Global Fintech Interview with Vishal Pasari, VP and GM, Digital Solutions at Fiserv

Vishal Pasari, VP and GM, Digital Solutions at Fiserv talks about the various expectations today’s customers have from their financial institutions, while sharing a few thoughts on Fiserv’s recent win at the BIG innovation awards.

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Hello Vishal, we’d love to hear about your time in fintech through the years and a little about your time at Fiserv too?

Throughout my more than 22-year career, my primary focus has been leveraging technology to push the envelope and drive innovation and change for customers. From driving a strategic plan that led a global media conglomerate to become the dominant interactive digital entertainment provider throughout Asia, to delivering digital tax preparation solutions serving over 6 million clients, I have always approached technology with a customer-centric lens.

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I have been at Fiserv for over a decade. My current role centers around partnering with fintechs to infuse transformative and intelligent experiences in the digital banking journey. We have worked with our partners to create industry leading solutions around AI, customer engagement, intelligent security, and personal financial management amongst others, and we are just getting started.

This is an exciting time for the global fintech market, with virtual banking and payment solutions becoming more sophisticated and centered, how are you seeing the market trends evolve?

Customers today have far greater expectations from their financial organizations than ever before. This stems from changing demographics, as well as the pervasive presence of technology in our everyday lives. The predominant population today consists of millennial and Gen-Z consumers and real-time, low friction interactions are more key than ever to drive engagement and loyalty. It’s all about convenience and speed. I can use my voice to order groceries and have them delivered to my house in under 2 hours. These everyday expectations have extended to the financial world as well. There is a clear shift from physical to digital and the experiences have expanded from purely transactional (What is my balance?) to more guidance and control oriented (Can I spend $200 on these shoes?). This is where experiences like Virtual Banking and Instant Payments play a big role, enabling financial institutions to offer customers trusted advice when and where they need it. These areas will continue to evolve rapidly as the shift to digital has escalated competition from tech startups, which in turn will drive innovation at an exponential pace.

Tell us about Fiserv’s recent win at the BIG innovation awards: a few thoughts on upcoming innovators and innovations that you also feel are set to shape how fintech performs in business?

Recently, Virtual Banking Assistant from Fiserv was named a winner in the 2021 Big Innovation Awards, presented by the Business Intelligence Group. Virtual Banking Assistant offers out-of-the-box AI that is embedded within financial institutions’ digital banking experiences, empowering institutions to present dynamic, real-time financial information through intelligent conversations and rich visualizations. The solution enables financial institutions to promote financial health and reduce the cost to serve.

As the financial services industry continues to innovate, the method in which we acquire data and how users interact with that data will continue to shape the success of other products within the sector.

What are some of the biggest tech advances that you feel fintechs today should be focusing on more? 

Recent tech advances that hold significant potential include, the use of real-time decision making to tailor experiences and automate digital experiences, whether it’s through a virtual assistant that provides self-service capability or through the extraction of useful insights for users as they make decisions on purchases. The shift towards financial institutions providing a more personalized experience in digital channels is propelling new products and fintech opportunities in the market. Ultimately, this can be achieved by shifting towards a nimbler technology infrastructure and strategy that can respond quickly to the end-user across different channels. We see this currently as we look to extend the same product experience from mobile and web to IVR to point-of-sale (POS).  Each channel provides new resources and capability and it’s critical to react quickly and meet the users in the many channels of their customer journey.

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A few thoughts on some of the most innovative B2B finance solutions you’ve seen in the market changing the game for users?

There is a lot of exciting stuff happening in this area including point-of-sale financing, embedded financial services and automation,  through which we are seeing the application of AI in the financial services sector both in customer-facing and back-office channels. Financial institutions that position themselves to leverage AI as an embedded technology can extend the capability to many different verticals within their ecosystem of products. The key to driving the most value for the users will be bringing together B2B products and extracting a more holistic experience shifting away from disparate systems that work in silos.

As global fintech trends change and the market shifts due to business environments (and also Covid-19), what are your comments on the state of fintech in 2021 and beyond?

2020 has been a year like we have never seen before. And challenging as it has been, it has also driven some behavioral changes that I believe are here to stay in 2021 and beyond. The escalated adoption of digital, and the ongoing need to engage and empower customers will further spur fintech innovation and investments in customer collaboration, AI-based automation, money movement, frictionless cyber security, and financial well-being solutions. 2021 is likely to see an increase in both the demand and supply side for fintechs and will drive digital transformation for financial institutions faster than we would have seen were it not for the events of 2020.

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