全球最古老的银行如何迈向数字化未来

Leumi（以色列国民银行）是以色列最大也历史最悠久的银行，创立至今已近120年。但在推出移动银行Pepper以后，Leumi也成为了全以色列最年轻的银行。Leumi集团的总裁兼首席执行官莱克菲特·卢萨科-阿米诺克于上周二在伦敦举办的《财富》全球最具影响力的商界女性峰会上发表讲话时说道，2017年Leumi集团推出Pepper是为了吸引千禧一代，并帮助“当今的Leumi适应新世界”。

Leumi此举凸显了银行业面临的转型需求以及随之而来的挑战，具体来说便是历史悠久的传统行业如何跟上消费者的变化。举个例子，在过去几年内，到实体银行分行办理业务的客户已经大幅减少。

Leumi决定将Pepper打造成为一家初创企业，在公司内部进行孵化。“要让人们相信我们不是自断生路，而是在加固根基，这很有挑战性。”卢萨科-阿米诺克表示。她说，有人质疑说Leumi已经有了在线服务，为什么还要做移动银行Pepper。“两者之间差别很大。”她解释道。Leumi.com只是一层“数字皮肤，罩在非数字的身体外”；而另一方面，Pepper则是从头开始打造的新银行，建立在新的体系之上。她说道，使用Pepper可以比去实体银行办业务还个性化，因为人工智能技术可以根据客户的具体情况而提出贴心的建议。

巴克莱私人银行和海外服务公司的首席执行官卡伦·弗兰克表示，银行业的难处在于整个体系“古老、沉重而且根深蒂固”，却要快捷灵便地提供服务。她说，行业面临的挑战之一是，资本要用来满足监管要求，而不是打造新的服务和技术。 “大量资本都得支持旧的基础设施”，确保旧的软件仍可运行，确保在监管机构提出要求时，可以提取旧数据。

弗兰克和卢萨科-阿米诺克都指出，改变公司文化是最大的障碍之一。弗兰克说，说服人们不必每个业务都在内部做的理念就是“巨大的文化变革”，尤其是安全等功能。（财富中文网）

译者：艾伦

审校：夏林

At nearly 120 years old, Leumi is the largest and oldest bank in Israel. But thanks to the launch of its mobile-only bank, Pepper, it’s also the country’s youngest bank. Leumi launched Pepper in 2017 to appeal to millennials and to help “adapt incumbent Leumi to the new world,” said Leumi Group President and CEO Rakefet Russak-Aminoach, speaking at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women International Summit in London on last Tuesday.

The move by Leumi is indicative of the type of transformation the banking industry is trying to undergo and the challenges that come with it: a legacy sector with a deep history adapting to a changing consumer. For example, the use of physical bank branches has declined significantly over the last few years.

Leumi decided to build Pepper as a startup, incubating it from within. “It was challenging to convince people that we were not cutting the tree we’re sitting on, rather that we’re reinforcing the tree,” Russak-Aminoach said. She said that people questioned why the company needed Pepper when it had an online version of Leumi. “There’s a huge difference between the two,” she explained. Leumi.com is a “digital skin over a non-digital body.” Pepper, on the other hand, is a new bank started from scratch and built on new systems. She said that using Pepper is even more personalized than going into a bank because, thanks to artificial intelligence, Pepper can offer tips that are very specific to a particular customer.

Karen Frank, CEO of the Private Bank and Overseas Services at Barclays, says the challenge for the sector is taking “something that is old and heavy and established” and doing something nimble and quick. She said one of the challenges for the industry is that it has to use its capital to answer regulatory demands rather than building new services and technology. A “relatively large part of it has to be supporting old infrastructure” and making sure old software still works so they can pull old data up if regulators ask for it.

Both Frank and Russak-Aminoach pointed to changing company culture as one of the biggest hurdles. Frank said convincing people that they don’t have to build everything in house is a “massive cultural change,” especially when it comes to functions like security.