Bridging the Gaps: Strategy, AI, and the Future of Financial Services with Zoya Lieberman, Principal Strategist at Endava

In this episode of Banking on Information, Rutger van Faassen speaks with Zoya Lieberman, a Principal Strategist at Endava. They discuss the importance of understanding the 'why' behind actions in financial services, the role of AI in shaping the future of the industry, and the need for global perspectives on financial inclusion. Zoya emphasizes the importance of facilitating conversations among teams and the necessity of standardization in processes to prepare for future challenges.

Keywords

financial services, AI, strategy, consulting, global economy, financial inclusion, technology, Endava, neobanks, innovation

Takeaways

• Zoya enjoys connecting the dots in financial services.
• The skill of seeing the big picture is diminishing.
• Asking 'why' helps combat rigidity in organizations.
• Facilitating conversations is key to aligning teams.
• AI will take over menial tasks, allowing humans to focus on strategy.
• Global perspectives are crucial for financial inclusion.
• Standardization can help address universal issues in finance.
• The future of finance will require better conversations.
• We need to start with small, manageable solutions.
• Preparing for the future involves understanding diverse global needs.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Zoya Lieberman

01:29 The Role of a Principal Strategist

03:56 Value of Independent Perspective in Financial Services

05:44 Future of Financial Services and AI

09:47 Preparing for the Future of Banking

Transcript

Rutger van Faassen (00:01.346)
Hello and welcome to another episode of Banking on Information. Today, my guest is Zoya Lieberman, who is a Principal Strategist at Endava. Welcome to the podcast, Zoya.

Zoya (00:14.512)
Thank you, Rutger. Really excited to be here.

Rutger van Faassen (00:17.72)
Thanks for being on. We will start with that very important question based on the book by Simon Sinek, start with why. Why, Zoya, do you do what you do?

Zoya (00:28.573)
That's a really fun question to start with and I think I'll try to give you a succinct answer. As you know, I've spent many years of my career working with variety of financial institutions in the competitive intelligence space and as we're becoming more global in nature, an interesting phenomenon is occurring. We're trying to be more global but in reality we're all way more rigid in our approach to what we do.

So to answer your question directly, I think I enjoy doing what I do at Endava simply because of that rigidity and being that bridge and bridging the gaps between different disciplines within the financial services space as not that many people these days truly see the big picture, right? So we really need to paint that painting in a way that makes sense to everybody. And unfortunately, that skill is slowly diminishing.

Rutger van Faassen (01:28.494)
So you like to connect the dots and be the bridge and help people see the bigger picture. That is a great why. Now, what do you do with that why? What do you do at Endava?

Zoya (01:41.948)
So thank you for asking that. It's a tricky question to answer that my kids don't know the answer to. So I'll try to explain. So Endava is a technology consultancy. And Endava works with a variety of verticals, including banking and capital markets, really trying to help clients with not only software development issues, but

with starting, let's say, new neobank or creating a new digital space or working with the core conversions of whatever systems they're using. So, Endava really ends up being in the middle of variety of communications between financial institutions, if we use banking as an example, variety of software providers, other fintechs, other partners.

And if you put yourself in the shoes of a software architect or an engineer, they may know how to build something, but they don't necessarily know why. So that's where my role comes in, where I function as a principal strategist from the financial services space. And I try to illustrate A to the internal team of why they're doing what they're doing and also communicate with clients.

on why it makes sense to continue with the process, right? And to ask the difficult questions maybe that no one else is asking. Do you really need 15 different rails for money movement, for example? And those are the questions that aren't often asked. Just because the direction comes from the executive suite that we must have it, no one really knows why. And what's the North Star vision really for that provider?

So that's what I do at Endava. As I said earlier, I connect the dots and make sure that everybody's on the same side and on the same space.

Rutger van Faassen (03:47.447)
Yeah, so I'm not the only one asking the why question. You seem to ask that quite a bit as well to your customers, which is a very important question, right?

Zoya (03:55.127)
It is a very important question and often leads to unintended consequences, right? Unintended discussions that never took place. And if you remember my comment from earlier talking about rigidity, I think asking a lot of why questions really helps to combat that rigidity and make sure that different parties are aligned.

Rutger van Faassen (04:02.092)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Rutger van Faassen (04:17.6)
Now, when you talk with your customers that you've worked with, how do they say they get value from that role that you play? In their words, what do they say the value is of?

Zoya (04:28.186)
Obviously the answer, it depends on the client because that's how things work in this space. I'll give you a couple of examples. I think the value in general comes from having an outside independent party really look holistically at what organization is doing without really having anything to contribute to a specific process. Being able to remove yourself from day-to-day interactions.

and step away from minutiae of daily life, as a lot of us overworked and do the job of 15 people all at once. So it's really difficult to step away and look at the strategy. So from that standpoint, I think the value comes in from being provider agnostic or financial institution agnostic and really looking at the general trends and understanding

where the industry is going and being able to add that additional opinion and often frankly mitigate conversations between various teams, right? Every single financial institution, for example, that I've worked with in my career always has some sort of issue or misunderstanding between, let's say, sales team and product team or technology team or all of the above. right?

So often you need somebody who can again, connect the dots between all the teams. So the value really comes from being able to zero in and dive deep into these conversations. And at the same time, take a step back and really pinpoint the problem.

Rutger van Faassen (06:12.437)
Yeah, so you're really a facilitator. You're able to make everyone see that bigger picture. And I could see that that is very, very valuable. And like you said, sometimes that's missing in a lot of cases. Now, I like to do this thing called Futures Thinking. And so no one knows what the future is gonna hold, but we can think about what a possible future could look like. So if we think 10 years out, so 2035, can you paint a picture of what the financial services

Zoya (06:24.845)
Yes.

Rutger van Faassen (06:42.096)
landscape looks like? What is your idea of a possible future in banking?

Zoya (06:47.937)
Right, so I think these days it's a tricky question, right? Because things like LLMs and artificial intelligence in general are on top of everybody's minds and you feel that every conversation starts with that. So I'm going to take a slightly controversial position and say that I'm being asked about the role of AI and LLMs and any type of

artificial intelligence in the banking space and I think the answer is also not very clear. Maybe in the consumer universe you see a lot of business cases that really explain and see how you can navigate the space in that sense but when you go to wholesale banking when you talk about really complex relationships it becomes a little more trickier.

not to date myself, but you know, sometimes I'm really optimistic and other days I'm Sarah Connor of the conversation and I'm really questioning, you know, where the direction is and are we in fact asking ourselves the right questions. So to go back to your initial question, what does the future look like? I'm hoping that in 10 years from now, we actually gonna make sense and understand where artificial intelligence is actually helpful.

and where it's a deterrent from where we need to be. And as I said, I see a lot of rigidity in the way we do things, both on the global scale, as well as within each organization. So I would hope that with half of AI in 10 years time, we're going to be able to bridge those gaps and have better conversations and not get stuck in daily routine, but be able to spend our time actually doing what matters.

right, focus on strategy instead of taking care of the daily fires like a lot of us tend to do. So that would be really a happy place, I think, for the industry in general.

Rutger van Faassen (08:39.177)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Rutger van Faassen (08:52.148)
Yeah. So AI is going to take over a lot of tasks, a lot of menial tasks, but you're still seeing a role for the human in the loop, but at the strategy level. that, is that good interpretation of what you're seeing, what future you're seeing?

Zoya (09:04.235)
I think so.

I think that's a happy path, right? You know, for the AI to take over the tasks that no one enjoys doing and for humans to be able to focus on things that matter. Now, having said that, I think it would be incredibly obnoxious of us to have this conversation from maybe Western world standpoint, right? If you look at other regions in the world, I'll use LatAm as an example.

Rutger van Faassen (09:09.158)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Zoya (09:34.435)
It is viewed as kind of the next region of growth, both in the payment space and digital space. But then if you look closer and you look deeper, there are some regions in LatAm where majority of the population is still part only of the cash economy. So all the conversations that you and I having are absolutely meaningless to that part of the population. So how can you talk about globality when you're excluding

massive numbers of populations. So I think that's really the question to ask and see how we can mitigate that maybe with help of AI or maybe with something else. But I think that's probably going to be something that we need to address.

Rutger van Faassen (10:15.614)
Yeah. So obviously, yeah, we might sit in a little bit in our own bubble, right? Like here in the United States, things are happening really quickly, but there's lots of parts of the world where that isn't happening just yet. Now, what do you think, if you see that future, what should we do today to get ready for that possible future?

Zoya (10:33.355)
Really good question. think, again, I'm using my experience of my prior life in business intelligence. I think it really makes sense to try to standardize some of the processes and also address the issues that are common in the space. So if you think about our universe today, whether you're in banking space or insurance space or gaming space,

It doesn't really matter when we talk about, let's say, money, right? And the way we pay things, all those issues transcend the verticals, right? So all those issues are universal. So I think we need to start with something that is beneficial to the entire universe of us, right? And make example of it. So, you know, I have an idea, know, the Olympics are coming up to Los Angeles in

a few years, right? And the big question on the horizon, how are you going to mitigate issues with payments and transportation as you have people from all over the world coming to LA? So this is a really great way of solving those issues on the global level. And if we do it right, then we can take that example and replicate it everywhere else. So I think we cannot boil the ocean. We can only boil a cup of tea.

one at a time. So I would think that would be the approach. Start with one cup of tea at a time and then you get to the ocean.

Rutger van Faassen (11:58.792)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Rutger van Faassen (12:04.659)
Yeah. Yeah. Now that's great. So yeah, we need more standardization and I love that you're taking a very specific example. So I hope that the organizers of the LA Olympics are listening to the podcast and that they'll reach out to you because then you can help them take that one cup of tea and boil it right. And actually help them standardize payments for the Olympics. I think that would be a very interesting thing to see. Now.

Zoya (12:31.667)
I agree with you.

Rutger van Faassen (12:33.084)
Yeah, now that I think is probably a good spot to to wrap up our conversation. Really appreciate you being on the podcast. So I really enjoyed our conversation.

Zoya (12:43.838)
Of course, pleasure to be here.

Rutger van Faassen (12:46.938)
And until next time, choose to be curious.

Zoya (12:50.771)
That's right.