FinTech Magazine January 2024 | Page 166

JULIUS BAER
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Successfully validated products are then transferred to internal business units to run as part of ‘ business-as-usual ’. The team then resets , focusing on the next set of big opportunities .
Talking to me from his office in Singapore , Jon explains the journey that Julius Baer has been on in recent years to reach this point . “ We ’ ve spent the past 24 months setting up the capability , building the talent pool , creating the portfolio of use-cases as well as the infrastructure for us to move forward . I think the next 12-18 months is going to be the most exciting phase in terms of innovation .
“ Now we really get to experiment , move fast , look at new things , look at new areas for exploration . We get to look at how we drive more collaboration globally as a bank and how we explore new technologies at a rapid pace .”
Underlining its commitment to innovation , Julius Baer has made a lot of investments in technology over the past few years . This often gets communicated as ‘ moving onto the cloud ’, as if it were a catchall phrase for everything that ’ s changing within financial services , but Jon believes that this is not the be-all-and-end-all of innovation .
“ I wouldn ’ t say that being on the cloud is everything in terms of innovation and transformation ,” he tells us . “ It ’ s one part of that journey . I think having a hybrid approach is always going to be something that ’ s necessary . And being an open ecosystem , open architecture platform , I think that ’ s something that ’ s going to be quite critical moving forward , especially in this new age of AI .”
166 January 2024