Mr. Sameer Raje, General Manager & Head, India & SAARC Region, Zoom Video Communications

3 Jan 2023 , 11:54 AM

Mr Sameer Raje, General Manager and Head, India & SAARC region, Zoom Communications, interacts with India Infoline. 

The financial services industry was swept by a complete digital overhaul over the past two years. How have collaboration platforms helped in reimagining both client services and internal operations?

The financial services industry was once characterized by analog processes. The desktop phone was critical technology, paper contracts were a main form of communication, investment bankers used to fly from one city to another for one-hour meetings, and video was only a nice to have. But not anymore. Over the past two years, the industry went into a sweeping digital transformation, with many embracing this new paperless world as an opportunity to reimagine both client services and internal operations.

As financial services institutions (FSI) work to serve digital-first customers and empower a flexible hybrid employee experience, they are leveraging the benefits of collaboration platforms to deliver a seamless virtual experience similar to in-person meetings. For example, Know Your Customer (KYC) via video has become a quick and easy way through which users can complete the KYC for their accounts within just a few minutes, thus eliminating the need to visit the branch physically.e-KYC transactionsvia Aadhar in India crossed the 25-crore-mark in September 2022, a 7.7% jump from August. With a reliable collaboration platform like Zoom, financial services institutions can build closer customer and employee connections and future-proof their business, all with the security and privacy controls in place that they need to remain compliant while they collaborate with confidence.

Experience is everything — for employees and clients alike. With the right technology in place, financial services organizations can elevate the way they serve both groups, creating a more dynamic way of working as a result. According to Frost & Sullivan, 50% of financial services firms employ video chat for customer interactions today; another 44% expect to do so in the coming year. As the financial services industry embraces a new wave of change, they need to partner with providers like Zoom that support seamless digital transformation in a secure environment. The outcome: an industry redefined by innovation.

How is Zoom enabling new dimensions in existing banking and financial operations?

Human interactions are at the heart of any effective financial transaction or client relationship. Zoom helps today’s wealth management firms deliver the same trust through virtual interactions as in-person communication, driving efficiencies and allowing for relationship-building that defies the physical limits of distance and location. Financial services organizations can use Zoom’s unified communication platform to enable flexible work, deliver innovative and personalized client services, and build out revenue-generating opportunities.

Our unified communications platform — which includes meetings, chat, conference room, and workspace solutions — provides the flexibility and interoperability that today’s wealth management firms require to address modern client needs and establish stand-out services. We also offer a Zoom API that allows developers to access information from Zoom to build private services or public applications on the Zoom App Marketplace, enabling financial solution vendors to develop custom solutions optimized for an evolving landscape. 

By deploying Zoom as a key client-facing solution, wealth management firms can foster more meaningful work and relationships, elevating the experience for both employees and clients alike.

Please throw light on some features and services that enhance the way that people working in the BFSI sector can make a difference to their work style.

Zoom has designed unique features and worked to address industry-specific standards to help organizations maximize efficiency while addressing their unique needs. Here are some of the ways Zoom’s unified collaboration platform can help future-proof financial services institutions:

• Supportive: Connect digitally and build closer connections with your customers by providing dynamic, omnichannel services. Increase customer satisfaction with video-first 1:1 client consultation or real-time collaboration sessions via the Zoom Whiteboard. For in-person or hybrid interactions, you can greet clients with Zoom Room’s Virtual Receptionist Kiosk or present visually-engaging information via Zoom Rooms signage.
• Accessible: Services like auto-generated captions and real-time transcription help enable a more equitable communications experience, support faster client follow-up, and expand and diversify your potential portfolio of clients.
• Flexible: Give your team the ability to embrace flexible work, with features like Zoom Rooms Smart Gallery designed to create an inclusive experience that promotes equality for both in-person and remote workers through the strategic application of AI technology.
• Interoperable: Zoom integrates with CRM providers to provide a holistic view of your customers, archiving vendors to support archiving regulatory requirements, electronic document signing partners to accelerate agreements, and more.
• Scalable: Scale video and chat easily and reliably across your institution to support communication and transparency during change management efforts like mergers and acquisitions. Zoom’s easy implementation process fosters location-agnostic connection-building as new organizations — or new hires — join your institution. Zoom solutions also help make scaling sustainable by providing easy-to-use controls, strategic features, and clear policies designed to enable compliance and secure important client information.

Securing client information is vital for any financial services organization. What kind of data management and encryption features does Zoom offer?

Securing client information is vital for any financial services organization. Customer trust — and therefore business viability — is contingent on security, so any financial services organization using Zoom should take advantage of these data management and encryption features:

• Data routing control: Zoom users have the ability to select which data centers process their data in transit, or, in other words, data that is actively moving from one location to another across the internet. You can opt in or out of each specific data center region (except your default region where your account was provisioned) for data in transit, helping to maintain more control over where information travels.
• End-to-end encryption: When enabled, this feature uses the same 256-bit AES GCM encryption that supports standard Zoom Meetings to help encrypt communication between all meeting participants. The only difference is that the cryptographic keys are known only to the devices of the meeting participants. This means that no third party — including Zoom — has access to the meeting’s private keys.
• Meeting and Webinar Archiving: Allows account administrators to set up an automated mechanism to collect and archive meeting data to a third-party platform of their choice and hence, help satisfy FINRA and/or other compliance requirements. Unlike Cloud Recording, which saves video, audio, and chat/transcription files to the Zoom Cloud, the Archiving API collects webinar and meeting data/metadata necessary for certain compliance guidelines, as well as the audio, video, and chat files if set in the API call.
• Information barriers: Designed to help you control user communication policies and meet regulatory requirements at scale. You can use information barriers to prevent certain groups of users with confidential information from communicating with others who are not approved to know this information.
• Data loss prevention (DLP) integrations: These integrations connect with Zoom to help customers apply policies designed to detect and block potential data breaches or exfiltration.

Can you share some stories of customer innovation leveraging virtual collaboration in this sector?

Financial institutions are using our platform to serve a growing number of clients who prefer to connect digitally and to give employees the flexibility to embrace the era of flexibility. 

• With Zoom’s intuitive platform, Nasdaq was able to simplify its communications and create a seamless user experience.
• Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, designed outdoor Zoom Rooms to enable employees to safely meet in person while creating a dynamic meeting experience for those off site.
• National Australia Bank, Australia’s largest business bank, uses Zoom to improve collaboration among teams.
• Capital One uses Zoom to provide premium employee and candidate experiences by connecting global teams and enabling efficient collaboration, enhancing inclusivity in the workplace and reimagining its talent programs through virtual recruiting.

We are also working with some of the largest banking and financial institutes in India.