For February's Member Spotlight we are featuring @Jane Hiscock, President and Founder of Farland Group, a consulting firm that helps companies elevate their B2B relationships with C-level customers. Recently, Jane sat down with me to discuss which future technology she thinks is most interesting, how storytelling can help with regulatory compliance, and...Swedish Fish candy!
1. To start, please tell me about your background.
I’m a bit of a different FS Cloud Community member because my background is in marketing. Earlier in my career, I was the VP of Global Marketing for Barra (now MSCI) a risk modelling company. I spent a lot of time with Chief Risk Officers and Chief Investment Officers trying to understand what they were looking for in risk management tools.
I learned that understanding the customer need (versus engineering interests) was critical to building products that landed in the market. I started Farland Group to help our clients (like IBM) listen to and understand the trends in the marketplace and how to build out solutions to meet the market need.
2. What new IT technology are you most excited about for 2025 and why?
For sure AI is upending our ways of working and bringing incredible opportunities on the horizon as well as risks to manage. The low hanging fruit opportunities that banks are experiencing are around efficiency plays but the bigger areas will be in financial modelling and using AI to drive innovation in customer service, fraud detection, loan and credit analysis, etc.
But the most interesting future technology is Quantum – while it is challenging to fully get our arms around practical applications for it, the applications in banking and financial services are emerging. We know from Council sessions that many of our CISO leaders are evaluating and testing out Quantum Safe to get ahead of the security threats and, we have leaders like HSBC using Quantum for exploratory work. 2025 will open up more opportunities in Quantum and its consumption will be through clouds like IBM Cloud.
3. What cloud computing advice would you give to financial institutions for 2025?
The advantages of cloud are clear to most of the people in this community, the challenge is how to adopt it broadly while adhering to regulatory requirements. We need to continue to tell each other our success stories and the advantages we experience from our use of cloud. Through that storytelling, we will help each other to address the regulatory and risk requirements while supporting the needs of business users to move faster and in more innovative ways.
4. Why was it important to you to be part of the Financial Services Cloud Council and Community?
I think most of the successes we have in our personal and professional lives come from learning and listening to others. This Community and the Council allow us to understand what others are doing to build successes and identify challenges. In addition to peer sharing, the Council is a way to advance our thinking about important industry trends and regulatory shifts, which we all need to stay ahead of in our day-to-day work with our organizations and customers.
5. If a C-suite exec at a financial institution is considering joining the IBM Financial Services Cloud Council, what would you tell them?
Join! If you are looking for a group of like-minded and experienced industry peers who are open to helping you be successful, this is your place.
6. Okay Jane now it is time for our Lightning Round (fun) questions, are you ready?
Absolutely!
If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower and why?
Teleportation. I love to travel and visit different cultures and people. If I could be in a different part of the world on a weekly or monthly basis taking in new foods and experiences and learning new cultures, I would do that.
Last podcast you listened to?
Pivot for tech news; and Huberman Lab for some fitness science.
Favorite ice cream?
Sadly, I’m allergic to milk and have never had ice cream in my life. I do love a good wine gum for those outside of the US or Swedish Fish for those inside the US.
Current favorite app?
Peloton app for my morning fitness.
Book you are reading?
2 books on the go: James by Percival Everett (fiction) and Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish (non-fiction).
Your go-to karaoke song?
I try to hit the back of any karaoke room, but if I must, I think a good repetitive ABBA song is likely safe (ish).
Finally, Jane if people want to connect with you on social media, where can they find you?
http://linkedin.com/in/janehiscock/
Many thanks to Jane Hisock for taking time to talk with us. If you're interested in more content like this, join the Financial Services Cloud Council and Forum online
community at http://ibm.biz/fsccandf
#Spotlight, #financial-services, #Banking, #Governance,RiskandCompliance