OneConnect's Rohit Chowdhry to grace the ABF Digital & Open Banking Conference 2019

He will discuss how partnerships with ecosystem players can create open banking models.

Rohit Chowdhry is the vice president & head of business development and channel for OneConnect Financial Technology, an associate company of Ping An Group, a ChineseFortune 500 company. He is responsible for growing OneConnect’s business and sales channels across ASEAN and India. Building upon Ping An’s extensive knowledge and expertise, OneConnect’s Chowdhry is looking to bring the best of China’s financial technologies to empower financial institutions and banks in Asia.

Before joining OneConnect, Rohit held leadership roles at Microsoft, Accenture and Tata Consultancy Services. He has more than 15 years of experience in leading cloud and digital solutions for global enterprise clients.

Chowdhry graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, with a Bachelor of Technology degree.

In an interview with Asian Banking & Finance, Rohit talks about previous work experience, as well as compelling insights on AI/ML, block chain, and open banking.

What are your previous experiences and positions held that contributed to who you are as a banker/expert today?

I have over 16 years of experience in technology industry across consulting, strategy, business operations, and business development. Having worked with multiple clients in BFSI, retail and government sectors, I’ve helped them shape and execute tech strategies and large transformational projects. I started my career with legacy closed loop technologies and have seen how cloud, mobile and data disrupt the business ecosystem with the adoption of open source frameworks. Today, I utilise these experiences to assist financial institutions ride the next wave of disruptive tech around AI/ML whilst balancing it with issues around security and privacy.

What would you say are the best practices and digital strategies deployed by the region's digitally dominant banks? Where does open banking fit in this agenda and how should banks capture the opportunities from this growing ecosystem?

If you look at some of the top banks in the regions, they are focusing to provide best customer experience via mobile, e-wallets, payments, remittances and customer service. Plus they are focusing to digitise operations to increase transaction speed and reduce Opex. Open banking footprint is small primarily due to lack of trust, regulations, privacy and internal legacy technologies. However, as competition from fintech, e-commerce players increase, banks will be forced to adopt open models, give and get data in order to provide better micro services to consumers at lower fees. New data feeds will also enhance banks’ risk management engine. For this to happen, fundamental relook at traditional business processes and technologies will need to happen. Partnerships with fintechs and other ecosystem players will be critical.

Can you give us a glimpse of what you will share at the ABF Digital & Open Banking Conference 2019?

I would like to share how we can capitalise the next digital wave by creating open banking models in partnership with ecosystem players. This will drive smart banking, smart lending, smart advisory services with right use of data, processes and technologies. OneConnect has been helping multiple organisations in this journey, and I would like to share our experiences on areas around blockchain and open banking.

The ABF Digital & Open Banking Conference 2019 will take place on 22 October in Singapore. To learn more about the event, click here. To register, click here. For inquiries, you may contact Andrea at [email protected] or at +65 3158 1386 ext 212