An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments across the Caribbean are ac­cel­er­at­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) and au­toma­tion tools move from pi­lot projects in­to every­day op­er­a­tions.

Tech­nol­o­gy firm New­gen Soft­ware Tech­nolo­gies, which has op­er­at­ed in the re­gion for near­ly two decades, be­lieves the next phase of adop­tion will see AI em­bed­ded deep­er in­to bank­ing, in­sur­ance, and pub­lic sec­tor ser­vices.

Sandeep Hin­du­ja, who leads New­gen’s Caribbean busi­ness, out­lined how the tech­nol­o­gy land­scape is evolv­ing as or­gan­i­sa­tions move from proof-of-con­cept de­ploy­ments to full pro­duc­tion sys­tems.

“We have tran­si­tioned our­selves in­to be­ing an AI-first play­er over the past two years,” Hin­du­ja said. “Cus­tomers ini­tial­ly start­ed with proof-of-con­cept de­ploy­ments to un­der­stand the tech­nol­o­gy and test how it fits in­to their op­er­a­tional life cy­cle.”

The next stage in­volves scal­ing those ex­per­i­ments in­to plat­forms used dai­ly by cus­tomers and cit­i­zens.

“We are now ap­proach­ing the phase where sev­er­al clients are mov­ing from proof-of-con­cept in­to pro­duc­tion use, and the next few quar­ters will be where we see re­al scal­ing of the tech­nol­o­gy.”

New­gen is head­quar­tered in In­dia and op­er­ates in about 59 coun­tries. The com­pa­ny man­ages its Caribbean op­er­a­tions from Tam­pa, Flori­da, with cus­tomers spread across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean as well as Dutch and Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries.

Caribbean adop­tion ac­cel­er­at­ing

Across the re­gion, adop­tion has cen­tred on bank­ing, in­sur­ance and gov­ern­ment agen­cies—three sec­tors where au­toma­tion and dig­i­tal work­flows can sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce man­u­al pro­cess­ing.

Hin­du­ja ex­plained that New­gen al­ready works with sev­er­al of the re­gion’s largest in­sti­tu­tions.

“Across the three ver­ti­cals, three of the five largest banks, three of the five largest in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, and about five of the largest is­land gov­ern­ments are cus­tomers of New­gen.”

The com­pa­ny’s re­gion­al fo­cus is on digi­tis­ing both in­ter­nal ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems and cit­i­zen-fac­ing ser­vices.

Gov­ern­ments across mul­ti­ple is­lands use the plat­form to man­age ar­eas such as im­mi­gra­tion pro­cess­ing, cit­i­zen­ship ser­vices and pub­lic com­plaints.

“Use cas­es vary from man­age­ment of cit­i­zen­ship ser­vices to im­mi­gra­tion to cit­i­zen-griev­ance sys­tems,” Hin­du­ja ex­plained, adding, “The scope of ap­pli­ca­tion across gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions is very wide.”

In some ju­ris­dic­tions, AI is now be­ing ex­plored to sim­pli­fy how cit­i­zens in­ter­act with pub­lic agen­cies.

“Cit­i­zens will be able to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly reg­is­ter griev­ances based on some­thing as sim­ple as click­ing pic­tures,” Hin­du­ja not­ed. “You no longer have to go through mul­ti­ple forms to file a com­plaint.”

The com­pa­ny’s pres­ence varies from is­land to is­land, de­pend­ing on mar­ket size and the pace of dig­i­tal adop­tion. Larg­er economies typ­i­cal­ly host de­ploy­ments across all three sec­tors gov­ern­ment, bank­ing, and in­sur­ance, while small­er is­lands may adopt the tech­nol­o­gy for spe­cif­ic ser­vices.

“Our fo­cus is on dig­i­tal­is­ing all the is­lands,” Hin­du­ja said. “The pres­ence varies by coun­try, but we have cus­tomers across the Dutch is­lands, the British ter­ri­to­ries, and the Span­ish-speak­ing Caribbean.”

Com­pet­ing in the low-code mar­ket

The re­gion’s dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion push has in­ten­si­fied com­pe­ti­tion among tech­nol­o­gy providers of­fer­ing low-code plat­form soft­ware en­vi­ron­ments that al­low or­gan­i­sa­tions to build ap­pli­ca­tions quick­ly with min­i­mal pro­gram­ming.

Ma­jor glob­al com­peti­tors in­clude Mi­crosoft’s Pow­er Plat­form and Pe­gasys­tems.

Hin­du­ja ar­gued that New­gen’s ad­van­tage lies in com­bin­ing its low-code plat­form with in­dus­try-spe­cif­ic tools.

“A low-code plat­form is on­ly one side of the sto­ry,” he ex­plained. “Where we dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves is by com­bin­ing the plat­form with in­dus­try ac­cel­er­a­tors.” Those ac­cel­er­a­tors are de­signed around spe­cif­ic sec­tors, al­low­ing in­sti­tu­tions to de­ploy dig­i­tal sys­tems faster be­cause the work­flows are al­ready struc­tured for that in­dus­try.

For in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, the plat­form can au­to­mate sev­er­al parts of the busi­ness cy­cle.

“If you take in­sur­ance as an ex­am­ple, we help au­to­mate three main buck­ets of the busi­ness,” Hin­du­ja said. “That in­cludes is­su­ing poli­cies, ser­vic­ing cus­tomers, and pro­cess­ing claims.”

Banks are al­so adopt­ing dig­i­tal work­flow sys­tems to short­en the time re­quired to launch prod­ucts and process cus­tomer ap­pli­ca­tions.
“What oth­ers may take months or years to im­ple­ment, we aim to de­ploy in weeks.”

Bank­ing and in­sur­ance con­tin­ue to lead the way in tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion in the re­gion, re­flect­ing glob­al trends where fi­nan­cial ser­vices re­main among the most ag­gres­sive in­vestors in dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture.

“Fi­nance has al­ways been the moth­er­hood of tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion,” Hin­du­ja ob­served. “Bank­ing and in­sur­ance are still the two in­dus­tries where we see the strongest trac­tion.”

Cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­tion

As fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions and gov­ern­ments ex­pand their use of dig­i­tal plat­forms, cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance re­main cen­tral con­cerns.
Hin­du­ja ex­plained that se­cu­ri­ty is built in­to the en­gi­neer­ing de­sign of New­gen’s sys­tems.

“Se­cu­ri­ty is wo­ven in­to the fab­ric of our prod­ucts.”

En­gi­neer­ing teams reg­u­lar­ly up­date the soft­ware to align with evolv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty stan­dards while en­sur­ing sys­tems com­ply with reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments in each ju­ris­dic­tion where the com­pa­ny op­er­ates.

“Prod­uct ar­chi­tec­ture aligns with the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works gov­ern­ments pre­scribe in each mar­ket,” Hin­du­ja ex­plained. “Those two lay­ers to­geth­er form the se­cu­ri­ty en­vi­ron­ment in which our cus­tomers op­er­ate.”

Im­ple­men­ta­tion costs for dig­i­tal plat­forms vary de­pend­ing on the scale of each project.

Some de­ploy­ments in­volve a sin­gle de­part­ment or line of busi­ness with­in an or­gan­i­sa­tion, while oth­ers span mul­ti­ple coun­tries and lan­guages with­in re­gion­al fi­nan­cial groups.

“We have small de­ploy­ments on one is­land for a par­tic­u­lar line of busi­ness,” Hin­du­ja ex­plained. “At the oth­er end of the spec­trum, we sup­port some of the largest banks in the Caribbean op­er­at­ing across more than 16 or 17 coun­tries.”

Those larg­er projects of­ten in­volve mul­ti­ple reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works and tech­nol­o­gy en­vi­ron­ments, re­quir­ing sys­tems ca­pa­ble of op­er­at­ing across dif­fer­ent mar­kets.

Sagi­cor is test­ing the tech­nol­o­gy

One re­gion­al in­sti­tu­tion work­ing with New­gen is Sagi­cor Group, which be­gan its part­ner­ship with the tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny about three years ago as part of its wider dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion pro­gramme.

An­drew Burke, vice pres­i­dent of in­no­va­tion, IT, da­ta se­cu­ri­ty and en­ter­prise ar­chi­tec­ture at Sagi­cor Group, ex­plained that two core sys­tems have been im­ple­ment­ed so far.
“One deals with loan orig­i­na­tion and the oth­er fo­cus­es on au­to­mat­ed un­der­writ­ing.”

The goal is to sim­pli­fy process­es that tra­di­tion­al­ly re­quired ex­ten­sive pa­per­work and man­u­al re­view.

For loan ap­pli­ca­tions, cus­tomers can now com­plete the process on­line rather than vis­it­ing a branch.
“Imag­ine sit­ting in the com­fort of your home and ap­ply­ing for a loan on­line in­stead of go­ing in­to an of­fice and fill­ing out pa­per­work,” Burke ex­plained. “With­in min­utes, you can com­plete the ap­pli­ca­tion and re­ceive a de­ci­sion.”

Au­to­mat­ed un­der­writ­ing sys­tems ad­dress an­oth­er area where in­sur­ers his­tor­i­cal­ly re­lied on man­u­al process­es.

“A lot of the un­der­writ­ing process is man­u­al,” Burke not­ed. “Au­toma­tion helps re­move repet­i­tive work and makes the process con­sis­tent.”

The tech­nol­o­gy al­so al­lows in­sur­ers to process ap­pli­ca­tions faster while im­prov­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

“No ad­di­tion­al cost is passed on to the cus­tomer. The goal is to re­duce in­ter­nal costs and re­move fric­tion for clients.”

De­spite grow­ing in­ter­est in AI, Burke em­pha­sised that the tech­nol­o­gy is de­signed to sup­port em­ploy­ees rather than re­place them.

“The aim is to help hu­mans do their work in a bet­ter way,” he ex­plained. Hu­mans are de­signed to think. AI is a tool to help them op­er­ate more ef­fi­cient­ly.”

Burke not­ed that the two sys­tems cur­rent­ly op­er­ate in Ja­maica, where Sagi­cor has been test­ing the tech­nol­o­gy be­fore ex­pand­ing to oth­er mar­kets. Ex­pan­sion across the wider Caribbean will de­pend on dis­cus­sions with­in the group’s op­er­a­tions across rough­ly 15 ter­ri­to­ries.

“At the mo­ment, the sys­tems are op­er­at­ing in Ja­maica,” Burke ex­plained. “The roll­out across oth­er ter­ri­to­ries is part of an on­go­ing con­ver­sa­tion.”

Fu­ture ap­pli­ca­tions could in­clude dig­i­tal pro­cess­ing of in­sur­ance claims, an area where au­toma­tion could sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce turn­around times.

“Yes, that is cer­tain­ly one of the ar­eas we want to ex­plore,” Burke said, point­ing to cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence as a key dri­ver, adding, “Re­duc­ing cus­tomer fric­tion is ex­treme­ly im­por­tant be­cause it de­ter­mines whether a cus­tomer leaves hap­py or dis­sat­is­fied.”

Tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms ca­pa­ble of op­er­at­ing across mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant for re­gion­al fi­nan­cial groups seek­ing to stan­dard­ise process­es.

While im­ple­men­ta­tion has en­coun­tered oc­ca­sion­al tech­ni­cal hur­dles, Burke in­di­cat­ed the roll­out has pro­gressed steadi­ly.

“There are al­ways hic­cups when im­ple­ment­ing tech­nol­o­gy,” he not­ed. “Some­times you en­counter things you did not an­tic­i­pate or process­es that need ad­just­ment.”

Those chal­lenges are typ­i­cal of large tech­nol­o­gy de­ploy­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly across mul­ti­ple ju­ris­dic­tions.

“We have been grad­u­al­ly smooth­ing those is­sues out and con­tin­u­ing with im­ple­men­ta­tion.”