Anish Kumar Jain a technologist with nearly 20 years in the banking and financial services industry with leading firms. He holds a degree in electronics and engineering in computer science from Walchand Institute of Technology and has attained several technical certifications like AWS Solutions Architect AWS Certified Developer Certified System Architect - PEGA 7.1 and Sun Certified Java Professional. He has excellent knowledge of Cloud service programming with Java GoLang and Python J2EE Unix. Anish has had a tumultuous and exciting career in technology holding senior roles in the financial services industry in Europe and the US leading many technology transformations and innovations in credit card systems and banking applications and insurance platforms.  Q1: What inspired you in focusing on tech innovation in fintech specifically banking and insurance?   BANKING TECHNOLOGY HAS SINCE INTRIGUED ME BECAUSE I HAD INTERESTS IN BUILDING SCALABLE RELIABLE SYSTEMS THAT COULD BEAT UP COMPLEX CURRENCY TRANSACTIONS. IVE ALWAYS FOUND ALSO BANKING AND INSURANCE INTERESTING SO INTRICATE BECAUSE OF THE SPECIAL SECURITY COMPLIANCE AND PERFORMANCE ISSUES THE TECHNOLOGIES AN INNOVATIVE OPPORTUNITY TO BASICALLY REDESIGN WAYS THROUGH WHICH FINANCIAL SERVICES ARE DELIVERED THUS MAKING THEM MORE EFFICIENT REGARDING ACCESSIBILITY SECURITY AND RELIABILITY. THE FINANCIAL MARKETS ARE CONSISTENTLY ADVANCING INWHICH MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR INNOVATION PRESENT THEMSELVES AND MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN AND GROW.    Q2: How do you view leading technical teams and delivering demanding projects?  A: Leading for me means nurturing diverse teams building an inclusive culture where associates are psychologically safe to voice their thoughts. Trust is important to me and I trust my team to innovate while having high expectations for design and code quality. My management style founded upon portfolio management of up to 35 engineers or voluntary cross functional teams included always aligning the attainment of technical solutions with the relevant business objectives. I believe my success in enabling the team and project was due to setting up an agile framework that was also adjustable according to the specific needs of a given project. Team success and project success were furthered through regular knowledge sharing and technical deep dives that kept members updated on industry trends; additionally assessing any attempted technical changes helps inform and speed engineering team learning curves.   Q 3: Can you give me an example of a complex project on which you worked?  A: Among the most really meaningful projects I managed was about the modernization of an application under fraud detection systems. Similarly we used to joang about 175 million dollars in rejected fraud claims on an annual basis. The last challenge was modernization of the warehouse systems and at the same time ensuring that the legacy systems do not lose any business and compliance expectations by addressing and pausing clear business expectations throughout the modernization process. We as material completed an entire modernization approach as it included serverless systems and converged to a enhancing potential-enterprise machine learning platform. This modernization type not just aided in the specific areas of accelerating the pace of the system- as many of our cost reductions also around a 50% in team capacity and in operational cost around 30%- were actually factors to the serious engagement and accountability atthehrd to modernization efforts. The project was successful because of foreseeing the project having trust and collaboration among peers in addition to a phased stabilization approach in the voice of limited expectations on operations. I believe these are the efforts that gave an intentional environment to further improve better processes and systems not because we were done but as the opportunity further maximizes the project impact for more value and confidence.    Q 4: How do you keep yourself abreast with new technologies in the financial sectors?    Q 4: Explain the role of continuous learning in your career development.    A: Continuous learning is very important in our field. I keep myself updated with knowledge by taking certifications including AWS Solutions Architect AWS Developer Associate and Java Professional certifications. I also hold a certificate in Microservices Architecture and facilitate Events Storming sessions on Domain Driven Design for various lines of business regularly. I advocate for a culture of learning within teams through regular technology-sharing sessions encouraging certifications and participation in innovation initiatives. The combination of understanding trends and tech and understanding business needs is what I draw on to help establish the strategy for adoption and implementation of technology.    Q 5: To what extent does one aspect of innovation impact your approach to technology leadership?    A: Innovation is core to my leadership philosophy. I have the overall responsibility for driving all innovation initiatives within the organization and defining the strategy for maintaining continuous days of innovation within the domains. I pioneered the use of machine learning model implementation for fraud detection and transition to enterprise machine learning platforms. I encourage teams to think differently through practical maintainable solutions. Most recently I have pioneered using generative AIs for better fraud detection.    Q 6: How will you assure quality of your solutions and security from threats specifically for financial technology applications?    A: Quality and security are primary elements of financial technology. I encourage a security-first mindset and follow it up with comprehensive testing strategies. We use automation build robust CI/CD pipelines and follow enterprise standards. In other words on recent projects we have achieved the highest level of testing maturity as defined within the enterprise standards have implemented fully automated test execution and built new mocking solutions to aid system availability. We also build security and resiliency by design and emphasize these aspects in anything we develop.   Q 7: What advice would you give to aspiring technology leaders in the banking sector?   A: First build a strong technical foundation - understanding core concepts is crucial. Second develop your soft skills; technical expertise alone isnt enough for leadership roles. Third stay curious and adaptable; our industry evolves rapidly and the ability to learn and adapt is crucial. Fourth embrace diversity and inclusion in building your teams - Ive seen firsthand how diverse teams bring different perspectives and drive better solutions. Finally focus on understanding the business context of your technical solutions and developing strong project management skills.   Q 8: How do you see financial technology evolving in the coming years?    A: Its such a ripe moment with the combination of cloud computing artificial intelligence and financial services all appearing to be merging into one. Serverless technologies will probably be the next wave along with more real-time processing and data analytics. Security and compliance are going to be top-of-mind as ever while financial services become all-the-more digital and interconnected among different infrastructures. Its also a time when were really seeing machine learning applications develop into real-time fraud detection and risk assessment and I see generative AI ending up being vital for the future in relation to identifying patterns and detection of financial crime.    Q 9: How do you build and maintain relations with business stakeholders?    A: Stakeholders in business should be able to form strong ties that enable successful delivery of the technology. I believe in a partnership model not being just a service provider to them. In my career I have worked well with product managers and business leaders to understand the desired application capabilities and convert such needs into effective technical solutions. Like recently I participated in a Getting new intents to market panel place alongside operations partners product partners and intent partners. This has considerably helped in delivering big projects such as preventing possible fraud losses of more than $300 million from a major fraud attack by leveraging our platform investments to avert such loss through platform analysis and figures.     Q.10 What was the most remarkable transformation that you spearheaded in your career and what were your key learnings from that transformation?   A: One of the most major transformations that I have led was modernizing an enterprise-wide application fraud detection system. This was a kind of transformation that demanded modernization of legacy systems while ensuring business operations were unbroken across multiple use cases. The progress included serverless technologies deployment integrated with enterprise machine learning platform and better self-service capabilities for business users.    There were key nuggets learned along the journey. First about a clear vision and roadmap but still flexible enough to factor in changes of requirements along the way. Second importance of change management-all stakeholders are on board and prepared for transformation. Third building diverse and inclusive teams having different perspectives in solving problems. This experience has really taught me that a successful digital transformation is as much about people and culture as it is about the technology.   About Anish Kumar Jain   Anish Kumar Jain is a technology leader with rich experience of credit card systems banking applications and insurance platforms. His work has been recognized with excellence awards from many financial institutions. An AWS Solutions Architect an AWS Certified Developer as well as a certified Java professional Anish has the competency of technical skills with strategic thought process to fuel innovations in financial technology. Multilingual Anish speaks different languages such as English Hindi Bengali and basic German which makes him lead global teams for the past years in his career. His spirit for continued education and newly learning skills combined with experience gained from large-scale financial systems makes him one of the most worthy leaders in the fast-evolving world of fintech.