Maureen Lowe - I'm Maureen. Well, I'm the founder and president of FTF and publisher of our online news service, FTF News. I'm also serving as today's host for our webinar Modernizing, Mobilizing the Power of Digital Change. How to Influence Your Firm's Tech Future, which has been produced by FTF and sponsored by Broadridge. The time is now for firms to accelerate technology modernization to not only keep up with competitors but to survive. Up until now, the digital transformation journey for most firms has been incremental. However, with ever mounting industry mandates, such as ten plus one plus zero other regulatory changes and pressures to stay innovative in order to attract and keep talented staff. Incremental changes are a thing of the past. The good news is that, according to a recent digital transformation survey Broadridge conducted with C-suite executives and direct reports from 500 financial institutions globally, more than 75% of CEOs and CEOs said digital transformation is considered a business as usual, part of their innovation and change management programs.

So now the question for firms is not is not do we need to go down this journey, but rather how do we navigate this new phase driven by more powerful technology? And over the course of the next hour, we'll talk about just that. Well, delve not only further into the recent Broadridge survey findings, but hear from our expert panel how they've led their own digital journeys within their firms and how they think the industry will evolve over the next ten years. Before we get started, however, I just want to note a few things on your event console. You'll see that there's a Q&A window that's open to the left of your screen. Please do take advantage of our speakers today and you can submit questions at any time throughout this discussion. The questions are only seen by us. They're not seen by the other attendees.

We'll do our best to integrate them into the discussion and then have questions at the end as well. You'll also see there is a related content section where we've uploaded some additional resources for you to take a look at before you hop off, including the actual write up of the newly released Broadridge Digital Transformation and next gen study where you can read more about the findings that we're sharing today, as well as a number of others we just don't have time to get to. It's filled with an enormous amount of great findings and insights, so do be sure to download it before leaving the discussion today. If you happen to be listening to the on demand or recorded version of this webinar, you are able to still submit questions to us that will be emailed to us and answered accordingly. Before we get to the main discussion, I just pushed out a polling question that we're asking everybody to just take a moment and respond to. We will be sharing the results with you before moving on to the main discussion. But if you would just let us know.

The Broadridge study found that 60% of respondents believe that the financial services industry will modernize its technology stack before we land a human on Mars, which is estimated by early 2030. So let us know when do you think the industry will have a fully replaced legacy systems in favor of more cost effective cloud based infrastructure that puts microservices and APIs at a core? Do you think it's before 20, 33, 30, and 2035, between 2035 and 2040 or after 2040? Or do you not really know? And if that's the case, say, I have no idea. And while you're while you're answering some of these polling questions. I'm also going to introduce our speakers today. We're starting off with our moderator, Eugene Griego, who is the chief content officer for FTA News.

We also have Cindy Schreiner. She's the managing director and head of operations, Transformation and Key Strategic Relationships for RB RBC, U.S. Wealth Management. We have Peter Akwaboah. He's the managing director of Morgan Stanley, the CEO of Technology and Global head of Innovation for the Firm. We have Scott Bellows. He's the executive vice president of the Investor Experience for LPL Financial. And we also have Mary Sue Colette. She is the CTO of Broadridge. So I'm going to check back on our polling results to see how they are coming along. If you've taken a moment, we have people from all over the world joining us today, so it will be insightful to see. It looks like most of our audience so far, 50% of them think that will be between 2030 and 2035. So we'll just take one more second and then we will close this out. And yes, it looks like between 2030 and 2035 seems to be the top answer from our audience. I'm just going to turn it back to you guys and see what you think. Do you find that surprising or pretty much what you thought? Anybody wants to comment. Worrying.

Cindy Schreiner - I actually think it's going to happen sooner. I don't think we're going to have a choice. So, yeah, I agree. It's happening now across the industry and I think that it'll be more embedded way before 2035. Yeah.

Mary Cecola - Yeah, I would agree as well. And you know, one of the things that's really important to think about is the expectation of our clients is really being set by their digital experiences they have beyond the financial services. So this change has already happened in a big portion of their lives. And financial services for a large part is is lagging those experiences. So it's going to be really important over the balance of this decade for all of us to invest so that we catch up and meet those expectations of our clients. I would take I would take the opposite. 7 to 12 years, I think is going to be a tough one. I do think that is going to be more targeted and more commercial to the business we're trying to solve. And I think we have a dichotomy between how you continue to grow your business at the pace and how you continue to modernize infrastructure. And I think modernizing for the sake of modernizing is a challenge. So I think it be more targeted in my view.

Maureen Lowe - Thanks, everyone. That's a great segue way into our first question. So, Eugene, I'll pass it over to you.

Eugene Grygo - Well, hello and good morning, everyone. Our first question for the panel is, are companies transforming fast enough in terms of technology modernization? What are some of the tough decisions you need to make to get to your desired end state from an innovation perspective? So first, Scott, can you could you start off the discussion?

Scott Belous - Absolutely. So, you know, like I mentioned a moment ago, I think that we're not moving fast enough and we need to pick up the pace. I think one of the hardest decisions is really a lot of the way that you pick up the pieces by uplifting the core infrastructure that all of our front end experiences are based upon. And in a lot of ways, that is a long term investment and it's not readily visible by the clients, but it's a necessary first step to get that foundation in place in order to be able to deliver those world class experiences. So I think that's a little bit of the challenge of making sure that we are pouring that foundation so that we can build these great experiences, even though the client might not feel that immediately and taking that longer term view. All of us have time pressures to deliver, of course, and you want to show results to your clients as quickly as possible. But in this case, you need to take a little bit more of the long game. Hmm. Yeah, I really agree with that.

Mary Cecola - You know, the legacy infrastructure. So getting to data consolidation and cloud is is so important is the step item and figuring out how to make that business case to the organizations that they realize they're ready. Budget can be a huge stopper to this. Also, internal resistance. People need to be educated and what we can do with this in the future. And that means both having change agents in your technology department and more importantly in the business unit so they can help you with a vision on this. So I think there's a lot of things we have to get tough decisions and tough things we have to do to get that certain state.

Cindy Schreiner - Yeah, I was going to say, Mary, I think, you know, couple that with the regulatory pressures that we have that continue to mount, right. And that we have to pay attention to, which a lot of the digital organizations outside of financial services don't have to pay attention to the way we do. So, you know, all of this change, this rapid pace of change, you know, self-service capabilities to clients, you know, digitization, front to back processes. You know, we all we have to now embed controls and regulatory oversight, you know, processes just to make sure that we're ticking all those regulatory boxes and that we don't get ourselves in trouble for customers in any way.

Peter Akwaboah - I think the other thing is that unlike in the past, where you can control your own destiny, now we have a lot more dependency with external providers. And given the regulatory agenda you talked about, the partnership becomes stronger and and the partnership becomes a way where that some of the vendors you're working with are not under the same pressures that we have. So the first question is they can go and get revenues elsewhere, so why should it partner with you? So I think we have to redouble our efforts in terms of the way we partner with them. If we want to go out the space that we want to go as well as I think as.

Eugene Grygo - I agree. Okay. I do have a couple of quick follow up questions. My first one is how are firms getting rid of manual barriers and updating legacy technology? And then sort of related to that, how do you set up priorities? Well, yeah, the panels have mentioned the different things that are happening and all at once. How do you set a priority for change? But the first the first follow up is how are firms getting rid of manual barriers and upgrading legacy technology?

Cindy Schreiner - Well, I mean, I can take it from the business perspective. I think, you know, operations historically is where all of those manual processes reside. Right. So, you know, it's really important that we have a fresh set of eyes and and folks that are visionaries and strategic oriented to take a look at what we're doing and and build those solutions, those digital solutions for the future. You know, I think that, you know, most you know, at least in my organization, that's a challenge, right? Like, you need to find those folks that can push the envelope and have challenged the status quo and and identify those areas. And, you know, and the key is right, because we always get caught in this, is that to digitize a process that is inefficient.

Right. So sometimes we take the existing process and just, you know, put more technology around it or automated in a certain way. But we really need to be forward thinking and strategic about, like I said, customer experience and self-service capabilities and all of those things. When we look at that,

Mary Cecola - I really agree. I mean, having people that are visionary from the C-suite down to people in departments that normally would provide requirements for work with, you'd have this and then a change enabled technology department. I think in the absence of being able to build all that, looking out for SaaS products in the industry can propel you forward. If you don't think that you have the internal people to do it.

Scott Belous - Mm hmm. One thing I'll add on this one is really embracing the mantra of progress over perfection. And there's an opportunity to really chip away at a lot of these manual barriers that exist in the back office. And so we don't have to solve everything all at once and have that big launch. There are ways to be laser focused on certain processes that can be digitized and continue to make progress and get rid of them one at a time.

Peter Akwaboah - On that legacy, updating the legacy technology. One of the things we're trying to we've just implemented is a concept of a technical fitness school so similar to one of a Fitbit or anything like that. We have what we call in a technical school and we're trying to measure each of them by your kind of your debt, but you have a legacy infrastructure point of view. So we call it technical fitness school and it starts working because depending on where you want to would investment spend on your schools, we can then help you or we can detract from that as well. And there's a way of doing that. And then obviously share with the board and your senior management as well. And that's that's putting focus around a base and legacy infrastructure.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. It looks as if we got a quick question from our audience. What are your thoughts on the evolving regulation and compliance requirements impacting the ability of financial service companies to innovate? I'm sorry to intimate. And adopt new technology. Do you see a big hurdle? And what strategies are being employed to reconcile compliance with the need for technology advancement? So rather long question there.

Cindy Schreiner - But so I think I mean, look, any firm, any organization that's going through a digitization journey or transformation journeys is dealing with this today. Right. And I think it's, you know, engaging your compliance and risk partners in the beginning. So they get a comfort level with regards to replacing human controls with automated controls. Right. And making sure that we are laser focused on covering off on all of those oversight models that have to be in place today. And I think we have to be creative around that. Right. I don't think, you know, we're kind of stuck in the same model just because the regulation hasn't changed. Right. I think we can be creative around solutions and how we adhere to those guidelines and those regulatory mandates.

Mary Cecola - I also think some things that have been pushed forward like at1t0 settlement cycle have pushed forward straight through processing, has really brought more digital innovation. You need to be more creative to meet some of that. So I think there can be a pro and con scene with some of the regulatory things that come through. But, you know, there's a struggle between the day to day and being innovative and sometimes splitting your teams a little to have your innovation group and your more. I think there's an old term out there, bimodal. You have your day to day people and then you also have your innovators. And sometimes building a team that way can really help you achieve both.

Scott Belous - And if I can just layer on something Cindy said a moment ago to is really being creative in how we address some of these regulations that come down. And, you know, at its core, let's assume positive intent by the regulators. They're trying to protect the consumer in some way. And if we can really go a level deeper beyond what's written in the regulator and what they're trying to accomplish and serve for the consumer themselves, sometimes there's a creative solution there that might not be in the text of the regulation itself, but it's in the intent. So I think, you know, getting to the why the regulation exists overall really helps that, you know, deliver a solution to the challenges that it presents.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. Very quickly, what how do you get to that creativity? Does that involve the business side? And then we have another question from the audience.

Cindy Schreiner - But I actually think it has to involve the business side, Right. You know, as much as our technology partners have become more creative over time, I think that the business acumen is critical. Right. And so having that experience engaging with your financial advisors and your customers is front and center in everything we do. And sometimes our technology partners don't have that insight and don't have those experiences to share.

And also, you know, there's different approach, there's different perspectives, if you will, on solutions, right? You know, with regards to delivering the end state, you know, solution again to the business, right? You know, there's a certain level of creativity that, you know, I'd love technology to have, but at the end of the day, the business owns whatever is delivered and we need to be happy with it. So I think that partnership has to evolve. I've been in way too many situations where our technology partners don't have that business acumen or we weren't given the opportunity to share and we didn't get to the right place. So I think the partnership is really critical

Mary Cecola - And it really reinforcing having both the technology department and the business to think more creatively. I think about post 2008 and the regulation that came with that, that did a lot and that forced a lot of things to consolidate data in such a way that you could meet that regulatory reporting. You could have taken that as your opportunities to do major data cleansing and consolidation, which is a huge step to get forward with analytics and the use of AI. So you can use these as a stepping stone and a driver to fix some of those internal issues.

Cindy Schreiner - Agree.

Eugene Grygo - And then quickly, we had a question as a follow up to Scott's commentary. How do you prioritize where to start? You start with the low hanging fruit, with the low impact or the higher impact. That is a much more complex effort. Personally, I would think. All right. Go ahead, Mary.

Mary Cecola - No, please, go ahead.

Scott Belous - I was going to say it's more of an answer than in a war and trying to find those opportunities. So the way that we typically look at it, it's a little bit of art and a little bit of science. The science part is by looking at the data and really understanding what the drivers of manual work is and then seeing if we can ideate a solution to that and depending on the complexity of the solution, will prioritize it or not. The thing that really plays in on the art side is on the client feedback and really understanding in their own words what the pain point is and how significant of a pain point it is. And then that is a big component in terms of how we prioritize. It's just based on understanding the clients and their needs and what's frustrating them. So it's a lot of different factors that goes into it. But I think finding the things where you can get some quick wins is really important and the things that really impact the clients the most.

Peter Akwaboah - Yeah, I'm going to be I'm not a big fan of big projects. I think to your point, every project has some sort of a long term view, but it's always an incremental view of how you deliver that, which improves quick wins and so forth. So it's a combination of all of those is not one versus the other.

Cindy Schreiner - Right.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. Quickly onto the next question. The study, which just came out yesterday, found that on average firms, firms are planning to increase spending on next generation technologies like artificial intelligence and distributed ledgers known as blockchains. They're going to spend between 20% and 30% more over the next two years, according to the survey. 71% of the survey respondents also say that artificial intelligence is now significantly changing the way they work. So, panel in particular, Mary, how powerful are AI and DLT based innovations and what kinds of changes are they causing? Which use cases are generating real value for your firm?

Mary Cecola - Yeah, I think AI and DLT blockchain is extremely powerful. You know, with AI, we're getting better automation, smart decision making, enhanced customer experience. You're really seeing research and data analytics get pushed forward in a grand way. There's error reduction when you do AI correctly, and it really starts to learn, especially around things like reconciliation technology and increased business efficiency. I think with blockchain you can really see that peer to peer connections for better security, transparency and much more efficient processes. So I think all of that is being proven out and is really powerful for organizations.

Personally, for us, we've invested heavily in blockchain. We have a blockchain based, a repo application shareholder disclosure hub that is written with blockchain involved and a private equity asset management service in blockchain that we've developed in conjunction with one of our partners. That's a great product. It's really, really tech forward. You know, in AI, there's so many examples right now and you know, you're seeing them in the media. So it sounds funny to even try to come up with a business case for it. But tools we've developed, I mean, data control using artificial intelligence. You have smart insights coming out again in the data and analytics space with corporate action tools, leveraging A.I. trade applications, LTX platform.

I mean, I can keep going, but anti-money laundering has been an area we leveraged A.I. and we've built a couple complete platforms around artificial intelligence, including a wealth management platform and our proxy policies insights with data. So, you know, I kind of feel like A.I. is the one really delivering at the forefront of this. And blockchain is right on its heels.

Peter Akwaboah - Yeah. Just to just to answer that, I think to your point, I'd like to see us it was like becoming tablespace now. It doesn't necessarily change your business model. It complements your business model. And leveraging the power of data through AI is giving a lot more flexibility for clients, a lot more flexibility and choices around how you make decisions going forward. And I do think that that's just part and parcel of our business model and how we augment that. The difference between that and DLT is DLT is changing business more is changing the way we think. And I think that time is more there's more time required and continue to have more time to clarify, even including how you educate the regulators in the right.

So different people are on different stages of embracing the DLT compared to AI, which is probably more embraced today. And so there's more work to be done in that space. And I think to your point, some people have used it with yet to see it with we're still working on how we see some of the benefits around that. I think there's more to come in that space and we just the here and now and we see moving.

Cindy Schreiner - So in our shop, I think, you know, right now a lot of the effort is on the front-end technology right in the in the client experience, as Peter just said. Right. I think most of us are focused on that on a lot of levels. Well, when you look at it, you know, from an operational perspective, obviously, I need to talk about where I sit, but I think there are things that we are starting to leverage around machine learning with regards to training opportunities when our teams are interacting with the field, you know, behavioral aspects of field requests coming in and getting them to the right place. You know what? We just sort of, you know, touch the tip of the iceberg. We're not as far as along as the front office folks are.

Eugene Grygo - I mean. Okay. I think I think we have another poll question.

Maureen Lowe - I popped another poll question out for everybody to respond. Again, we will share the results with you. We do ask that you interact with our console, make for a much more engaging conversation. You can, if you had a magic wand to accelerate transformation at your firm. What is the single thing you would change dramatically? Expand the use of AI and automation Enterprise wide. Eliminate legacy systems and shift. Sorry, somebody moving the slides, I may shift entirely to a modern platform, gather and integrate all data across the enterprise and make it easily accessible. Double the digital transformation budget.

So far, nobody has chosen that one, which I'm a little surprised by and able to answer customer needs five years from now. So please do take a moment to weigh in. And while we're waiting for a few more of you to respond for those that might have been late to join, I just want to point out the survey report some of the stats that we're sharing with you today. You can download the full study in your content section, so please do so before popping off today. And also this webinar will be available on demand for a year. And so if you would like to listen back or have a colleague I know listen, and we are having sharing a lot of information with you, so you might want to listen back.

So please go ahead and do so. We will be sending out emails when the recordings are ready. It looks like so far the top answer is gather and integrate all data across the enterprise and make it easily accessible at 51.9%. With that and still zero at double the transformation budget. So be interesting when you guys come back. With that, I'll push the results to the audience. And if you just want to make a quick comment about them, you can do some move on.

Cindy Schreiner - But I think the budget challenges I think we're all investing in and so maybe that's why and heavily and I think maybe that's why that question was not a tough question. But as far as gather and integrate data across the enterprise and make it accessible, look, we've all been on that journey. And Peter, I'm sure you guys, everyone has been on that journey, right? You know, we've had our core platforms and then we've built best in class solutions that, you know, kind of hub and spoke, you know, visual. But now we've got all of those disparate data sources and what do we do with that to bring that together, to leverage it with AI and blockchain and all of those things. And so I agree. I think we're still on that journey. I don't know about anyone else, but I think we are.

Mary Cecola - I think not picking, doubling the budget as the one thing you would do makes sense because you're getting budget without a purpose. Clearly, you need a budget to do the you know, to gather the data across the firm. And I really believe in the second one, getting to a cloud platform, getting your infrastructure to a place. I also think you're out to focus on our network to get to cloud. Getting those two things in place are key to move to the next stage. So I kind of agree on one or two and I, I think budget without a purpose is what we're seeing isn't a good idea here.

Scott Belous - Yeah, definitely. I think, you know, one of the challenges too, is, you know, converting dollars into outcomes. And so, you know, throwing more money at the problem isn't always necessarily the best way to go. It just makes it more expensive and not more efficient and more effective. But just going back to the data vote here at 50%, I think we're all sitting on a goldmine of data in terms of all of the client information that we have and being able to use modern techniques to unlock the value in that data, both for our clients and for our companies, is such a huge opportunity. So it makes total sense that that's the top vote getter.

Peter Akwaboad - Yeah, I think totally makes sense. Although 111 of the other ones I will pick is if I was being very commercial, anticipating Clientes in the next five years. Because if I can anticipate the client's needs in the next five years, I will tailor my investments relative to that to to monetize what I need to grow going forward. So it's interesting to speak to 60%, but all the other ones probably I have control around that one. I don't have control as being able to anticipate the clients needs, and that's why I use.

Eugene Grygo - Interesting. We have a very quick question about I come in from the audience what ethical considerations and implications should be. I will use the word consider it again when implementing it, particularly when it comes to risk management and decision making.

Mary Cecola - I think that's a really good question. Some of the places that we've seen it leverage right now are not areas where I think you're running into ethical issues, getting better data and analytics information synthesized, improving your reconciliation process. That tends to be very manual. And yet you can have something learn how to not only do reconciliation better, but what do you do with things that don't reconcile? I think that, you know, when it moves up, possibly up the staff to also make decisions around portfolio management and trading, we're going to run into a lot more issues with that. But at this point, we are looking at things that more optimize areas that are less controversial.

Cindy Schreiner - And look, I think, you know, from a customer perspective, you know, the FCC has already come out and said they're going to take a look at I. Right. So, you know, are customers being given preferential treatment based upon how the air is structured, etc.? I mean, that that just came out a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure what they're going to do with regards to that. But now they're always front and center with these kinds of changes, especially when it comes to the impact on our on our consumers or our customers. So more to come on that from my perspective.

Eugene Grygo - Yeah, I agree. Okay. Another quick question from the audience. When a firm undertakes transformation, the person is asking, how do you balance transformation with maintaining business as usual and ongoing support for new products and services and the business you need to grow? How do you effectively create and manage a balance to more efficient and scalable processes? So basically, how do you juggle it all?

Mary Cecola - So I touched on this earlier, but I have found and I've implemented this really kind of splitting my teams between day to day business and you will have to spend a bit more and then investing another team to do the transformation work. You will got your transformation team if they are heads down in the day to day and those types of items. I think really going and I know it's an old term, I think bimodal and having two teams attacking each problem differently can drive solutions quicker.

Cindy Schreiner - Mary I would couple that with. I agree. Right. So we're doing the same here at my organization. But I do think, you know, I said it earlier that the connection between the folks that are performing the day to day functions that are the experts right to that transformation team is critical. You don't want a bunch of, you know, creative people going off on one direction when they don't really understand the business. Right. And so and that's a resource drain. And, you know, it could it could take you down the wrong path. So I agree. You know, you need to separate that so the day to day gets taken care of and that you can implement that change with the with the transformation team.

Mary Cecola - Now, at some point we've actually used agile teams and we've moved them in different cycles from the day to day to the new work, because also people would get upset if they're not having new items and leave and you bring the legacy knowledge in. So if you're working in an agile environment, you can kind of make the teams move between. I think it gets the legacy people working and legacy staff. Knowing the new tag, it brings that knowledge to the new tack and you know, you get invest to make that happen. But I've been doing that here at Broadridge.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. Our next question actually fits quite well with what was just discussed. Talent shortages are a problem. Now. The Broadridge study found that 60% of technology leaders and 52% of the business leaders report that they're falling behind. That falling behind in digital transformation will definitely hurt their ability to attract and retain talent. So how can the use of cutting edge technologies help firms attract talented staff to carry on the journey? Well, maybe, Cindy, you could take that one.

Cindy Schreiner - Yeah. So, look, I think, you know, I thought a lot about this question. I think, you know, we live in a digital world, right? And financial services a little bit behind everything else. And I think that's really due to, you know, the regulatory constructs, frankly. Right. We've got a lot more we have to pay attention to than Google does or any of the fintechs out there that aren't involved in our industry. But I do think that that talent, the talent that's coming in with that digital sort of mindset and thinking through solutions with technology versus the way, I guess, you know, I grew up where you solve the problem and then you ask technology to fix it, right?

So now people are coming to the table thinking about technology, as are you know, they're discussing the problem and they already have in mind what that solution is. I think, you know, if we attract I'm sorry if we don't go there with digital, we're going to miss that opportunity with those folks that live in that digital world and that can bring those ideas and those different thought processes to the table. Sorry, I got off the of the topic a little bit, but I really think that, you know, it's going to help us attract talent that will move the business forward.

Scott Belous - You know, one of the things that we've been looking at is thinking about how a stint in financial technology could really contribute to somebody's career and the way that folks who are just starting out now, they think of their careers differently than people did ten, 15, 20 years ago. So their expectation is that they're going to work for a company for decades. They want to get a35 year experience and then move on to the next thing. So due to some of the elements that Cindy just mentioned, being successful working in financial technology is challenging. And but if you can have a successful tour of duty in financial technology and is really a great building block for your career, as you move on as being a digital transformation person in other industries.

So I think, you know, as a way to attract talent and, you know, it's something for all of us to think about as in sort of trying to recruit people to say, you know, have a career for your life in financial services, then give it more of an opportunity to add another tool to your toolset as you advance your career, even if you decide not sustain financial services for the long term.

Cindy Schreiner - And I also think, Scott, you need to take the handcuffs off, right? Like when you hire, you know, these young folks that that that have this perspective on the world from that digital, you know, you know, view. You know, it's low hanging fruit to them, like they look at some of the things we do and they're like, Well, why are you doing it that way? You know, and people are so caught up in the status quo and the way things have been done in the past, that they don't they don't think about it that way. And so I think it's a great opportunity to bring folks in and just, you know, you know, give them a little bit of runway with regards to, you know, taking a stab at that solution rather than, oh, you train this way and you have to learn that, you know, like it's that step process. Sorry, Peter.

Peter Akwaboah - No, no. I was going to say and to your point, look, there are there are people who want to join financial industry because it's totally real solutions and real challenges, solutions for clients, shareholders and so forth. And we will absolutely train them and give them the skills to be able to get that done. And fundamentally, a lot of the challenges we're trying to solve is what everybody is trying. So we're all trying to get too far. We are trying to use data and so forth. So all these things are there, but you have people who want to join.

I think the dynamics is is in addition to that, given where we're heading, we also the partnership becomes quite key because there are people that will not join. They would like to go to tech companies and guess what? Some of the solutions that we're trying to solve, we have to partner with these tech companies. And if we all do that, there's no competitive advantage when we are trying to go to cloud, for example, and trying to get a security just in the right place, we run a partner, use the right skills is where they should be and then we'll get there. So it's going to be a combination of both in terms of where the industry is going and I think we just have to accept that.

Eugene Grygo - But also younger people don't bring the internal politics with them. They will approach a problem and they will. Part of the political part of that calculation is not there. I think that's something that sort of needs to be said. Okay. All right. Quickly, we do have another quick question from the audience. Can you share the innovation programs your organization is using to upskill the people, the people aspect of it and leadership? Well, basically, I think the person is asking like, what kinds of how are you getting innovation going among, I guess, incumbent staff and new staff?

Cindy Schreiner [00:39:30] Let's just say that, you know, again, I'm going to reiterate the business teams, the operational teams that are engaged right away in the transformation program. Right. You know, I've encouraged my leadership team to share everything that we're doing. It's connected to our strategy. It's, you know, every part of any time we do a communication, it's a part of the communication. So we have to live and breathe it as an organization and, you know, bring everyone together for that. You know, that goal, that single thought process. And I think I think there is no I wouldn't say it's formal and the way that there's an innovation program, but I think you need to connect, connect the teams and engage them right away. And in the change

Mary Cecola - And Cindy I can’t agree with you more, you know, making sure that the innovation you are doing in your organization is communicated, talking about the benefits of that. You know, training is always important, but sending people off to training is not what people expect anymore. Even if you bring in new people from school, they are used to doing things online. So, so much online trainings out there and encouraging it, but more importantly, talking about where the firm's going, encouraging people to get that training and then even selecting for people who've got an innovative mindset. Yeah.

Peter Akwaboah -Yeah. I think there is there are probably three or four different things. There's not one but I think you mentioned some of those and the core of it, anyone coming in will get the basic training relative to where we're headed. So that is almost like table stakes. So we train everybody around the new DevOps. We're training people around where we're heading on cloud data and so forth. So that's, that's almost like a given. I'm sure everybody is doing that. But diving on to your point, doesn't address innovation. So innovation comes when you're solving real problems for a customer's in the right. So make sure that you're working on the right programs to be able to get that done. And then of course, we complement that with other things, like the people who are interested in buttons, for example.

We have a way of making sure that that we can accelerate and help them to get their patterns, violence and so forth. If people are interested in ideas, we have strategy challenges where we bring them together to be able to get them done so that over and above the day job and they can learn things. And then on a frequent basis, we I'm sure would say everybody's inundated with a number of fintech companies trying to penetrate the organization. So we have a way of trying to bring them together. And once a once a year we do what we call a tech week. We expose all of the fintech companies been trying to find out what is it, 10% solutions that we can put in place.

And then we have a tech expo where we invite the whole firm to come once a year, including our board looks at it, and then the talent, the tech organization can expose their own innovative things that you're doing to all senior people for the utilization. So there's no one risk as young as how you bring it on top down all the way through to the solutions that we're doing for this business.

Eugene Grygo - Interesting. Okay. Moving along. How will looming industry changes such as the T plus one and T zero shorter settlement push and and related and additional regulatory changes? How will all of that impact firms and their digital journeys?

Cindy Schreiner - So? I think.

Cindy Schreiner - Yeah. So. So, look, I think. I don't think we have a choice, right? I think it's, you know, just like when, you know, it was an unfortunate thing that we had the pandemic, but it really forced us to think differently about how we run and process our businesses. Right. You know, and I think this is going to be another one of those situations where we don't have a choice, know, you know, we're taking processes that that have overnight bad cycles and all kinds of things that have to happen real time and same day in order to settle the trade the following day.

So I think it will impact firms significantly. I think most and you know, I've said this on numerous occasions in other forms that most certainly the capital markets teams or the institutional side of the the financial services firms have the heavy lift because most wealth management firms not settle, which is a little bit of a different model. So. So I think, you know, we're our hands are you know, I think we've got to do it right, Peter. I think we have a choice.

Mary Cecola - You know, I really think this can drive innovation if you approach it correctly. I think we touched on this a bit earlier, especially the shorter settlement cycles. Different regulatory changes, pulling things together. I mean, there is that joke going around that, you know, who's my innovation officer, my digital driver, and it was Covid right during the Covid time. My firm at the time because I'm new to Broadridge finally embrace teens, which was wonderful and chats and things like that. But you know, regulatory things give you an opportunity to look at your infrastructure, look with age, maybe bring in some outside SaaS products that are already more technically advanced and then build the things you want to build around that to meet that level of technology. I think this can really be seen as opportunities. Yeah. Yeah.

Eugene Grygo - Mm hmm. And then, you know. Well, the dark side of that is that if you don't meet these opportunities, if you miss shorter settlement and so forth, there could be internal problems and also problems with your clients and their counterparties and.

Cindy Schreiner - Oh, yeah, Yeah. I think we have to do it right. What I need to say is that, you know, you talk about actions when. All right, so you talk about Sara, you talk about getting budget. These things drive you getting the budget to do it and then leveraging it for a more tech forward strategy. It's win win. Yeah.

Eugene Grygo - Yeah. Do you think do you think that the that the shorter settlement push in some of these big regulatory changes, will they get priority? Will they help people set priorities when it comes to budgeting?

Cindy Schreiner - Yeah, I think. I think we all do that, right? I mean, we all I mean, we you know, when new regulations, you know, are passed that goes to the top of the heap, you know, based upon the timeline. Right. Depending upon when we have to implement the change. But I think Mary's point is really important, right? I think we all leverage those situations to innovate and evolve our technology solutions and our client experience. So I totally agree.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. Moving right along. It sometimes feels like business leaders and technology leaders within a financial services organization talk across each other, past each other, maybe even in different languages, and have completely different priorities. So how can technology leaders and business leaders within an organization work more effectively together to make a transformation a success?

Peter Akwaboah - The growing sense that I feel like when I speak to business on the street and when they speak, I do understand it is okay. Now I'm like that. On a serious note, I think this is an important one, and I think of it as little things I will offer here. And the first one is really around an alignment of strategy, because whichever way you go, both tech in business needs to be very commercial and the mindset and alignment of strategy becomes quite key. That alignment actually works well when you've probably said yourself, and I think you mentioned employees say yourself in an agile way where you have some sort of a product manager who really sees an end to end basis and it was soon becoming a like having a line way of setting priorities online.

We all speak it. And so for us, I think that's the first one. And then the second one is really around regard is what we do. The tone from the top is important to the composition of the board position of the management and making sure that there is a diverse group, including tech people sitting at the table becomes quite key because of the education starts from the top and all the way down. And that's important. And you see that increasingly even analysts, models and so forth, there are a lot more questions around that. So it's ultimately becomes key in that area. I will offer is really around the subject around mobility and the rise.

Some of these things sometimes are I'm quite keen to be able to move people around to get things done. And the last area that I think about is that it is okay to for business to understand technology is not one way or the other way around. And in some cases where the industry is going, I think it's important for business to understand technology and we have to educate them to understand the language and speak the language as well. So government is where you would say that everything is speaking in English and the rest. I think these days the technology has to be understood as well. So that's the kind of yeah, I would double that when I hear it. So we really all need to be real, as you say. Right? And those are.

Scott Belous - You. Is that okay? I was just saying, you know, we really leaders across business and technology need to be bilingual. There's the ability to just speak one language or the other is needed. Right. And if a business leader doesn't understand the technology that's powering their company, they're not going to be successful. And similarly, a technology leader who doesn't understand the goals and objectives of the business and the products of the business, they're not going to be successful either. So I think we will move out of this mindset of different languages across business technology, and either everybody is speaking the same language or everybody is bilingual and they're comfortable moving back and forth. And I.

Eugene Grygo - I just very quickly. I've seen it happen many times. A very large Wall Street firm, a C-level person from the business side reads an article and named the magazine about the latest and greatest business trend, then orders the group to move to this, you know, whatever, you know, reengineering for example, in the early nineties where just reengineer everything. See you later and then that's it. There's no further discussion. Is that dynamic still underway?

Mary Cecola - Absolutely. I mean, a firm I was at two firms ago. I sat in a room, gave a presentation on strategy, and the CFO said, well, why aren't we using. I am, boss. And I just kind of sat there and I'm like, oh, someone read The Wall Street Journal this morning. But it's also an opportunity for us to educate them on what that can mean, where it can be used. So, you know, one off articles do sometimes drive those one off comments. I think that's where, as everyone said before, as a leader of technology, understand the business and the possible uses and then also taking the opportunity to educate the business on what that technology is and how it can and can't help. Also, whether it's still too new or is it something like we're saying? Is there some if somebody asked me today about using quantum computing, I would say, you know, that's still a bit fringe. We've got to let develop a bit more. So being ready to answer those questions and met early in my career, I get frustrated by them and now I just see them as wonderful opportunities to say, let's talk.

I think this is also driving, you know, you go into strategy meetings in your company and everyone's presenting and there's the 80, 80 strategy, there's a business strategy. And I think we have to undo that. We've got to have a combined strategy that includes both and not seen as two different things. And that's almost this reaching across the aisle kind of thing to use a political term and saying we've got to get to know each other, what we do and how we're really. Most companies are becoming technology companies as they move forward. So we have to know what each other does.

Cindy Schreiner - So I agree with what you both said. I think, you know, the thing that stood out for me in all of your comments is communication. Right. And, you know, the audience, the business and technology folks, I think I agree we have to speak the same language. But then when you talk about customers and and financial advisors, you know, if you tell them the proxy server is down, they're not going to care. Right. And they don't just want a fixed rate. So, you know, we've got demands from our clients and our, our and our financial advisor contingent and we need to make sure that we're communicating the technology and the business solution and the way that they can digest it. Right. So I think communication is key. I agree. We have to be bilingual. Scott I there's there's no question about it. But I also think that, you know, depending on the audience, we need to pay attention to those things.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. A very quick question from our audience on this issue about the C suite for which the CEOs and so forth, the C suite folks tend to understand the emerging technology less than the junior staff or what? Well, anyways, I don't know about the junior bit, but how do you educate upward? How do you educate as you both are? As you all have noted, sometimes in the C-suite, they don't know what a proxy server is or they don't know. They don't they don't have a clue as to how difficult a particular i.t process is or they don't understand that they're telling them to purchase a new product and they have no idea about the incumbent product or how difficult it is to implement the new product. So how does that education process start?

Peter Akwaboah - I think I think this question around emerging tech, it depends on what you define as an tech, because I would argue that some of the things understand emergency. I guess why? Because all the consultants own ideas about where they should go and invest more than actually we can do. So it depends on how we talk about emergent. I think that that the question you raised, if I look at it more broadly, foreign education really comes with staying in touch.

So, for example, I talked about the fact that we do a tech expo. When we do that, we make sure that the fees are there and they can touch and engage on that level and understand some of the emerging things coming up because it doesn't matter what you educate in the boardroom. We do not see in the things that we have second thoughts that we're running and this is what is causing maybe the industry to move faster When we come to our electronic trading, for example, you don't see that this is a matter how much you educate in a room. You're not going to see that. So there's a bit of an education which is really putting it back to the fraud to be able to see some of those. It is also important that we spend time with taking them to someone in San Francisco. So that was part of the thing is when the business stands up in something like tech, then we talk to them a lot. So there's a whole scene in Geneva around that. And the last one, it really comes to the business strategy and trying to send it back into the.

Eugene Grygo - Okay, great. In the meeting, for the sake of time, I'd like to get to our last question. What have firms already learned from digital transformation projects and how can they accelerate the pace of change?

Peter Akwaboah - So let me I'm going to answer this quickly around the person I would say is friends. I'm learning a lot. Guess why? Because during the pandemic, everybody realized that you can actually move quickly and to be able to reposition everybody to select from two years of discussion around what it would be possible to have 100% of your team working from home, We operate and still make record profits. We've all learned from that. So president says we don't waste that crisis and we use that to be able to energize itself. But what is interesting through that, what we've learned is the fact that there are a number of things that drive that digital transformation, which is culture and culture built over time.

You never know when it's working until you hit. You see real shocks in society, and then you realize that if you set up the firm in the right way relative to strategy and culture, then things like this will help you propel things in the right way and then you are able to respond to three times, four times the volumes in the home. So that's one. Second thing is the fact that culture becomes the long-term strategy, and you have to really have that view in place. And the last thing I would say in digital transformation going forward and I said it in this place is now is going to be strategic partnerships is not just about us doing it, but the way to speed up some of this is really being thoughtful around strategic partnerships that we put in place to drive this more.

Cindy Schreiner - Couldn't agree more.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. All right. Does anyone else want to chime in? We're kind of coming down to the wire here.

Mary Cecola - Yeah. No, I think the statement still stands, right. Necessity is the mother of invention. I love that. And that's what happens during COVID. It's an old saying, but it still works. And culture is crucial. And I think all the things we've been talking about, about better communication, aligning strategies, giving thoughtful responses with C-suite and technology leaders is a huge part of that culture. I also can't agree more about leveraging with partners, having partners look at things that may be more advanced or pulling in some of those technologies on things that you don't want to build yourself and having a tech forward SaaS platform.

I am new to Broadridge. I came in three months ago. I always worked in the client side before that and I had strong SAS strategies to help me accelerate. Even though back to something we talked about, I had to do my cloud transformation, I had to do my data transformation, although I could leverage outside to help me, and I also had to do my network upgrade. You get ready for it, pick the places you want to partner, and that can really help you accelerate the pace of change in your organization.

Eugene Grygo - Okay. Quickly, I want to just give people some quick takeaways. It's been noted that that firms can move much more quickly than they thought on digital transformation. And in some cases there's going to be some heavy lifting and they don't have a choice in the matter and they have to get things done there. There needs to be greater kind of creativity between it and business groups as AML, DLT are beginning to show real benefits. Overall, there needs to be a budget for a purpose. Don't forget that the younger generation can figure things out and they start with a digital answer first, most likely, and that ultimately the business side and the IT side have to combine their strategies so that so there's one. So it's been covered quite a bit in one hour. Thank you very much. And I think we have some closing words for Maureen.

Maureen Lowe - Yes. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you to Eugene for moderating today. There's a lot going on here behind the scenes. And to Mary, Peter, Scott and Cindy for participating today. We appreciate that. And thank you to Broadridge sponsoring. Without them, these sorts of conversations wouldn't be possible. Just a quick reminder to download the complete survey before you leave today and that you can listen to the recording of this webinar. We'll be sending out emails and thank all of the attendees for coming on and joining us today. We know that you have very packed schedules being pulled in lots of different directions, so we appreciate you taking the hour out of your day to spend with us and we hope to see you on another webinar soon. Thanks, everyone.