The financial services industry is investing heavily in driving innovation, not only in Australia, but across SouthEast Asia too. To gain a better understanding of the landscape, I reached out to financial services innovation champions across the region to gather their insights on how they are building a culture of innovation.

I’ve distilled their answers into this blog post. Enjoy!

Poppy Rouse

Innovation Manager, Social Impact

Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Sydney, Australia

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1. When it comes to innovation, which company/person inspires you the most? Why?

Netflix - they have taken the time to truly understand their customers and deliver tailored solutions accordingly.

2. What is one aspect of your corporate culture that supports innovation and how?

We're focusing on building an innovation mindset using mindfulness and growth mindset tools to build resilience, opening people to constant learning and failure.

3. What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you have encountered in your career so far? How did or are you overcoming it?

When organisations don't have full commitment from C-Suite, along with a clear strategy and pathways for innovation. Without these you can teach people all the tools but they won't feel comfortable using them.

4. With emerging technologies and digital disruption, what do you view as the #1 skill-set required to thrive in this new age?

Curiosity, openness to learning, empathy and relationship building.

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Dan Taylor

General Manager, Innovation

TAL

Sydney, Australia

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1. When it comes to innovation, which company/person inspires you the most? Why?

As innovators, we need constant new stimulus from new sources, so rather than just looking to the classic entrepreneurial figureheads and 'sages' like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, I think it's important to keep looking to new sources of inspiration, new leaders, new start-ups, so there is no single answer, rather a new one every week!

2. What is one aspect of your corporate culture that supports innovation and how?

We're really proud of how our culture at TAL embraces innovation. A great example of this is our annual innovation challenge, which delivered 2 new launches to market last year including TAL SpotChecker and had over 40% employee participation this year to come up with 2 more that we’re now building towards pilot. We achieve such success by applying a few key principles:

• Strategic Focus: We set the theme around a key strategic challenge to ensure that there will be real buy-in to ideas

• Senior Sponsorship: We get our top leaders involved as sponsors and judges for the ideas as they progress

• Make it real: By creating a prize pot to fund the winning idea(s) into pilot, there is a belief that our challenge leads to real products in market rather than just some ‘innovation theatre’

• Energize the company: We bring in designers, behavioural scientists and artists in order to inspire, facilitate, support and engage all our employees

3. What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you have encountered in your career so far? How did or are you overcoming it?

One of the biggest challenges is staying true to an idea. Corporates often have great ideas and have the assets and resources to give them real impact, but then the idea gets watered down and ultimately fails as stakeholders in the business look to minimise impact on their area of the business – so for example a contact centre leader may not want to trial a new product for fear that it increases call times or training needs of the team. I’ve seen lots of ways of addressing this – but you’ll need to read my book to get them!

4. With emerging technologies and digital disruption, what do you view as the #1 skill-set required to thrive in this new age?

I’ve seen vast changes in technology over the past 20 years, and the one thing that has always driven success has been a focus on the customer and this is as true today as ever. It can be easy to be seduced by new technologies and disruptive business models, but it’s the ones that solve a genuine customer challenge in practical ways that have the real potential. That’s why we at TAL are really interested in Artificial Intelligence at the moment as I think it creates real potential to step-change the customer experience in Life Insurance.

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Philipp Diekhoner

Asia Innovation Fellow

Manulife

Singapore

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1. When it comes to innovation, which company/person inspires you the most? Why?

Dieter Rams who impressively shows that the most valuable propositions retain their appeal over time if you stick to a few key principles of creation.

2. What is one aspect of your corporate culture that supports innovation and how?

Hiring externally on the one hand and a certain curiosity towards external developments with impact on us.

3. What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you have encountered in your career so far? How did or are you overcoming it?

Treating leadership as a privilege instead of a skill, lack of individual upside when starting innovation efforts, lack of trust in the individual to get their job done whichever way they know best.

4. With emerging technologies and digital disruption, what do you view as the #1 skill-set required to thrive in this new age?

Understanding what has value to people and the ability to trust those colleagues and customers' best interests.

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Emma McDonald

Strategic Programs Director

Commonwealth Bank

Sydney, Australia

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1. When it comes to innovation, which company/person inspires you the most? Why?

It’s the people who are curious who inspire me. The people who ask is this the best way? Can we do this differently to make it better?

2. What is one aspect of your corporate culture that supports innovation and how?

The most important mindset any corporate in any division needs to have is a willingness to be open to new ideas. It doesn’t mean you need to do everything but you at least need to be open to look.

3. What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you have encountered in your career so far? How did or are you overcoming it?

Inability to see, accept or work with change. I worked in digital media in the very very early days. A big obstacle was the mindset that the way consumers accessed content could be different.

4. With emerging technologies and digital disruption, what do you view as the #1 skill-set required to thrive in this new age?

A curiosity to see the world differently.

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Carina Parisella

Senior Manager Strategic Engagement, Digital Transformation & Performance

ANZ

Melbourne, Australia

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1. When it comes to innovation, which company/person inspires you the most? Why?

There are lots of companies that I read about and visit who inspire me on a daily basis. Top of mind is Thankyou Group – a social enterprise that donates profits to fund safe water, food, hygiene and sanitation services around the world. Built into the business is a smart technology tracking tool that helps consumers track their personal impact around the globe (creating the stickiness!). It is their origin story that impresses me most – a group of young uni students, with no funding or experience in retail/tech, decides to change the world. Go ahead and Google their story about how they got the attention of Australia’s biggest retailers through their famous Coles & Woolies campaign (enough said!).

2. What is one aspect of your corporate culture that supports innovation and how?

We’re doing a lot of work on this right now – from building our new ways of working and agile practices to establishing innovation functions to build capability across the organisation. One of the things I am very proud of is our partnership with SheStarts – the Technology accelerator for female-led startups which is changing the face of the innovation economy. Our involvement in SheStarts allows us to work closely with startups to identify opportunities for collaboration and investment while supporting them to start, run and grow their businesses. Involving our people in SheStarts also provides a tangible opportunity to expose ANZ to ‘innovation in action’, reflecting our purpose to help people and communities thrive and solve problems for our customers.

3. What is the biggest barrier to corporate innovation you have encountered in your career so far? How did or are you overcoming it?

I think there's a bunch of barriers, this is a really complex problem and opportunity. The most important is the mindset - from the very top and to all levels of the organisation. Does the organisation have an acceptance and readiness for change? Only then can you start to systematically design for innovation, both within your company culture and capability, but also your product offering. Then there's risk avoidance, siloing, lack of integration, technology inhibitors, tools and processes etc. Once you have the mindset to change, you can start proactively building on innovation capabilities - and there's a stack of quick wins that will make a huge difference - do your people have the right tools and processes in place to enable innovation?

4. With emerging technologies and digital disruption, what do you view as the #1 skill-set required to thrive in this new age?

Technology is rapidly changing the way we work and the roles we do. So we need people who can think both creatively and critically to solve problems. Technology is driving a lot of what we do, so STEM skills are going to be critical in the new age. Building diverse teams that better reflect our communities is also incredibly important to succeed and tailor customer solutions for rapidly-changing needs.

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