AI Magazine Issue 9 2018

Acquisition International - Issue 9 2018 7 Oliver Rajic: Leading A Fintech Revolution “Central to any leadership should be that knowledge in any field has a beginning, but no end. APIs, micro- services, blockchain, distributed ledger, AI, BI; the list of relevant fintech solutions, and the niche vendors populating them, is expanding at an exponential rate. Banks and PSPs can no longer afford to ignore this new Fintech landscape: just like an orchestra, any instrument, no matter how small its role, will impact the symphony if it’s not playing correctly, or worse if it’s not included at all. “As such, Alpha’s DNA is more than just attaining and maintaining our best-in-class knowledge within each of these fields, but also continuously probing and testing of how we and our constituency can benefit from them. Every single one of our team-members believes in the ethos that power is attained by sharing knowledge, and not by hoarding it.” Building upon its current success, overall the future looks bright for both Alpha and Oliver, as he is proud to conclude. “Ultimately, at Alpha our goal is to become the industry’s digital commerce innovation Hub. We will achieve this by enabling banks to access, test and signup new solutions quickly, cost-effectively and virtually risk-free, while helping innovative vendors to expose their solution seamlessly, overnight. “After all, just think of the impact the App Store had on productivity, innovation and entrepreneurialism by eliminating friction tied to delays in finding as well as accessing a solution versus enjoying instant exposure and access. It is our ambition to become Fintech’s industrial strength ‘App Store’ with the added benefits of solution interoperability, empowering the user with unprecedented product design possibilities and introducing a creative freedom that was unattainable before. The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. “If you always do what you always did, you will get what you always got. Hence, we invite any Bank or MSP fed up with being tied to their legacy vendors, restrictive supplier approval processes, empty promises of internal magical fixes that for some inexplicable reason haven’t been implemented yet, to reach out to us and jointly work on overthrowing status quo and start the innovation journey today with a head-start.”