Shivani Jaswal | Technology Partnerships Manager | Thought Machine

 

I studied Politics & International Relations at Warwick University and from the beginning was interested in the intersection between political economy, technology and globalisation. I specialised in understanding the advancement of Far Eastern economies and US/Chinese relations, to which technological advance was always at the centre of the debate.

I started my career as a Consultant at Ernst & Young. I specialised in Cost optimisation & benchmarking, Digital transformation, Strategy and Product & Experience design. I frequently worked with large Insurers and Financial Institutions that were looking at embracing new technologies to make their businesses more agile and lean. This often meant spending time within a business, sitting (for example) alongside a claims handler answering customer calls, so I could better understand at a micro level how employees were using technology, the impact it had on the customer’s experience and the end-resulting outcome for the business and their customer.

A key piece of work I developed was the first business case model for Insurwave, a proprietary blockchain platform developed by EY for marine and cargo insurers and brokers. Insurwave is now its own standalone company and won the Most Innovative Insurers Technology Creator Award in 2022.

After my learning at Ernst & Young, it was clear that financial institutions were struggling with legacy, mainframe technology that was the root cause of rising costs, poor customer experience and inefficient operating models. After just under three years at EY, I joined Thought Machine. Thought Machine, as a product-led business, was giving banks a solution for the challenges that have been plaguing the industry for many years.

I joined as a Partnerships Associate, focusing on developing the company’s technology vendor alliances. Thought Machine was around 400 people strong, and was about to close their Series C round of funding when I came on board. I was then quickly promoted to a Manager role, leading the category and strategy for our engagement with the technology vendor ecosystem. I was responsible for leading the execution and launch of Thought Machine’s Integration Library, a collection of pre-built integrations with leading technology companies all around our headless core banking engine, Vault Core. This marketplace is a crucial element of Thought Machine’s go-to-market proposition and now boasts 25 technology partners in an ecosystem of offerings that support clients building new banking propositions, migrating off legacy technology or considering embedded finance propositions. I continue to own the Library and the majority of our partnerships within it. My role expands to product, design, commercials, marketing and pitching.

My next challenge is to continue to think through how a collection of point-point integrations in our Library can be combined to better serve and reach clients that want to quickly go-to-market with cutting edge banking propositions.

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