry continues to evolve, embracing fintech innovation will prove to be a win-win situation for all stakeholders involved.

Partner Spotlight
Modern Data Protection in the Age of Digital Transformation

Mohamad Rizk,
Regional Director, Middle East & CIS at Veeam Software

Over the past few years we have witnessed an acceleration of digital transformation initiatives across regional enterprises in the Middle East. This has brought with it a multitude of challenges and complexities relating to multi-/hybrid-cloud architectures and Kubernetes adoption.

Partner Spotlight
Modern Data Protection in the Age of Digital Transformation

Mohamad Rizk,
Regional Director, Middle East & CIS at Veeam Software


Over the past few years we have witnessed an acceleration of digital transformation initiatives across regional enterprises in the Middle East. This has brought with it a multitude of challenges and complexities relating to multi-/hybrid-cloud architectures and Kubernetes adoption.

At the same time, the incidence of ransomware is also on the rise. Indeed, according to the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2023, 86% of organizations in the Middle East and Africa fell prey to ransomware attacks in 2022.

Businesses cannot stand still, particularly in times of crisis. IT and data protection teams have a big task ahead keeping up with ramping workloads and ensuring they close the gap between technology and how well it is backed up and protected.

So, as budgets constrict, enterprises need to optimize every dollar and make sure the right workloads and applications are prioritized and protected, and a simple, flexible, reliable and powerful modern data protection solution is in place – one that protects all environments - Cloud, Virtual, Physical, SaaS and Kubernetes. Only then can enterprises ensure they’re sufficiently protected and ready for turbulent times ahead.

Partner Spotlight
10 Operational and Business Benefits of Mobile Life-Cycle Automation

Tansu Yegen,
CEO & Co-Founder, Appcircle

Mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives. Whether running a finance company, ecommerce business, or any other business category, you cannot disqualify the importance of mobile apps. This also means that companies and developers are constantly pressured to release features at a break-neck pace.

Partner Spotlight
10 Operational and Business Benefits of Mobile Life-Cycle Automation

Tansu Yegen,
CEO & Co-Founder, Appcircle


Mobile phones have become an integral part of our lives. Whether running a finance company, ecommerce business, or any other business category, you cannot disqualify the importance of mobile apps. This also means that companies and developers are constantly pressured to release features at a break-neck pace.

As the backend systems are evolving to cloud-native apps and the frontend clients are unifying around mobile apps, continuous integration and deployment are becoming more crucial in every software development project regardless of the size and scope.

On the other hand, the mobile application development process is usually managed by mobile developers, who spend 10-20% of their time on such tasks even though it is not their core role.

These complexities can be addressed by a mobile DevOps platform, which will provide the following benefits.

1. Higher productivity/lower costs

First and foremost, a mobile DevOps platform enables higher productivity with automation. Like in the manufacturing industry, you can automate the repeating application builds with automated workers, allowing developers to focus on value-added design and development processes.

A development team can minimize manual operations by automating application build and release processes, which amounts to significant productivity improvements/savings of 20%. Moreover, this 20% can be utilized with higher value operations, so the gains are even higher from the opportunity-cost perspective.

2. Faster release cycles

The mobile app build process is time-consuming; compiling the app is required for proper testing in many cases.

When this process is managed manually, the build process gets deferred with "let me just add another line of code." In such a case, large chunks of code get pushed, making it harder to test and more challenging to isolate if any issues arise.

With a mobile DevOps platform, developers get used to pushing even the most minor code changes as they will be built and delivered automatically in the background. This automated flow ensures that there is always an alpha or beta release version ready for testing with the latest code.

3. Faster feedback/response with continuous integration

With faster release cycles and more minor changes, it becomes possible to pinpoint the exact source of error when an issue is identified. This is especially important in larger teams where code conflicts may cause significant problems.

As the name implies, the code is integrated continuously without a manual handoff, ensuring that all pieces fit perfectly and identifying unfit segments to be reworked before it is too late.

4. Increased coding discipline with pull request builds and automated tests

With the pull request commit builds even before the merge, followed by automated unit testing and code reviews after every push; the code itself is inspected more thoroughly before it is a part of the release.

The developers get faster feedback on their code and facilitate improvements while increasing attention to quality.

5. Early warnings and higher testing volume with continuous deployment

With every change being tested with several workflow steps, issues can be identified faster.

As the name implies, the code is deployed continuously without a manual handoff, enabling faster and higher volume deployments. Thus a higher volume of testing is achieved, whether manual or automated. The pinpointing of the issues is facilitated with every release being matched with commit IDs and delivered to the testers with this information so that even the most minor changes can be tracked across releases.

6. Better visibility of coding and delivery performance

Complete visibility with notifications, alerts, logs, and reports is indispensable to a well-established mobile DevOps platform-based pipeline flow. Even though everything is automated, the system has much better visibility than manual operations.

With so much data previously hidden within the manual handoffs now visible, new opportunities for improvement can be realized in all stages. A mobile DevOps platform enables better visibility, and better visibility enables continuous improvement.

For instance, overall failure rates of the whole process can be viewed from a single point, and individual failure rates can be identified to see if there is a general issue or if there are specific points where the failures pile up.

7. Increased accountability

The data obtained during different stages of the mobile app life cycle is like an x-ray of the entire app life cycle, and this high level of transparency fosters accountability. The performance of individual team members and teams can easily be observed, reducing the friction between stakeholders.

This is highly beneficial not just for development teams but also for management teams. Responsibilities are much more straightforward, and management is better informed about every process step. The app life cycle is no longer a black box for external viewers.

8. Isolation from the complexities of application delivery

Each development discipline has its intricacies, and mobile apps are no exception. iOS and Android have independent and different processes for building, signing, distributing, and installing apps.

These mandatory processes require particular knowledge of mobile technologies while consuming significant time and resources, which can be better spent on more value-added tasks.

9. Easier maintenance

This item is applicable if you opt in for a full-featured mobile DevOps platform suite, where the platform is fully managed, eliminating the need for you to track component or agent updates for things like accessing Xcode betas or changes in the processes for things like the AAB file support in Android.

Developers can focus on their core tasks and let the mobile DevOps platform handle all the maintenance operations to deliver apps up to date with the latest specifications.

10. Higher quality and faster delivery with best practices

Last but not least, with better visibility, more immediate feedback, and less human intervention combined with the mobile application development best practices and standardization, the application quality increases and becomes less prone to errors.

Moreover, with the faster time-to-market, any issues can be fixed quickly, and new features can be delivered just when needed.

Contact Us

Yash Pal Dogra

Associate Conference Director, Middle East and Africa

+971 55 1961597

IDC, Foundry

IT executives rely on IDC and Foundry events for discovering new ideas, trends, and solutions that drive their technology strategies. Leveraging IDC’s deep market intelligence and advisory expertise, and Foundry’s rich media brands (CIO, Computerworld, InfoWorld) and relationships, IDC and Foundry produce powerful learning and networking experiences for IT decision makers around the world.