From compliance to personalisation: Advancing banking & financial services experience

Experts explored how banks and financial services can deliver seamless, compliant, and personalised customer experiences.

As Asia’s financial institutions accelerate their digital transformation, many continue to grapple with challenges in modernising legacy infrastructure, particularly in compliance, auditability, data governance, and operational complexity.

To explore how financial institutions can overcome these challenges, Asian Banking & Finance, in partnership with Smart Communications, hosted the executive roundtable “From Compliance to Personalisation: Advancing Banking & Financial Services Experience” on 26 February 2026 at The Fullerton Bay Hotel. The session brought together industry leaders in banking and financial services to examine how governance, ecosystem convergence, and AI accountability can drive customer excellence.

The discussion was led by Norman Lim, Enterprise Account Director, Asia at Smart Communications, and hosted and moderated by Simon Hyett, Contributing Editor at Asian Banking & Finance.

Building on the Smart Communications 2026 Trends Report, the conversation explored how banks and financial services organisations can leverage Smart Communications to deliver seamless, compliant, and personalised experiences, integrating communication creation, workflow orchestration, and archiving whilst maintaining regulatory adherence.

Navigating compliance and operations

The increasing regulatory and operational pressures confronting financial institutions are shaping how they adopt AI-driven communications. Norman highlighted that whilst AI can enhance communications and customer experience, trust, compliance and human oversight remain critical: “Hence we believe in the 'human-in-the-loop', where workflows with AI can be validated with human oversight.”

He also noted emerging AI regulations across Asia and Europe, emphasising the need for transparency and accountability: “When we talk about convergence of all these platforms, one key thing is we want to maintain auditability and the capability to know where the content came from.”

Beyond regulatory considerations, industry leaders discussed the practical realities of managing customer communications across fragmented systems. Verifying customer authenticity remains a persistent challenge, particularly as interactions increasingly shift across digital channels. Some organisations still rely heavily on manual CRM inputs, where account or sales teams record customer interactions at the end of the day, creating operational inefficiencies and potential compliance gaps.

The cost implications were also underscored. As one delegate observed, “The cost of compliance is high, but the cost of non-compliance is higher.” Leaders agreed that whilst scaling operations and pursuing growth targets, institutions must remain mindful of accumulated tech debt. “And whilst you scale, whilst you grow, and whilst we are chasing the numbers, we always have to remember that there is always a tech debt,” one participant noted.

To address these issues, the discussion turned to governance and performance measurement. Participants emphasised the importance of moving beyond static scorecards towards actionable, trackable KPIs that align different teams. “I think we do need to transform from this kind of score into more actionable or tractable KPIs across different teams,” a delegate shared. Establishing structured governance processes was seen as equally critical to ensure initiatives are executed towards a common objective, whilst empowering employees across the organisation to act in the company’s best interest.

Modernisation for better service

The broader transformation journey also emerged as a key theme. Leaders reflected on the need to shift from a product-centric mindset to a customer-centric approach, harnessing AI and technology not as standalone tools, but as enablers of better engagement and service delivery.

An industry leader noted, "I think technology and AI are here to stay, and it is for us to harness the power of that technology to be able to serve our customers better."

Norman concluded with a strong focus on customer experience. From the customer’s perspective, the only boundary that exists is the interface with the organisation; legacy systems, regulatory complexity, and AI readiness are invisible to them.

As expectations continue to rise, organisations cannot allow internal constraints to define the experience. Delivering a seamless, real-time, high-quality customer experience is achievable — and increasingly non-negotiable.

“At Smart Communications, we consistently reinforce that customer communications are not a supporting function, but a strategic priority for every organisation,” he affirmed.

Explore the full report to see how these insights can drive seamless, compliant, and customer-centric outcomes across your organisation.