5 Things I Learned at a Bank IT Conference

I recently had the opportunity to attend, and speak at, the Southeast Community Bank I.T. Rightsourcing Conference in Georgia. It was a great 1-day event with speakers representing various areas of technology in community banking, including IT, Core & Payments, Audit, Cybersecurity, and Regulatory.

This brief post is my sharing of the top items I learned that day.

1. Cybercrime is now the 3^rd largest economy in the world. Yep, the GDP of global cybercrime has reached an estimated $8.4 Trillion in 2022, just behind the economies of The United States and China. It is the equivalent of Japan and Germany, combined. Cyber is here to stay and we must start making it important in every facet of our lives, especially our financial institutions.
   
   
2. Artificial Intelligence is moving at a rapid pace and is accelerating. It will disrupt our lives in the very near future (weeks, not years). AI will change cyberattacks, affect banking operations, replace humans in many parts of our industry, and will impact our whole society like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s scary. But we cannot afford to act from a place of fear. We must embrace this new evolution of mankind or be left behind.
   
   
3. Regulatory examinations have not kept up with guidance releases from the past couple of years. I heard both an auditor and a past examiner specifically call out Authentication and Access changes from 2021 and the new AIO handbook from 2021 as both still not receiving proper review and scrutiny. This aligns with the Inspector General report of the FDIC earlier this year. Both speakers warned folks to not become complacent with softer examinations, and both felt that these guidances were valuable and will be getting hard looks from regulators soon.
   
   
4. The core landscape that we’ve all known for a couple of decades will see disruption in the next 5-10 years. The hunger for digital adoption, the democratization of microservices, and the rise of fintech were all cited as drivers for this massive shift in our industry. What does this mean? Well, more innovative financial institutions are already working on API integrations platforms, sidecar cores, and seeking best-of-breed solutions for mobile, web, loan, and CRM. For folks that prefer a later adoption, the speaker said to not sign a core contract for more than 5 years and that you should be doing a review of the landscape in 3 years.
   
   
5. Establishing a culture of security continues to become more important. Every speaker mentioned culture and described its relevance in being successful with the upcoming changes that the banking industry will experience. This was what my presentation was on, so my 3 steps for doing so are here:
   
   • Make security important.
   • Build healthy teams (trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, goals).
   • Communicate

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