Our five highlights from the SAP & SAP Fioneer FSI Forum 2023

bancon was proud to sponsor this year’s SAP & SAP Fioneer FSI Forum and attend the conference in person. Jörg Mauelshagen, co-founder, Brad Scott-King, Group Director of Markets for Financial Services and Brad Jarrett, Group Director for Financial Services, went to the event in Frankfurt and enjoyed seeing some familiar faces as well as meeting some new ones.

Read our five key takeaways from the FSI Forum over the three days of creative insight, networking and catching up with familiar faces. 

1. The role of innovation and co-innovation in the financial services industry

In the forum’s opening keynote, Dominik Asam, Group CFO of SAP, and Dirk Kruse, CEO of SAP Fioneer addressed SAP and SAP Fioneer’s vision for a more human and customer-centric future of financial services. They spoke of the key role innovation and co-innovation hold and the importance of ecosystems that live far beyond financial services institutions. Financial services are embedded into every industry, and the key to moving forward is to do it together. 

Within the keynote, SAP reaffirmed its commitment to the financial services industry. Dominik demonstrated this by revealing that they invest 600 million into FSI-related R&D spend each year and is the second largest industry for R&D spend overall.

‘‘Dominik provided comfort to those financial institutions who run an SAP and SAP Fioneer technology stack that they are focused on helping the industry tackle upcoming challenges through innovative technology. Both organisations are committed to the industry and more specifically SAP will continue to ensure their market-leading cross-industry solutions address the needs of the financial services industry.  The ecosystem needed a strong statement, and this is exactly what it received’’

Brad Jarrett

2. Launch of new propositions 

During their opening keynote, CEO Dirk Kruse and Dominik Asam, CFO of SAP announced two new solutions SAP are introducing to the market.

a. 𝗙𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 (𝗙𝗦𝗗𝗠) 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 - a solution that consolidates fragmented data silos in banks into a central data hub - ensuring streamlined integration and creating a single source of truth. Developed jointly with Accenture TiGital which delivers IT services to 25 banks.

b. 𝗙𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 (𝗙𝗢𝗙) - an integration solution built on S/4HANA. It helps to extract, map and transform data from various sources into one consolidated data layer, such as Fioneer FSDM, and it can be used to integrate third-party solutions for risk and regulatory reporting, like Abacus360.

Fioneer previously announced new solutions earlier this year. 

c. Fioneer Virtual Accounts Management (VAM) -  enables banks to service existing customers more efficiently. It offers improved visibility and control over cash management, increasing customer satisfaction and strengthening relationships. bancon was proud to play a key role in the initial product design, development and delivery, and look forward to a continued partnership where we work together on increasing the user base.

d. Fioneer SME Banking Edition - the solution will enable banks and neobanks to offer banking capabilities in a digital-first and data-driven approach, tailored to the financial needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – a historically underserved market segment. We had the opportunity to meet with Product owner Thomas Becher, who has refreshing ideas on how collectively we can make clients and prospective clients within the SME banking segment more efficient and provide a better experience to their client base.

3. SAP Fioneer clients move to S4TRBK

Another of our highlights was the sharing of two Financial Institution’s journey to S4TRBK. Alberta Treasury Bank (Canada), who moved to S4HANA Transactional Banking last year, shared lessons learned and the experience of being the first to undergo the transition and captured the room with their frank but insightful presentation.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia shared that after assessing over 25 core banking providers from across the globe, SAP Fioneer technology was still the right platform for them and are therefore committed to embarking on the journey to S4HANA Transactional Banking. Presenter and CommBank’s Core Banking executive, Simon Davies, then went on to expand upon a series of proof-of-concepts they were set to undertake over the coming months to further prepare for the transition event next year.

‘‘It was a great demonstration of the significant commitment from existing SAP Fioneer clients to move to the S4HANA Transactional Banking platform. Both presentations really captured the room given the relevance and topical nature.’’

Brad Scott-King

4. Face-to-face networking

On the evening before the event, bancon held an opening dinner for our core banking clients that attended the event. In the beautiful setting of the Ristorante Azzuro terrace, the dinner gave partner banks the opportunity to meet their counterparts and discuss topical challenges that the financial services industry is currently facing.

This a great way to interconnect the community and understand where partner banks could work better together and leverage learnings from one another.

‘‘The highlight of the week for me was seeing our client base come together in an informal setting, giving them the opportunity to discuss topical challenges and exchange ideas ahead of the event. The discussions held really demonstrated the power of the collective.’’

Jörg Mauelshagen

5. Don’t be a six out of ten

The closing keynote speech of the event was from Janne Müller-Wieland OLY, Triple Olympian, TEDx speaker, and Co-Founder of Unthink. In her keynote speech, “Don’t be a 6”, she spoke of the importance of having the right mindset in achieving goals, and how to shift yourself above the line. 

“𝘖𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘴𝘪𝘹 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘦𝘯…𝘞𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘴𝘩 𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 10 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘎𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘧𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘺𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘵 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘴.”

Janne Müller-Wieland OLY

The keynote from Janne was a fantastic ending to three days of inspiring keynotes from industry experts, interactive panel discussions and plenty of social networking sessions. 

Thank you to SAP and SAP Fioneer for organising a fantastic FSI Forum alongside the team at TAC Events. We hope to see you there again next year.