From cycling to foresight: Christian Dicke sets out his vision for futureproofing the Swiss banking market with Swisscom Banking
Take five minutes with Christian Dicke to learn:
April 2024, Text: Tanja Dujic 5 min.
No time to read? Watch the ‘Five Minutes with Christian Dicke’ video now:
Christian, as a warm-up: outside the banking world, can you tell us something interesting about you that we are unaware of?
Right now, I’m excited about my new hobby: I’ve switched from the running camp to cycling and treated myself to a brand new bike that I’ll ride this weekend.
It sounds like you plan to make a success of the weekend. What does a successful day at Swisscom look like for you?
A successful day at Swisscom is full of collaboration and creativity. We truly enjoy what we’re doing and work closely together to ultimately deliver a result that offers real added value for the customer. Maybe we end the day by going out for a beer together to celebrate our success.
With an eye to remaining successful in the future, what do you feel are the key trends you are seeing right now in the banking sector?
Essentially, we are seeing three major trends in banking in Switzerland. Regulatory requirements represent a significant trend that we want to use as an opportunity to support our customers. We help them to be compliant while operating efficiently. The journey to the cloud is also a key focus, as is the development of generative AI – an area where we hope to lead by partnering with Nvidia.
The future of banking: AI, cloud & compliance
How do you perceive the influence of these trends?
Trends put the focus on different aspects of the market. Some create new challenges, while others offer opportunities for growth and innovation. With tools such as our Core Banking Radar and e.foresight , we are helping others to navigate these trends. We support our customers in identifying relevant developments and adapting their strategies accordingly. It’s important to us that we can create synergies and exploit economies of scale across different banks. The main trend here is to use platforms that provide standardised basic functionality and also offer modularity towards bank customers so that individual banks can actively differentiate themselves. Platforms are becoming a major trend as a result of the different trends affecting the market.
Interestingly, you haven’t mentioned fintechs at all. What opportunities do you see for collaboration with fintech companies?
Fintechs are certainly a trend in recent years that we first felt could be very big. They have now become an integral part of our industry. Although initially considered disruptors, they have established themselves as partners that are learning and growing together with banks. Fintechs and banks have learned to coexist, whether through co-opetition or in full partnerships.
That is often made possible by the opening up of technologies, an opening up towards ecosystems in which interfaces are mutually open.
This is exactly what you need partners for. Platforms are required to make active use of these ecosystems. Swisscom plays an essential enabler role in this context. With our Open Business Hub, for example, we offer a platform through which different market participants network with each other in a standardised way. Take, for example, the wealth management business initiative with the OpenWealth APIs, where we enable banks to connect to bLink provided by SIX Banking Services.
Finally, let’s take a look at the long-term future: how do you see the role of Swisscom Banking in the Swiss banking system developing over the next five to ten years?
I’ve now been Head of Banking at Swisscom for just over 100 days. This is an exciting task that inspires me every day.
First and foremost, this is because the impression I get from the outside, how Swisscom Banking is perceived, is that of an operator and an integrator of large banking solutions in a classic infrastructure. Looking at what we’re doing today, what our employees are engaged in, how much innovation there is in so many small cells, this is much more than what is commonly understood as the work of an operator and integrator. When I look to tomorrow and the day after, that’s exactly what we’re supposed to do: show the strength we already have internally to the outside world, bring the trends we identify in the market with our customers together in a transformation and future-proof the Swiss banking market accordingly.