Saket Sharma: Building bridges with NEXEN

What does a 232-year-old financial services veteran have in common with the fresh and innovative minds of Sibos's Innotribe? Quite a bit, as Saket Sharma, BNY Mellon's Chief Information Officer for Treasury Services, shared at a lunchtime SWIFT Lab discussion during the annual Sibos conference in Geneva on Tuesday, September 27.

'When we think of fintechs, we usually think start-ups,' says Sharma. 'And that's largely who BNY Mellon is actively cultivating working relationships with. But this opportunity gave us the chance to show that we also have lessons to share. We are one of the oldest and largest financial services institutions and you can't remain an industry leader for as long as we have without innovation in your bones.'

Sharma demonstrated how BNY Mellon's industry-leading NEXEN digital ecosystem incorporates the latest technology, design and development advances to give clients the services they need in a simplified, intuitive and flexible way. He also shared how NEXEN can help smaller companies, like start-up fintechs, share their solutions with BNY Mellon's massive client base.

'We talk a lot about the technology of NEXEN - the cloud-enablement, the APIs, the analytics platform, the intuitive Gateway portal - and all of that is very exciting,' adds Sharma. 'But one of the most exciting parts of the NEXEN story, for me, is the potential it has to build bridges across our industry and with fintechs. Our six global innovation centers are also part of our NEXEN strategy. The people who work in those centers are actively involved in the tech and fintech communities in their regions including Silicon Valley, London, New York and Chennai. We want to share and we want to learn because it will ultimately make all of us more innovative and bring better solutions to our clients.'

The NEXEN demo and discussion focused on some of the core components of NEXEN, including the App Store where third parties, like fintechs, can offer their services to BNY Mellon clients.

'Disruption is a term that is thrown around a lot in recent years,' explains Sharma. 'We agree that traditional companies like ours must evolve and we don't view fintechs as threats, and frankly, they don't view us a threat. Incumbents and start-ups each have unique attributes. We have scale, an amazing client base, regulatory wisdom and capital. Start-ups have strong focus, top talent, and unprecedented agility in bringing minimally viable products to market to test and iterate. We have a lot to offer one another and we are excited about the collaboration opportunities that NEXEN is spawning.'