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East West Bank EVP & Head of Consumer Banking, Catherine Zhou, spoke at financial services panel of Microsoft Envision

OCTOBER 28, 2019 | Test Author 1

Property Tips

On October 22, 2019, East West Bank EVP and Head of Consumer Banking, Catherine Zhou, spoke at the Intelligent Financial Services panel of Microsoft Envision The Tour, an exclusive event targeting senior business executives held at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.  Through the panel discussion, Zhou revisited the journey of building Velo by East West BankTM, the digital platform built by the bank, and shared valuable learnings with the audience. 

The panel was moderated by Madeline Moyer, Global Industry Product Marketing Manager, Financial Services from Microsoft.  In her introduction, Moyer revealed the four critical success factors in digitization among various industries based on case studies of Microsoft:  vision & strategy, culture, unique proposition, and execution.  The most important impact technology bring to digitization is the improvement of user experience.  Therefore, any organizations who are inspired to be successful in digital transformation must keep laser focus on the user experience.  

Catherine Zhou is currently EVP of East West Bank and oversees the bank’s consumer and digital banking businesses.  In her panel discussion, Zhou recounted the ups and downs experienced by the Velo by East West BankTM team on many thought-provoking topics.

On building a winning team, Zhou reflected upon a heated debate of “build vs. buy” by the bank’s senior leaders at the beginning of East West Bank’s digital transformation journey.  The finding is that too many existing banking services and tools tend to be off-the-shelf solutions, unable to deliver the degree of customization at a scale or a speed that East West Bank would like to see.  The result is to pursue a DIY approach to build from scratch.  During the past two years, East West Bank has built a team of more than 100 members, including talents in product, engineering, QA, content, design, and marketing.  The newly founded digital team currently work on a monthly release schedule to bring new banking product, updates to mobile app, and new user experience to the market at a steady pace.  Simultaneously, the team receives valuable user feedback and integrate it real time into the next releases.  The “learning by doing” approach has enabled the entrepreneurial team to introduce a brand new mobile app, Velo, to the market in a few months.  

The panel talk was well received by the audience.  Attendants, many of whom are senior executives from financial institutions around the world, expressed admiration to the endeavor by East West Bank.