Interview with Contovista’s new Head of Unit: Karsten Kaiser

Karsten Kaiser is the new Unit Head at Contovista, Switzerland’s leading FinTech in data-driven banking. He takes over Olivier Brin’s position, who guided Contovista with a steady hand for six years, including through our transition period in 2022 (thank you for that, dear Olivier!).

Karsten has extensive knowledge and experience in the banking industry as well as in the global and Swiss FinTech markets. Karsten has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and Information Science from the University of Mannheim. During his professional career, he has held various positions as consultant, manager, and senior executive at Accenture, Vontobel, UBS and Credit-Suisse, both in Zurich and across the globe. In 2018, he assumed overall responsibility for Pega Systems as Global Account Manager for consulting and sales covering the entire product range relating to AI-driven 1:1 customer interactions and intelligent automation for banks in Switzerland and worldwide.

Why Contovista and what is our mission? Well, with our integrated concept “understand. coach. enable”, what Contovista stands for is crystal clear. Having developed a state-of-the-art methodology, we seek to understand the challenges of banks and the needs of their customers while simultaneously providing relevance and generating value add.

We’re committed to customer centricity and discover the issues that concern our customers and what they expect from us through direct customer discussions and on-site co-creation. The lively exchange of ideas allows us to constantly check the relevance of our technology and set the right priorities in order to launch solutions such as digital market development via Product Recommendations and the Subscription Overview.

Let me give you two practical examples. First, multibanking for retail customers will be available to our customer banks as early as January. This is not only good for end customers; our customers are also positioning themselves as pioneers, as they are the first on the market to be able to offer this service together with us.
What’s more, we’re investing heavily in the further development of our Carbon Footprint Manager, where our customers can also look forward to additional interesting features. This is doubly rewarding for banks working with Contovista. First, they can strengthen existing customer relationships by expanding their range of sustainability offerings. Second, they boost customer engagement through exciting touchpoints and increase the chance of becoming their customer’s main go-to bank.

Where do we want to go? Our experience, professionalism and agility are and will remain the core pillars of our market position in Switzerland. To achieve this, we will focus even more on SaaS solutions that enable all companies to easily integrate our solutions into their IT landscape and offer individual advisory both in online and offline customer interactions.

Our strategy is to focus on topics such as “Next best action” and “Next best offer” in marketing and customer management, enabling us to offer customised solutions in real time during customer interactions. In addition, we’re working towards automation to facilitate the implementation of our solution and to drive efficiency in relationship management. To this end, we are continuously expanding our Enrichment Engine and strengthening machine learning within our AI-driven solutions.

What do our customers get out of it? With this approach, banks can sustainably improve their internal processes and offer end customers a surprisingly personalised, compelling experience in banking, financing, investment, wealth planning, and lifecycle management. My ambition is to ensure that all banks benefit from our solutions so that they can provide their customers with an individualised customer experience.

Where do I start? Data-driven banking is one of the most efficient ways to use digitalisation to implement simple, intuitive everyday banking for customers and employees. Digital account data can be transformed into added value, enabling banks to detect patterns and use them to resurrect certain individuals. In this way, banks can provide their customers with the maximum amount of personalisation, and employees benefit from optimised processes, qualified leads, and greater personalisation in their day-to-day work.

Data-driven banking at Contovista is so multifaceted and supports so many areas. From consulting and sales to tools and features for customers (see carbon footprint in the PFM, multibanking in BFM and PFM, above-average user experience, greater transparency and clarity and, as a result, a better understanding of your own finances) to success analytics and data-driven product development.

Contovista has developed a comprehensive range of solutions and services in this area, enabling banks to gain rapid access to new trends and deploy affordable, customised solutions.
The additional benefit that Contovista offers customers is that we can quickly adapt and implement our solutions in the customer environment. Thanks to our shared learning approach to processing and refining anonymised transaction data, our partner banks benefit from quality improvements in the analysis and enrichment of payment data. Banks gain competitive advantages as well as valuable insights from the market. In the last ten years, we have been able to make a significant contribution to the status quo and intend to continue driving it forward in the decades to come.

Finnova is a professional provider of core banking systems and has been successfully established in the market for decades. Contovista has also established itself as a leader in data-driven banking in Switzerland over the last few years. Lots of banks have placed their trust in our innovative products.

Our customers also rely on the fact that they can make use of this Contovista core functionality regardless of which core banking system they want to use now or in the future, or which specialised software they use.

By merging the business units into one unit that develops data-driven banking solutions, Finnova has bundled AI expertise in Contovista and is sending out a strong message about its expertise in AI & UX-optimised solutions for banks and their customers.

In principle, Contovista is now doubly committed to its customer goals and core topics. The Finnova Analytical Framework (FAF) and Contovista’s solutions form the basis for data-driven banking for the benefit of our customers and the further development of our AI competencies.

Thank you for your time, Karsten!