Last month we hosted our first annual customer forum, an event that provided our banking community with the opportunity to come together and hear the latest company and product updates, gain some industry insight from notable thought leaders, and share their experiences with our award-winning real-time software, Realiti®.
Hosting a customer event had been on our agenda for some time. Originally set to take place as an in-person event in 2020, this was pushed back due to the Covid-19 pandemic and hosted virtually this year at the request of our customers.
Kicking off the day was our Financial Services Director, Pete McIntyre. Pete greeted all attendees on arrival and ran through both the agenda for the day and housekeeping rules – making sure that everyone knew who was speaking and when, and how they could interact and ask the speakers any questions.
The first speaker was Planixs CEO, Neville Roberts. Nev started the speaker sessions by providing our banking customers with an update on everything that had been going on at Planixs. This included our recent growth initiatives, with a new European office opening in Germany and the expansion of our sales team, and also our recent award achievements including being named US FinTech of the Year 2021 (RegTech category). Nev also took this opportunity to announce the launch of two new offerings from Planixs. The first, our new Strategic Reporting Module, allows banking firms to gain even more insight from their data and provides them with the capabilities to run more advanced reporting and analysis. The second was the Safe Passage Programme, a scheme that allows firms to migrate from their aging, legacy platform to our real-time Realiti software on an equivalent total cost of ownership basis.
Next up, was Marlon Hope, Planxis’ Product Manager, with a session on product development and an overview of the product roadmap. In this session, Marlon took attendees through the delivery priorities for 2021 outlining what had been included in the recent GA13 software release and what new features would be included in subsequent releases. Marlon also provided an overview of the release structure for our Realiti software, detailing when customers can expect major and point releases. In addition, it was also announced during the event that regular customer feedback sessions will be planned and hosted by product management to allow customers to provide feedback that would aid product enhancements.
Following a short break, the next speaker to address the audience was Olaf Ransome, founder of 3C Advisory LLC. Olaf has worked within the financial industry for many years and at some of the largest banks in the world. As well as establishing his own consultancy, Olaf also works with SDX, assisting them with their digital proposition. Olaf’s presentation focused on having greater visibility of cash and liquidity, and how efficiencies can be gained. He discussed internal components such as limits, intercompany funding, agent network and flows, and how improvements can be made for enhanced operations. In addition, he also reiterated how greater visibility leads to cost savings and how preparing for the future with digital applications can breed opportunities.
Up next was our second guest speaker, Simon Gray, Director at Baringa Partners – an independent business and technology consultancy that works with global banking firms to improve front- and back-office operations. Simon’s session discussed the changing regulatory landscape and the increasing regulations that have been introduced over the last 10 years to ensure tighter management of a bank’s intraday liquidity risk. The session also looked at the different elements of intraday liquidity and the best practices around intraday liquidity management to ensure compliance, efficient risk management and cost optimisation. Simon also addressed stress testing and what firms need to consider when designing an effective stress testing framework.
Closing the presentation sessions, Pete wrapped up the afternoon by thanking all customers for attending the event and explaining that, following a short break, the next part of the day was the breakout sessions.
The breakout sessions consisted of a series of three workshops, two repeating sessions of each, that focused on three areas: regulatory compliance, stress testing and cash management. The objectives of these sessions were to better understand the obstacles our clients face in relation to these topics and to obtain feedback from customers to feed into the future direction of the Realiti modules. These sessions were a great success, with some customers commenting “the workshop sessions were particularly valuable, it was great to engage with other Realiti customers and understand how they are using some of the modules” and “the workshop sessions allowed us to fully understand how we could benefit from additional Realiti modules”.
Following the workshops, it was time to end the day with wine tasting – an opportunity to relax, and of course, learn all about wine.
Overall, the day was really engaging, informative and educational, we had a great turnout on the day with over 90% client attendance and received some great feedback from our customers. We can’t wait to host more customer events that allow us to interact with our clients and update them on our future plans for our real-time Realiti software solution suite.
