Oracle Innovation Meetup: Financial Services Industry
Oracle Innovation Meetup: Financial Services Industry
Burlington, MA
March 12, 2019
On Tuesday, March 12th, I attended a Financial Services Industry-themed Oracle Innovation Meetup hosted at the Oracle Cloud Solutions Hub in Burlington. As a telecom and tech industry analyst, I was, of course, well aware of Oracle’s strengths and weaknesses, but financial services is an industry vertical I haven’t touched on much within the tech space, so I was really looking forward to this event as an opportunity to stretch my fintech knowledge. So before the event, I wasn’t aware of Oracle’s positioning in this space, though the company’s database strength would seem to be a logical strength to build upon. In this brief write-up, I’ll note some of the things I learned on Tuesday, though since I’m not an expert please do reach out to Oracle or its partner companies for more information about the showcased products and capabilities. Indeed, since this was mostly an information-gathering and learning mission for me, I’ll dispense with any attempt at insights this early into my fintech research cycle and simply summarize what I saw.
The event was divided into ten demo stations, with presentations given at each stop by Oracle employees and, in a few cases, by partnering companies whose products were built upon and operate with Oracle products. As I walk through the event, I’ll give a very brief summary and include helpful links so you can investigate more yourself.
The purpose of the event was to showcase Oracle’s “innovation focus,” how through its innovation center it works to combine the best of its technologies and ecosystem with innovations in the fintech ecosystem to help banks and financial service customers drive innovation and value faster.
The kickoff presentation provided a broad overview of Oracle’s financial services offerings, including slides showing how Oracle’s Financial Services Innovation “Lego Kit” could help clients assemble innovative, client-specific solutions.
Autonomous Corner: Before attendees selected the order in which they wanted to visit the various stations, the demonstrations then kicked off with a detailed presentation for the entire group about Oracle’s Autonomous Database, detailing and differentiating it from other cloud information management platforms.
ATM Fraud Detection: The ATM fraud detection demo was interesting, showing how Oracle’s cloud solutions combined with machine learning to detect potentially fraudulent transactions, including a step-by-step live walkthrough.
Digital Transformation with Amelia (powered by IPsoft): This was a demonstration of Oracle partner IPsoft’s Amelia, its interactive AI platform for the insurance industry. There’s no better way than a demonstration to really appreciate this offering. As noted in the pre-event text, “The preconfigured insurance agent is ready to handle insurance queries for auto, claims, life, and P&C business and transform your service centers allowing you to have relevant and compliant digital conversations with your clients.” This is a specific product I look forward to digging into and learning more about in the coming weeks.
Oracle Financial Services Analytical Applications: There was a station that showed off Oracle’s financial services analytical applications; if I’m not mistaken, this stop focused on the building block nature of Oracle’s applications, recapping a theme from the introductory presentation.
Onboarding for Wealth (powered by Appway): Oracle partner Appway showcased its Onboarding for Wealth solution, which streamlines onboarding for wealth managers. The live demonstration of the solution helped drive home the point of its ease-of-use. Yet another reason why I always prefer to see software products demonstrated rather than just reading about their capabilities.
Enterprise Security: This demo showcased Oracle’s enterprise security capabilities. Again a live demo of a data set, Oracle’s representative walked through the signs of a cyberattack and investigated in real-time, highlighting suspicious activities and even showing how nefarious activities that flew undiscovered under the radar could be uncovered with just a little sleuthing using the showcased software.
Smarter Underwriting (powered by IPsoft): This station showed off Oracle partner IPsoft’s “smart underwriting agent” that speeds up the underwriting process by performing information searches automatically. IPsoft’s FRP (Financial Risk Profiler) mines the Internet to build a risk profile on a loan applicant in near real time, saving time by gathering the data without requiring the underwriter to perform more labor- and time-intensive manual searches that could result in less-complete information.
Biometric Multi-Factor Authentication (powered by Daon): Oracle partner Daon showcased its multi-factor biometrics authentication feature. One of the neat things about this offering is its ability to be more secure with also providing an easier digital experience.
Compliance Corner: The event featured a stop to discuss compliance issues and share resources.
Oracle Digital Innovation Platform for Open Banking: This detailed, multi-part open banking demo stepped through a variety of banking interactions that could be set up using Oracle’s tools. Quite impressive, crossing a variety of formats and touchpoints, covering many types of interactions.
In Conclusion
I hope you’ve found this summary helpful. I generally don’t share much in the way of thoughts this early into researching a sector, but I’m always glad to share information that would be helpful to others in this blog. I look forward to other vendors reaching out to me to share information about their products and services serving the financial services market and will continue to attend events that provide learning opportunities as they present themselves. And when I’m actively working on a project in this sector, I’ll actively seek out some of you in this industry I haven’t spoken with (and circle back with those of you I have).
For now, by the way, as I’ve recently made the transition to independent industry analyst, you can find my current consulting website by clicking here. (Please pardon the bare-bones web design – or relative lack of web design – if you follow that link.)
Indeed, I love events like this where it’s easy to learn a lot in a short period of time. Events like this are a great way to stay current on the latest trends in the tech industry, as well as to learn about new segments/verticals and to learn about vendors’ product offerings. For this event, thanks to Oracle for hosting; I look forward to more informational events at Oracle and other area tech companies.
Note to event organizers: I generally don’t assume local tech events are suited to blogging, so if you’d like me to write about your event, let me know, either at the event or, better yet, in advance. I’ll then take a different type of notes (and a few pictures, if you’d like) if the event lends itself to more than just brief text with photos. And if you share some material that will make it easier for me to accurately write about the event, that’ll help, too. In this case, the pre-event ticketing website was a big help in structuring this piece. In other situations, copies of slide decks or synopses of the talks would facilitate more than just a cursory overview.