Navigating the Future: Insights from ING’s CTO on Scalable Technology and Data-Driven Banking

Joining us once again from Money 2020 in Europe is our founder and CEO Vince Molinari.

Take a look.

Hi, I'm joined by Danielle Tella, who is the chief technology officer of ING.

Danielle, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Thank you for hosting me today.

We're delighted to be here at Money 2020, and then you can kick it off and tell us a little bit about what you do as CTO of ING, yeah.

Well, in the extreme essence, if uh something the NG has a chip or a line of code inside, it's my responsibility.

So as a, as a group CTO I oversee about 20,000 engineers, uh, developing software, operating software, controlling cybersecurity, and everything around the strategy and architecture.

Everything it takes.

For a digital bank to fulfill the promise to our 40 million clients.

Well, 200,000 developers, 40 million, 20,000, 2,020,000 massive undertaking, but I guess that goes right to the scalable technology that you absolutely look, um, at our scale, um, technology needs to be scalable, meaning needs to, to demonstrate.

That by simplifying complexity and converging on common solutions, we can get more growth for less cost, right?

It's not just efficiency, it's much more because uh with scalable tech we can also demonstrate time to market, acceleration of service delivery.

We can help our banks be compliant to regulation without having every time to overinvest or to invest because they just consume a global service.

So that's the value of scalable tech, massive, massive value.

Uh, Daniel, you know, we all talk about data and the importance of data when we talk about ING as being a data driven bank, what does that actually mean?

Yeah, um, there is a bit the hidden secret behind, uh, behind banking in general because we live in, uh, it's an information industry essentially we're in the business of trust and clients are trusting us.

Giving us the most delicate data which is about, uh, about their wealth and their uh their uh financial lives.

Um, data has always been core of the element.

Now, what is happening with GAI and with the IMO in general is that data becomes fuel to the way we serve our clients and to the way we deliver value to our clients.

And um data is um Um, has to be actively managed, um, also in technology terms, meaning convergence of data leaks if you want to use, uh, you know, N minus one word or description, um, but also cleanliness on where data is coming from and where this is heading.

So data, uh, data, uh, uh, lineage, uh, or velocity of data, how clear and aggregated.

So data is, is the hidden engine behind the way a bank is functioning.

So that this goes back to the beginning of scalable.

Technology back to you again whether it's agentic AI or AI into that process to have that efficiency around the data and how you make your decisions as the bank and and benefit the customer absolutely and uh you know AI is one characteristic which is you remember this that saying that says, well, uh, garbage in garbage out with AI is garbaging disaster out right? so models really require clean access to clean data and consistent data, context data, and also training necessarily.

And that is a precondition to really be able to sustainably operate uh a GAI infrastructure.

Uh GAI also software is a bit different from traditional software in the sense that we are used to, you buy a piece of software, you deploy a piece of software is there.

It works for uh against the specifications forever until you decommission it essentially.

AI has a life afterwards.

Models evolve with time, so that they require oversight, they require monitoring, they require active management of what they are.

And all of this requires cleanness of data below.

I really like that notion of thinking about it as as active management because so much of it we think about AI doing the job and getting smarter, but you really have that intervention where you need to be active in the management.

The funny thing is probably is where AI is really similar to humans because they all require an active, uh, intervention on the context to ensure that the result is always there.

Talk to me a little bit about cloud strategy.

We, we all have come to learn of what cloud strategy is, but you implement a hybrid strategy for the cloud.

Yeah.

Look, it all starts with the definition of what cloud is, and cloud has been, uh, explained and probably also sold as a sourcing strategy.

It's either in your data center or in my cloud.

Cloud is not sourcing, cloud is a, uh, especially on the infrastructure side, infrastructure code is a precondition to design, develop and deploy software in a completely different way.

Right.

So cloud architectures are powerful, not because the cloud itself, but because the way you can industrialize your software production uh stream.

That is a huge change that this is growing.

At ING we designed and we deployed our own private cloud, but we also see the value in integrating it with hybrid cloud, so we, we.

External clouds, depending on the type of functionalities and services more inside or more outside.

So that's the strategy that we are taking, very successful so far, um, because it gives us the good balance between speed of adoption of innovative solutions and sustainability and long term base load of what we have in data centers.

Is that a core element of your outstanding operations and, and the op models that you have?

How, how does that?

Yeah, it is, it is because, um, you know, tech is, uh, is a reputation business at the end of the day, right?

If you're, if the way you operate your production is spotty, you don't get a right to contribute or anything above, right, because fix your things first and then come talk about bigger things.

Uh, so operations has to be completely under control and that's if I think today we just updated the tech strategy, that's the underlying layer for everything above.

So the strategist says, well, first operate cleanly, then ensure control, which in an agile world like the one we are, is a, is a very delicate element, right?

It's not bureaucratic control, but it's still a balance between freedom and control, right?

That's the second big element.

The third one is transformed, scalable tech is a big thing.

And then on top of that is innovate, right?

It develop is everything that business needs and wants to have to really make a difference in client value, right?

So that's, that's the layers of the strategy.

Now, how cloud plays a role in that operates stability, not by itself. cloud per se can be also very unstable depending on what software you put to it and how you operate.

The real value here is what we call platform engineering.

So the ability of um designing a developer environment that allows us to automate.

And standardize that conveyor belt from an idea to production.

Cloud is a precondition for this, and as a consequence, I get more stable production, more control on changes, more quality and higher speed.

Well, one takeaway from me in the conversation, Danielle, I, I, I feel like I'm almost talking to a technology company, uh, versus a bank and I think that's kind of core to the culture that you've developed.

So the ING is a IG was a neobank before neo banking was a thing, right?

Uh, and, and you see that in the way we discuss about technology across organizations.

Our commercial colleagues, they have a view of technology is very, very mature.

They are technologies themselves in the sense that they're not thinking tools.

They think in client value.

Tools are just an instrument to deliver client value, and they know what the implications of just throwing a tool in the pond, uh, can have, you know, negative implications, especially.

So that level of maturity is a testament to the legacy of the bank as a first digital bank in Europe.

Daniel, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure having you with us phenomenal.