<article><a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/ocbc" target="_blank">OCBC Bank</a> has established a new <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/fintech" target="_blank">financial technology (fintech)</a> unit and co-working space called ‘<a href="http://www.theopenvaultatocbc.com" target="_blank">The Open Vault at OCBC</a>’ .</article>

<a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/ocbc" target="_blank">OCBC Bank</a> has established a new <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/fintech" target="_blank">financial technology (fintech)</a> unit and co-working space called ‘<a href="http://www.theopenvaultatocbc.com" target="_blank">The Open Vault at OCBC</a>’ .
This move is expected to drive the ideation, prototyping and deployment of new technologies, innovative commercial business models and solutions, which will help bring relevant financial products and services to the market and further enhance the banking processes.
Led by <a style="color: #000080" href="https://sg.linkedin.com/in/pranav-seth-49975a" target="_blank">Pranav Seth</a>, OCBC Bank’s head of e-business and business transformation, The Open Vault  will help connect the bank with external innovation and ideas, and become a fintech node of the startup ecosystem.
According to a press release, OCBC is exploring solutions in wealth management, credit &amp; financing, insurance, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI). As part of the launch, The Open Vault has partnered exclusively with <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/tag/nest/" target="_blank">NEST</a>, a global investment and startup incubation firm, to attract entrepreneurs to their inaugural accelerator programme, which launches in April 2016.
The programme will provide selected startup firms, access to business mentorship, technical expertise from OCBC Bank and dedicated guidance from NEST experts and partners.
Seth commented: “We are investing heavily in the areas of mobile, data and analytics, bio-metrics and security to provide superior customer-centric solutions. We actively scan for technologies and innovations globally that can help us achieve our vision of providing innovative, useful and efficient financial services to our customers.&#8221;
Seth added, &#8220;At The Open Vault at OCBC, we seek to experiment with a larger set of new technologies, business models and applications in a controlled environment to find tangible, value-added services that our customers can benefit from.”
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<h3>Development in context</h3>
The Open Vault, termed a &#8216;co-innovation&#8217; space by OCBC Bank, it is housed in a 2400 square feet of space on New Bridge Roa that will enable fintech entrepreneurs and their ventures connect to and collaborate with in-house OCBC Bank specialists – programmers, application developers, credit risk management specialists, data analytics experts, wealth management advisors and legal advisors &#8211; who possess extensive domain and industry knowledge.
Additionally, fintech startups will be able to employ OCBC Bank’s data sandbox and application programme interfaces (APIs) to experiment with and validate their products and services. This aligns with a longer term strategy to adjust to the growing disruption impacting financial services, it also builds a potential M&amp;A and talent pipeline for the bank.
This development reflects a recognition by OCBC of how non-financial players are using technology to offer solutions and services mirroring those of traditional financial institutions (FIs), with companies like Apple, Google and Alibaba exploring the payments space with digital wallets and payment services.
Additionally, the rise of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending has also expanded the scope of financing solutions, allowing investors and firms to target segments like SME lending and convertible notes via crowdfunding platforms.
This wave of innovation has led to a degree of disintermediation, threatening the traditional business segments of banks like OCBC. This move represents a recognition by OCBC of the need to evolve its business model, amidst a wave of digitisation and the disruption of traditional banking services.
OCBC can leverage on its size and networks, while building a pipeline for M&amp;A activity, while being able to expose their in-house staff to the perspectives and insights of external entrepreneurs.  are using technology much more intensely to enhance their product offerings and service delivery. It is also an extension of its <a style="color: #000080" href="https://www.ocbc.com/assets/pdf/Annual%20reports/2011/OCBC-2011-New-Horizons-III.pdf" target="_blank">New Horizons III strategy</a>, its five-year strategy for the 2011-2015 period.
This strategy is meant to sustain their position in the market as one of the leading consumer and corporate banks in the combined Singapore-Malaysia market and also represents a its objective of sustaining 15 per cent revenue contribution from new products annually. Its focus in the accelerator also reflects OCBC&#8217;s traditional focus on wealth management, credit cards and unsecured lending.
The stated focus on AI is a reflection of machine learning. <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/ravi-menon" target="_blank">Ravi Menon</a>, the managing director of the MAS, in his keynote address at the Global Technology Law Conference in June 2015, observed that traditional computing machines and algorithms were programmed for conducting specific tasks in response to defined circumstances.
However, machine learning has enabled the emergence of &#8220;cognitive machines which are designed to learn from the data that they hold and be able to, in a sense, programme themselves to perform new tasks&#8221;, enabling the rise of limited artificial intelligence that can continuously adapt to new data and feedback.
Menon noted that  equity, commodity, and FX markets were seeing traders employ self-learning algorithms that analysed historical data, predicted price movements and made trading decisions, as well as refining and optimising their trading strategies in response to new evidence and market reactions. He also noted their use in constructing models for consumer risk credit.
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<h3>International expansion &amp; competition</h3>
Commenting on the launch, <a style="color: #000080" href="https://sg.linkedin.com/in/samueltsien" target="_blank">Samuel Tsien</a>, Group CEO of OCBC&#8217;s, said, “I am excited about the launch of The Open Vault at OCBC, a stand-alone Fintech unit that will harness ideas from the fast-evolving global arena of financial technology for the convenience of our customers and employees. Digital innovation is not new to us.&#8221;
Tsien cited OCBC One Touch as an example of the adoption of digital solutions by the bank, such as the use of fingerprint sensors in smart devices. Tsien added. &#8220;The Open Vault at OCBC has great potential. I see it helping us to come up with digital solutions that will make banking with OCBC even simpler, faster and more secure, our internal banking processes more efficient, and our banking systems even more robust.”
According to the bank, the launch of the fintech unit, which will also serve as an innovation lab, is aligned with <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/smart-nation" target="_blank">Smart Nation</a> initiative and <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/MAS" target="_blank">Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS)</a> vision to create a <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.mas.gov.sg/news-and-publications/speeches-and-monetary-policy-statements/speeches/2015/a-smart-financial-centre.aspx" target="_blank">Smart Financial Centre</a> in Singapore. 
This move comes amidst an increasingly competitive fintech space, as DBS has been committing several resources aimed at growing its innovation capacity. In a <a style="color: #000080" href="http://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/building-engines-innovation-within-dbsneal-cross-3587/" target="_blank">March 2015 interview</a> with DEALSTREETASIA, <a style="color: #000080" href="http://dealstreetasia.com/tag/neal-cross" target="_blank">Neal Cross</a>, the chief innovation office of DBS Bank, shared that it has reinvented internal training and development processes.
Cross had disclosed:&#8221;We train them on lean startup methods and human centred design. We also get them to pitch to executives from within the bank, with rewards granted to startups as compensation. The startups get exposed to banking culture, with DBS staff gaining cultural exchange on how startups innovate and execute towards a prototype.&#8221;
With a footprint ad business operations in major emerging markets like Indonesia and Vietnam, where there are significant opportunities to build services catering to the underbanked and unbanked segments of the, OCBC is looking at new ways to drive revenue growth and diversity its service offerings, much like its fellow competitors in Singapore and the wider region.
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OCBC Bank has established a new financial technology (fintech) unit and co-working space called ‘The Open Vault at OCBC’ .

Singapore: OCBC -NEST partner to launch fintech accelerator unit

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