Hemanth Prabakaran, Executive Director, Head Data Analytics and Insights, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

What has been your path to power?

I started my career with one of the largest consulting organisations based in India, a dream company for many young graduates to this day. It was destiny that somehow landed me in the data and analytics team, but I am fortunate it happened as I was always intrigued about data and the opportunity to find patterns, gain insights and tell compelling data stories were fascinating to me. I also learned in this period the different processes to make sense of the data in a meaningful way while ensuring we are always mindful of the inherent blind spots.

Following which I worked in various data roles in the Australian banking sector and an industry-leading telco, as well as shipping companies in Europe. My global experience led me to Standard Chartered about five years ago, where I’ve been fortunate to build a world-class analytics team consistently driving client-centric analytics and insights in this digital age of banking.

What impact has the pandemic had on the role of data in your company/Organisation?

The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation that most organisations were on track to achieve. In the past three years, we have experienced a fundamental shifting how we work and play. For example, remote and hybrid teams have become the new norm. Fraud is on the rise as more of us are now online. Privacy continues to be a top priority for our clients and regulators alike.

At the bank, data and information have always been important to us. During this pandemic, we worked on many initiatives to support data-driven decision-making. One such initiative is MAYA, the bank’s first conversational digital assistant to search for answers and insights just like one would search for products in our preferred consumer app, making it easy for anyone in the bank to find answers to their own data questions.

Does data now have a seat at the table during strategic discussions? If not, what will it take to get it there?

About 1.7 megabytes a second of new information is being created for every human being on the planet according to some estimates and every organisation is taking notice. So, absolutely yes! Data is central to delivering the bank’s strategic priorities.

In fact, as we have transformed ourselves into a data and insights-led organisation, the bank has formally established a data and analytics community that is made up of representatives from our different businesses, functions and regions. This diverse group of people meets monthly collectively to drive a coherent data strategy to facilitate better collaboration in analytics and share best practices across the bank. Ultimately, this helps to drive data-driven decisions across the organisation.

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?

I am working with the team to scale our data and analytics capabilities while making it simple and intuitive for my colleagues across the Bank. We have three areas of focus:

Drive data democratisation at scale through an omni-platform experience for decision-makers across the bank. Currently, we have developed a conversational AI (MAYA) on top of our data platform to democratise data and insights to users in the bank that is capable of providing responses to everyone in simplified everyday speak. Our ambition is to deploy this into other areas of banking operations as the next step.
Deliver pervasive analytics capability to enable self-service, embed analytics into key functions and processes, and automate insights-generation for informed business decision-making, in real-time or eventually predictively.
Accelerate data monetisation and offering insights as a service. This will be delivered with help of predictive and prescriptive analytics supporting the bank to discover sustainable and scalable opportunities that diversify revenues while balancing risk.

Tell us what leadership means to you in the context of your role as a senior data leader.

For me, leadership is all about providing a signal in the noise just as data provides direction to our decisions. In that, I see my role as one who leads a data-driven culture at work and is responsible to:

Create an inspiring data vision for the future;
Motivate, inspire, and influence decision-makers with that data vision while growing their trust in us and our data capabilities;
Coach and enable a high-performing team that is able to deliver on the trust we need to grow in our decision-makers.

What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?

Short answer – staying close to data. I literally have a “live-in” relationship for the last 17 years. I can safely say now, after nearly two decades, the most efficient way to master anything data is by doing a lot of projects across skills.

How did you develop – and continue to develop – these skills or attributes?

I am life-long learner. My obsession with processing large data sets has brought a natural-born data analyst out of me which I shaped further by progressively acquiring new technical skills. While working through a large set of projects I focused on learning the concepts in-depth, their use cases, their implementation, and troubleshooting the issues. Being open, adapting and continuously improving whenever I failed was crucial. Even now, I believe I don’t have the answer to everything and often force myself out of comfort zone to up-skill to be a better data activist and trusted data advisor.

Is the data tech you have keeping pace with your goals and requirements? Are your providers leading or lagging behind your demands?

Transitioning modern data tech from paper to practice is a daunting challenge for regulated institutions like banks, but despite these challenges we at Standard Chartered continue to adopt emerging technologies like cloud, agile data lake, low-code , no-code, AI , RPA and block chain in our eco-system to serve our clients better. Our data strategy complemented by emerging data tech transforms our banking operations. It allows us to use data to unlock new revenue opportunities and business data to drive automation and efficiency.