Banks today are facing continuous challenges. Unless they embrace digital transformation from the ground up, they won’t find it easy to survive in tomorrow’s world.

A bank chairman recently told me that there are thousands of manual banks, but in the future there will be just a handful of digital banks. I think he’s right.

The challenge is that very few companies truly understand both the business and technology side of banking. I believe my company, Intellect Global Transaction Banking, does provide that combination, thanks to our agreement with IBM Services to jointly deliver a complete transaction banking solution.

Domain and technical expertise

iGTB is a digital transaction banking specialist. Our flagship Contextual Banking Experience (CBX) Platform provides customer centric digital capabilities for a bank’s corporate customers. Handling everything from cash, payments and liquidity to trade and supply chain finance transactions, the platform offers an integrated package, written by the same people, and we’re the only company that does that.

But even transformative software is only as good as the security, scalability and performance of the IT environment it runs on. That’s where IBM Services comes in. IBM is the world’s leading technology provider for the financial services industry. Together, we and IBM have the domain and technical expertise to help banks succeed.

Innovative cloud-native functionality

The CBX platform features several innovative capabilities. A contextual interface enhances the user experience by only presenting options relevant to the immediate need—no sifting through extraneous menus to find the right function.

Another advance is virtual accounts, which let bank customers configure multiple accounts as they want them, not what is most convenient for the bank, all within a regulated account. Many businesses will welcome such flexibility, among them professional services firms collecting funds from different clients or real estate firms managing multiple tenancies.

Learn more about IBM solutions for banking and financial markets

Businesses will also appreciate dynamic discounting. Powered by our platform’s intelligent analytics, dynamic discounts let creditors short of cash proffer early payment discounts to their debtors. The discounts save debtors money while boosting the creditor’s cash flow.

Technical assistance from IBM Services

The CBX platform was developed with cloud-native containers, microservices and APIs. Thus, banks can host it on a private cloud, on a public cloud or on-premises if they prefer. IBM Services provides hosting advice and provisioning on the IBM Cloud, IBM Cloud Private, third-party clouds and security-rich servers, but our agreement adds additional value.

In a typical engagement, IBM would conduct a short design thinking workshop in concert with iGTB and the bank’s stakeholders. The workshop team would gather requirements, design a user-centric implementation and evaluate the existing IT environment. IBM would then recommend the appropriate infrastructure, deploy the solution and integrate it with existing systems. At the bank’s request, IBM can provide managed services, freeing IT staffers to focus on business priorities.

You don’t often get the chance to take a 400-year-old industry and make it more competitive through digital transformation. That’s the passion that drives us and, I believe, IBM Services. For banks looking to quickly capitalize on iGTB’s transaction expertise along with IBM’s technical and industry know-how, we offer a powerful combination.

Watch Phil Cantor discuss keys to a successful transaction banking franchise: