 From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE. Special coverage here in Bahrain in the Middle East for Amazon Web Services AWS Summit. I'm John Furrier theCUBE. Our second year where cloud computing is changing the landscape, it's changing the entrepreneurial equation, it's changing the money equation and fintech is very popular. Our next guest, special guest, Saeil Awawari who's the deputy group CEO bank, ABC, legend in the industry. Also the founder of the fintech forum coming up on your fourth big event. But you're keynoting here at Teresa Carlson and AWS Summit on digital only bank. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you John, thank you, a pleasure to speak to you today. So I got a lot to talk about, but digital only bank, this is a real special time in history now. We're living in a digital error and the digital is driving business change and digital business is on the plate of every major executive in the world. How are you enabling digital business? John, the way I look at things that two years ago I have went to my board, I said I want to disrupt the bank. I want to develop a business digital strategy and to do that, we have three pillars. We have to run the bank first and transform the bank. To do that, we have continue investing on modernizing the bank. Then you evolve the bank, investing by creating new product and finally you disrupt the bank. And how you disrupt the bank introducing the digital highway and introducing the cloud computing and bringing in new tools which is change the framework and change the mechanics of the bank. So we created, we announced a digital only bank which will be going live in two months time. We launch a wallet and all that sits on an ecosystem sits in the cloud. It's a very brave and bold move but I can tell you without that you will lose the transformation. Banking today is different than they're gonna be banking with tomorrow. Yeah, we have to start getting into the journey of transformation. Bold moves require bold leadership. Absolutely. You are that. This is hard. It sounds easy on paper. Absolutely. You got people to convince. I agree. Change is hard. Absolutely. People, cultural change. How did you do it? What was the formula? That's a great question, John. I started that in December 2016. I went to my board when the FinTech started moving, hitting our part. I said, look, I want to be on a transformation journey. And I worked for about six to nine months including awareness with the board. Unity explained to them FinTech, I brought them actually a special FinTech speakers guideline. So I invested heavily with all the stakeholders, board level, people, group CEO, and tell them about the impact of digitization. You cannot afford to stay idle. If you stay idle and do nothing, your partner's chain will move. We'll go without you. So what you're saying is that the investment is the awareness. You have to explain to them why you cannot treat FinTech by the threat. You have to embrace it. I love that. I love that leadership. It takes time to nurture and unset the table. Absolutely. And then understand the cloud-only strategy. Absolutely. And then you got to sell it and then you got to implement. These are the new dynamics of leadership. The field's shown is that most of the stakeholders, they think of cloud as not secure. And they're spending of time, so not secure. Instead of spending their time questioning, spend their time to improve the security with Amazon. We are partners. Now we sit with Amazon AWS and I tell you, I'm putting all my critical banking system on the cloud. When you talk to Amazon, you're a bank, banks have money. Banks can be hacked. People are worried about all this. Trust is important. Absolutely. What made you decide to go AWS? I tell you, first of all, when I decided on the various was my decision. I looked at you guys, the investment you made in security, the investment you make on R&D and I look, you committed to the region. I want someone on my neighbor. You guys have invested and made a bold move to be in Bahrain. And that did a lot, ticked a lot of boxes for me. And that was an important move from AWS. And I tell you, many regulators today, they will go in the cloud eventually. So it's very important that AWS present themselves in the region. Well, we love AWS because we cover them in-depth as part of our media business and we look at disruptions too. And I want to get your thoughts on fintech disruption. We were talking before we came on camera about some key times in history where disruption happened in trade. That is a tell sign for what's happening in fintech. Tell the story. All right, let me tell you the story. In 1953, the first word, cargo ship sailed from New York to Houston. That ship changed the world, made history. Why? Because it has the container. So you can supply trade, sending through the container to different destination. You know before how it used to be, put them in a train through, it was a nightmare. That disruption have actually improved the globalization and increased the trade business. Today, all this equipment here comes through cargo, comes through container. And each container is labeled through computer. So we're investing today. The fintech made the same disruption in banking and financial services. And where's the similarity? Scale? Similarity to disruption, the scale, the volume, the trade. Trade become disrupted. Everybody start using your container. The business, the globalization. Fintech globalization, scale, awareness. So the way I see similarity is that we had a disruption, trade become more familiar. Life style has improved. You can now put your house, your TV is coming from where? From Japan maybe. All the cargo, right? Containers have changed shipping. Fintech is changing. Banking. Banking. And lifestyle. You got it, you got it, John. And so now. Containers change shipping and trade. Well ironically too, containers are changing the cloud because containers and Kubernetes and orchestration, this is about software. That's right. Software money. Absolutely. The term kicked around. When you hear the word software defined currency, software defined money, what do you think of? Look, at the end of the day, who writes software? People. Human. So basically the thinking has become from you and I. For the people that sit and think about the codes. Yeah. Programmer is a coder. But there's somebody behind it thinking. So you have a thinker. And the thinker are changing the word. Not the coder. Big moves in Fintech are happening. I want to get your thoughts on leadership. In this world where cloud has pretty much instant benefits if you execute properly. Absolutely. There's also architectural thinking. So the word business architecture is not something that they teach in business school or sometimes it has to be learned over time to operate a business and have a growth strategy in changing technological landscapes requires a business architecture, has to have a holistic systems thinking. This is hard. You've done that for multiple years. What have you learned? What were some of the challenges that you overcame? You have to look at when you're running a big enterprise you have a lot of investment around the world and a lot of duplication, a lot of inefficiency. I had a leader. I need to show my stakeholder efficiency. I want to run a better shop. Now, if technology can help me to do that, why not? So I have to jump under the wagon. Yeah, yeah. I cannot sit idle and I see a better efficient shop, better bank running more efficiently. So I looked at the technology decision to disrupt the way I work. But positive disruption, yeah. The main thing is that the disruption should be a catalyst for a positive change. So what I learned are learned efficiency. With the digital disruption, with the cloud, today instead of putting 25,000 servers to serve my 18 countries, I put in the cloud. You can dial in, you look at the economy, the scale, John, and the saving. Yeah, the flywheel is amazing. The operational efficiencies are amazing. As an executive, you manage to results. At the end of the day, business is business. Absolutely. Results matter. How are your results? You've got to make money. As a banker, I have to show a result. You've got to make some money. How do you see that evolving, digital-only business? What's your strategy? What's your roadmap for how you see the money-making kicking in? John, our clients becoming sophisticated. My corporate client today, if I don't deliver him a digital solution through his statement, give the payment faster, he's going to go for fintech companies. Because today, fintech companies are competing with me, eating my lunch. So I have to predict. If my clients becoming digital savvy, more sophisticated, I cannot sit and watch. So I have to invest heavily to make sure my client is satisfied. Give him the right cash management tool, transaction banking, all this, the bulk payment, all this have to be automated. So I have to continue looking after my clients. That's where the money comes from. Are you happy where you're at right now? Are you happy with work? They're always room for improvement. I will continue to invest and I will currently innovate because you cannot stop. Look, Amazon today, will they stop? No, no, they're not stopping. Absolutely, we need to continue. What's your areas that you think about for the next five years with fintech? What are an important areas? You know what I think, John? It's going to affect our lifestyle. AI, artificial intelligence. I feel we only see the beginning. We have seen nothing out of AI. We at Bank ABC, we just launched our first digital employee. Her name is Fatma. And we will be coming live in November. And I tell you, this is the beginning. I feel artificial intelligence is going to affect our workforce in the world. Tell me more about this digital employee concept. Well, I'm so passionate about what we worked with a company called Soul Machine in New Zealand. And there are the same people who actually invented, you've seen the movie Avatar, yeah? So the same people who actually designed the movie and Avatar, we worked with them to create Fatma. Fatma has already been trained to help a new client of Bank ABC, the Digital Bank ABC, to open account, to choose the correct credit card for you, help you, and also to be able to have a chat with her, to be able to ask her a question, general question about the Bahrain, about the population, about banking. It's a journey. And the journey's so far been successful. And I can tell you, if you ask me the question in a year time, I will tell you probably Fatma will be somebody else. This is helping augment the experience for your customers. That's the goal? Absolutely. Improve experience for my consumer and customer. Okay, I want to change the subject and talk about the founder of the FinTech Forum. You just had your third edition forthcoming up. Talk about the event. What's the purpose of the event? I tell you what. I went in about late 2016, December 2, I went to the Central Bank of Bahrain governor and I said we want to sponsor the FinTech conference. So, I'm impressed that he immediately embraced the idea. And then I went back to my board, my group CEO, I said we want to sponsor the first FinTech conference. And my papers at that time, the awareness, because at that time in early 2017, we hear FinTech around the region, but nobody actually sat there and say, what's the impact of FinTech on banking? You've seen other big tech. So, I launched the first FinTech conference. It was a success. Second one also a success. The third one was a coup. And because we put the top speaker around the world. And now people are shitting me for the fourth one. You're in the event business now. And no, we've sponsored. Bank ABCs was a sole sponsor. Got it. Sorry. That's exciting. And I think these events are changing too. The fact that you're getting into events, you're contributing your knowledge. You're also sponsoring, providing some working capital. I listen to our contribution to Bahrain. As a bank, international bank, this is the least I can do to support Bahrain in the infrastructure, in the vision, in the FinTech. Sorry. No problem. Think out some of the water. Sayiel, I want to get your thoughts on something I feel is important. I said this last year and the year before. When Amazon launches a new region, it creates a revitalization. It has computing power as all those things. It's a center point of innovation. Do you see that same thing? And what are some things that people might not know about the Amazon relationship to the area? Because all this innovation and enablement, FinTech, societal change, e-government, yet ministries are coming online here about Bahrain. Entrepreneurs are creating value. They're getting funded. There's liquidity. Banks are going FinTech. A modernization wave is happening with a new generation of young people and existing businesses. This is a digital, complete modernization. Your thoughts on all this digital transformation at a societal level with Amazon? Amazon already contributing to the digital economy. We've seen it in the world. And I've seen already the impact in this part of the world. The fact that this conference this summer today can answer your question. Look at the contribution. We have about 2,000 people here. Look at the excitement of Amazon. What's it bringing to the region? I have seen people today from Saudi Arabia, from Kuwait, from Emirates, from Oman, from Egypt, here. So you are actually building the knowledge, the excitement, and you're also helping people to understand the ecosystem. And what was missing? So what are you doing at AWS now? Actually investing heavily on educating the awareness of the digital disruption and digital economy. You are participating in the digital economy. I mean also today I heard from Teresa, which is a very good, sponsoring a program, a degree with the University of Bahrain. Yeah. And that is fantastic. A bachelor's degree. So this is basically, you continue doing that and you find AWS is already a fact of life. It's like the cloud is going to be a fact. So I think AWS is already contributing the digital economy worldwide. You know, I'm fascinated and I'd love to have more conversations with you on this, maybe at your forum. But one thing I want to get your thoughts on is, with digital, collaboration is not just face to face. You meet people here from different countries, but then we go back to our places, but we're still together digitally. So the scale of cloud computing in digital is impacting not just money, collaboration. What's your vision on how collaboration and the role of people are going to play in this new dynamic? Look, John, if you asked me this three years ago, I'll tell you, I was threat with Winter Company. As a banker, they're gonna eat my lunch. But today you realize with time the only way you can move and prosper is through collaborating with Winter Company. That's why today I'm sitting with AWS, sitting with other big tech, basically collaborating because I know my banks, but I don't know how to build a cloud technology. So I collaborate. I don't know how to build a new Sophia or Fatma digital. So I go with, I went to New Zealand to get that. You see what I mean? Yeah, and I think. Collaboration is the name of the game. I agree with another good point that we've reported on many times, and that is that when you collaborate with these technologies, it makes the domain expertise and the data that you have more intellectual property because you know banking. Absolutely. You have data, you have customers. That's your intellectual property. You could use that faster with the resource. Absolutely. This is the new competitive advantage. With analytics, with data science, the data is the new order. It's the future. But you need the tools. You need the analytics. You need the data scientist. And when you have the data scientist, the data will become the new order. Sahil, thank you for sharing your awesome insights here on theCUBE here in Bahrain. We really appreciate it. Congratulations. Keynote speaking. Bank, ABC. Thank you very much. Transmit going all digital. Bold moves, bold leadership. Thank you. Thank you very much, John. We're here in theCUBE. We're live broadcasting here in Bahrain. AWS Summit. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching.