ABeam Consulting raises yellow flags over Big Data

The whitepaper found that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) will be deployed by these businesses to leverage Big Data. Technological disruption has contributed to the emergence of the fintech industry phenomenon that provides effective and differentiated services including advanced financial services, as well as the enhancement of service process efficiency, security measures and compliance. The report reveals three key success factors to be to consider before rolling out Big Data analytics. Most important was to select potential partners to embed Big Data through an integrated service.
 A subsidiary of Japanese global consulting company Abeam Consulting Ltd, which has expertise in digital transformation, the Thailand company evolved a White paper after their initial study on Big Data in Thailand’s financial service business discovered information helpful to enterprises. The study found that 73.2 per cent of financial service institutions were studying Big Data and predictive analytics, with 70 per cent acknowledging that Big Data will be a critical tool to enable the organisations to cope with the major challenges in meeting their business requirements.
“Today, the financial institutions and insurance businesses are up against four different types of challenges,” explained Ichiro Hara, managing director of ABeam Consulting (Thailand) Ltd.
“First, the existing operations face intense competition in differentiating services through digital features, which causes fluctuations in market share. Second, new competitors in the fintech and insurtech businesses are finding it easier to enter the competitive fray by leveraging the customer database to disrupt the industry. Third, customer behaviour is changing in the way it seeks information and buying services wisely. The fourth has to do with the rules and regulations of the relevant agencies in the government sector,” said Hara.
He cited Siam Commercial Bank (SCB) as an example of a financial institution dealing with the challenging environment by prioritising its business requirements. SCB has defined its business requirement as finding a preferred partner with a focus on digital disruption and changing consumer behaviour. This was crucial prior to setting up SCM Abacus to use Big Data for data analytics along with AI for supporting digital platforms, to meet the needs of customers. Financial services businesses need to leverage Big Data to cope with the business challenges that lie ahead and increase their capability to deal with these unprecedented challenges, he said. 
Financial services need to take benefits that come from Big Data in order to get over business challenges and enhance their readiness to cope with new challenges. Big Data involves high volumes and diverse sets of information that grow at ever-increasing rates. Data change rapidly as unconstructed data pour in from multiple sources. AI, blockchain and internet of things (IoT) are adopted to leverage Big Data, affecting the exponential growth of the fintech business and disrupting the industry in terms of advanced financial services, an increase in service process efficiency, as well as measures and compliance.
“Many companies are adopting AI to develop financial services,” said Hara. For example, AEC Securities Plc offers AI trading called AIPRO, which creates a stock-trading strategy through in-depth data analysis, and learns how to adjust the trading strategy in changing market situations and trading history. Chatbots on the AI platform have been adopted by many commercial banks to improve customer services such as SCB Connect, Krungsri Bella and TMB Me, he noted.
“Moreover, financial institutions are using AI technology to develop other services such as investment consulting, verification of customer risk profiles, and monitoring of current market situation, as well as obtaining information from various sources to provide counselling,” Hara added.
Although Big Data is a growing trend, many organisations have faced failures in the beginning stage because they did not define the business requirements clearly. Financial services institutions should start with three key factors before launching use of Big Data. The first is addressing the challenges and the effects of the challenges they are facing. The second is defining the factors for success in implementing a Big Data project, and the third is stating the advantages to be gained from a Big Data project. Enterprises must also choose a partner with in-depth analytical knowledge, professional team members focused on data analytics especially in banking and insurance or related businesses, and integrated data analytics services throughout all steps of the project.