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“A.I. cannot work in a black box,” says Nick Smith at SmartStream Technologies, in this FTF Exchange podcast. “It needs to be able to provide transparency …” Managed services clients and prospects of SmartStream Technologies are showing lots of interest in A.I.-based technologies and how they can impact securities operations, but there is a caveat to that evolving demand for A.I., says Nick Smith, executive vice president, managed services, SmartStream Technologies, in this latest edition of the FTF Exchange podcast series. “A.I. cannot work in a black box and nobody knows what it’s doing,” Smith says via the podcast. “It needs to be able to provide transparency to both the senior managers and the risk managers, and the regulators exactly what activity the A.I.’s been performing and what was the logic used for developing those activities. That’s where we start looking at supervised and unsupervised A.I.” In fact, the transparency will show how SmartStream has incorporated what it learned five years ago when the securities operations provider began “working with Tier 1 banks, household name banks, and partnering with them, in terms of understanding their use cases, and the challenges that they face and also having access to their data,” Smith explains. “That enabled us to invest and develop the tools that we have today … What we’re really doing is providing the agile tools for an evolving demand that we’re seeing.” In the FTF News Technology Innovation Awards competition for this year, SmartStream Managed Services won Best Outsourcing Provider, and SmartStream Air won Best Cutting-Edge Solution. During the podcast, Smith also covers:

Corporate actions are characterised by complex processes agreed upon by the company. It entails impacts on the company's financial structure as well as its stakeholders. Whilst corporates are still reliant on painstakingly manual processes, the compressing pressure brought by the frequent changing of event details, multiple intermediaries, and upcoming deadlines calls for a transition to a digitally optimised approach. SmartStream offers automated solutions for corporate action processes. These solutions address the challenges and risks associated with inefficient practices through optimising operations control and real-time processing of event cycles, all, therefore, enhancing data management. Joining the talk is Adam Cottingham, Global Head of Asset Servicing, SmartStream

Corporate actions are characterised by complex processes agreed upon by the company. It entails impacts on the company's financial structure as well as its stakeholders. Whilst corporates are still reliant on painstakingly manual processes, the compressing pressure brought by the frequent changing of event details, multiple intermediaries, and upcoming deadlines calls for a transition to a digitally optimised approach. SmartStream offers automated solutions for corporate action processes. These solutions address the challenges and risks associated with inefficient practices through optimising operations control and real-time processing of event cycles, all, therefore, enhancing data management. Joining the talk is Adam Cottingham, Global Head of Asset Servicing, SmartStream

In the partnership with Asian Banking & Finance, Smartstream and AsiaPay talk about the different ways digital wallets have changed Asia’s payments landscape. Some of the key points discussed in this podcast:

Payment platforms such as AliPay and WeChat are gaining more users in Asia. As the region embraces technology faster than its counterparts, the demand for mobile payment solutions increases at a faster rate. But like all good things, there are actions that banks must take to keep up with the changing landscape in the industry. Asia Banking and Finance Magazine spoke with Roland Brandli, Strategic Product Manager for Digital Payments of SmartStream, to get the latest update on the banking payment landscape. Brandli said that the adoption of contactless payments, particularly for mobile apps, which has become the biggest change in recent years, made this possible. “The adoption of contactless payments is huge. Before, someone would go to an ATM, take money out of it, and you would buy 20 coffees with that cash. That was one transaction for a bank. Now, he pays 20 times with a contactless payment device, which means it's 20 transactions for the bank,” Brandli said. From this development, the banking industry today revolves around an ‘instant’ world—one where clients expect to have transactions completed faster with mobile solutions.

Financial institutions that still use legacy technology will continue to fall behind if they do nothing to upgrade their operations. The main focus for FIs should be reducing collateral management credit and operational risks via an end-to-end, automated solution. Some of the key points discussed in this podcast in partnership with ISDA and Asian Banking and Finance:

In this episode of the What the Fintech? podcast, Jethro MacDonald, product manager, artificial intelligence and machine learning at SmartStream joins Fintech Futures. For the main discussion, MacDonald and FinTech Futures reporter Alex Pugh discuss the differing applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) within fintechs and banks, the ways in which SmartStream leverages AI and ML to improve transaction reporting, how the space will evolve in the future post-Covid and the role of partnerships in innovation. Listen to the full Podcast here...

In this podcast titled AI Technology in Banking, SmartStream has partnered with Asian Banking and Finance to talk about the findings of a whitepaper published by Smartstream: ‘Data rich, but information poor: Why is it critical for banks to employ AI-enabled technology?’ Data volumes have grown hugely in recent years. Rapid change is clearly needed if the industry is to unlock the riches of its data and turn what is currently a problem into an opportunity. AI has immense potential for the financial sector, particularly in servicing back-office operational processes. Vincent Kilcoyne, EVP Global Product Management, SmartStream, joined the podcast to talk about AI-enabled technology, SmartStream’s Innovation Lab, and how banks are currently adopting these AI-enabled solutions.

The dual challenges of increased volumes and complexity mean event lifecycle validation tools need to evolve, to take advantage of AI and machine learning In Part 3 of this podcast, hosted by the Asian Banking and Finance, Vikram Gupta, ED and Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank is joined by Andreas Burner, Chief Innovation Officer and Robin Hasson, Senior Product Manager, SmartStream. Some of the key topics discussed:

The dual challenges of increased volumes and complexity mean event lifecycle validation tools need to evolve, to take advantage of AI and machine learning In Part 2 of this podcast, hosted by the Asian Banking and Finance, Vikram Gupta, ED and Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank is joined by Andreas Burner, Chief Innovation Officer and Robin Hasson, Senior Product Manager, SmartStream. Some of the key topics discussed:

The dual challenges of increased volumes and complexity mean event lifecycle validation tools need to evolve, to take advantage of AI and machine learning In Part 1 of this podcast, hosted by the Asian Banking and Finance, Vikram Gupta, ED and Head of Technology, Standard Chartered Bank is joined by Andreas Burner, Chief Innovation Officer and Robin Hasson, Senior Product Manager, SmartStream. Some of the key topics discussed:

Roland Brandli, strategic product manager at SmartStream, talks to The Banker’s Kimberley Long about if banks are ready to meet the ISO20022 deadline, and the importance proper data management.

In this FTF Exchange Podcast, Roland Brandli, Strategic Product Manager for SmartStream Air and TLM Aurora at SmartStream, talks about his work at SmartStream including the TLM Aurora Trade Process Control offering, also known as TPC, which won the FTF award for the Best new Post Trade Solution.

Neil Sheppard, Global Head of Business Development, SmartStream and Adam Cottingham, Global Head of Asset Servicing, SmartStream, talk to FTF News about SmartStream's TLM Corporate Actions solution that won the FTF 2021 award for Best Corporate Actions Service Provider. In this Podcast they are discussing why automation of corporate actions is still an issue around the industry and how SmartStream can help to achieve 100% automation and systematic control fast and reliable.

In this podcast titled AI and Machine Learning, SmartStream has partnered with Asian Banking and Finance to talk about how AI and Machine Learning is spearheading rapid change in data validation and reconciliations, as well as how these technologies deliver significant efficiencies into business processes, and how these translate to cost and risk benefits. SmartStream's Senior Product Manager Reconciliations, Robin Hasson and Chief Innovation Officer, Andy Burner, together with Standard Chartered Bank’s Executive Director and Head of Technology - Data Science, Automation, Data Analytics & AI/ML Vikram Gupta shared their insights on how financial institutions are now taking big strides in improving their operational efficiency and decision making in times of increased demand and dependency on the use of AI and Machine Learning.

In this podcast titled Cloud and Managed Services Transformation, SmartStream and Amazon Web Services partnered with Asian Business and Finance to talk about managed services business in Asia, how banks adapt to the new way of working in terms of cloud adoption, and the key challenges surrounding the acceleration of cloud and managed services transformation. Peter Hainz, Global Head of Product Management - Cloud and Managed Services, SmartStream and Anna Green, Head of ISV and DNB - Apac and Japan, AWS, shared their thoughts on how financial institutions can utilise SmartStream’s SaaS services, how the acceleration of cloud and managed services contributed to a large proportion of IT spend in the market, as well as the factors hindering the adoption of cloud in the region.

In this podcast entitled Corporate Actions: Delivering operational control in the new normal, SmartStream partnered with Asian Business and Finance to discuss key challenges when processing corporate actions, best practices for corporate actions exception management and workflow, and the challenges of newly enforced working patterns in processing corporate actions. Neil Sheppard, Global Head of Business Development TLM Corporate Actions for SmartStream and Alan Jones, Business Solutions Director APAC for SmartStream shared their insights about the changes they have seen in operations control both before and after the pandemic, as well as the best practices and trends in the coming years.

Nadeem Shamim, the head of cash and liquidity at Smartstream, tells The Banker’s Kimberley Long how liquidity has come under strain during the pandemic, and what can be learned from the experience in future.

Adam Ulman of SmartStream took part in an FTF Exchange podcast that focuses on the challenges of optimal collateral management amid a pandemic. Adam Ulman, senior business analyst at SmartStream Technologies, says that his clients and the industry are riding out the current pandemic lockdown and learning a lot of lessons to brace themselves for a possible second wave. Ulman took part in an FTF Exchange podcast that focuses on the challenges of optimal collateral management amid a pandemic. The podcast covers:

Victor Anderson chats to Radha Pillay, head of Asia-Pacific at SmartStream, about his firm's win in the best reconciliation platform category at this year's WatersTech Asia Awards. SmartStream won the best reconciliation platform at this year’s inaugural WatersTechnology Asia Awards. Victor Anderson chats to Radha Pillay about a number of issues, including: