Amnah Ajmal Podcast Transcript
Amnah Ajmal joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of The Digital Executive podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Amnah Ajmal. Amnah Ajmal is the Executive Vice President, Market Development, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa for MasterCard. In this role, she leads the P&L across multiple business verticals, including merchants, telcos, governments, FinTechs, digital players across 80 markets.
In addition, she holds the strategy pricing analytics and M&A function for the region. Prior to this role, she led the North America product and innovation organization based out of the U.S. creating sustainable, competitive differentiation for MasterCard and its customers by delivering digitally integrated consumer experiences across consumer and commercial products.
Prior to joining MasterCard, she was the CEO for Standard Center Consumer Bank Malaysia. She was also responsible for retail banking strategy for Indonesia, Malaysia, and Taiwan in a global role based out of Singapore. Prior to standard chartered, I’m not worked at Citigroup in United Arab Emirates, Egypt, UK, and Poland. She held several leadership positions at Citigroup, including asset business head for Poland, responsible for full range of consumer asset products, innovation, and distribution, including credit cards, company brands, personal loans, and mortgages.
Well, good afternoon. I’m not welcome to the show.
Amnah Ajmal: Thank you so much, Brian. Good afternoon.
Brian Thomas: Good afternoon to you again, and I really do appreciate you making the time hailing out of Dubai right now, which is amazing. It’s hard sometimes to get people’s schedules aligned, but I do appreciate that. So we’re going to jump into your questions right away. So, we can get your story out to our audience throughout your career.
You’ve been a key figure in driving digital and cultural transformation in consumer banking and payments across various global markets. Thank you. Could you share your insights on the most significant changes you’ve observed in this sector and how you’ve contributed to these shifts?
Amnah Ajmal: Well, one of the biggest change and probably it’s post COVID and also because of the rise of Gen Z generation is consumers embracing new technologies.
It took us like 50 years to scale contactless, but now with x rays and face recognition and other payment methods, it’s just a matter of months. The way they’re scaling. I think the consumer mindset to adopt new technologies is 1 of the significant trends. 2nd, I would say collaboration models between FinTech’s and traditional organization at one point in time.
It was like big organizations wanted to be FinTech’s. because they wanted to have agility and FinTech’s wanted to be the big organizations because they wanted to scale. And now you see a lot of positive collaboration models between the two. And I think that’s a very positive step towards innovation because no one can innovate today in today’s times alone.
Third, I would say there’s a huge focus on sustainability and financial inclusion, which really was not a trend as recent as four years back. And I think. Especially the focus on sustainability, where each and every business is looking at. How they work and how do they make sustainability top of their mind and their mindset.
Those are the three trends. Second part of the conversation that as to how I contribute towards them and what my role is to contribute towards them, I look after the non-financial institution segments across the 80 markets in Eastern Europe and Western Africa. And that requires collaboration between FinTech’s, telcos, retailers, hotels, buy now pay later players.
It’s all about putting together innovative solutions by bringing different players together in the ecosystem. And 2nd is there are players who are better served, better equipped to serve the underserved population and the SMEs from a financial inclusion standpoint, like the telcos. And I think our partnership with telcos is one of the proof points how we can provide better access of financial services to the SMEs.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, Amna. I appreciate you sharing that. Obviously, there’s a lot going on and I know in your role, you’re looking to innovate in some of those markets. So, we can better serve again, everybody equitably, but also serve the underserved and I’m not. Innovation in consumer experience has been a significant focus in your roles.
Can you discuss a particular innovation you might have spearheaded that you’re most proud of and how has it impacted the consumer experience?
Amnah Ajmal: Sure. I think acceptance traditionally was viewed as a physical device or a terminal which I think is extremely expensive for the SMEs are really the long tail of SMEs.
To drive digital payments and solutions like QR payments pay by link tap on phone. These are different forms of acceptance, which actually digitize payments. And I think that I would say is one of the biggest success stories that we have at Mastercard.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate you highlighting digitized payments that has obviously helped kind of move that needle forward as far as innovation in the consumer experience arena.
So, I appreciate the share. And Amna, the next question I have for you is you’ve been recognized as one of the top 25 women in financial technology globally and top 10 in America. What does this recognition mean to you and how has it influenced your approach to leadership and innovation in the fintech sector?
Amnah Ajmal: Well, first of all, I’m honored that I have for these recognitions, but I think it has just reinforced 1 point, regardless of which part of the world you’re working in. You have to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and you really have to support them. And doing bigger and better things that they did not think they could do.
I think that has been my philosophy on leadership across different parts of the world. And I think that has enabled me to drive business and people transformation. I really put people first, and I’m very passionate about that. And there’s a diversity angle over there. I’m extremely vocal about having diverse teams, be it background, be it gender.
And I think that has really played a very important role in me delivering business growth.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I appreciate that. And at the end of the day as leaders we need to focus on the people and let them have that autonomy and growth and believe in them and help them succeed at things that they maybe thought they couldn’t succeed at.
So, I appreciate your insights on that love, the leadership traits that you’re showing in your everyday career. And last question of the day, I’m not, how do you see the rapid evolution of fintech impacting traditional banking and payment systems? And what strategies should industry leaders adopt to stay ahead?
Amnah Ajmal: Well, Maybe I’ll answer the latter part of your question first. I think the first strategy is that you have to unlearn and. relearn, right? I think that’s very, very important. And many of the, many of times we are stuck that this is how it was done before. And I think that’s just so rapidly changing that you can’t really think like that.
So, it’s extremely important that leaders surround themselves with talent who can challenge the status quo and they have the ability to unlearn and relearn. So that would be the single most important thing. Answering your first part of the question. I would say that it would be critical to make sure that you do not use technology to solve problems that don’t exist because you just want to use the technology.
So, for example, you don’t have to use blockchain if you can actually solve a problem that doesn’t require use of blockchain. Technology is just a means to an end. You have to first figure out, these are my top five problems that I need to solve. And maybe you don’t need any AI, any blockchain, no unique technology for it.
It’s just about redefining a simple process. Right. So, I think defining your top five business problems or customer experience issues. And then figuring out, okay, is there a technology available that can solve that pain point? Would really scale innovation much further as opposed to doing it the other way around.
I see a lot of time people discussing, will we do this POC because they have this new technology, but maybe you don’t really need that.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And you’re right about that. A lot of times we tend to really create a solution, you know, around the problem. And we’re not really focusing, focusing on the actual solution.
And sometimes people throw technology at it first. And I’ve seen that time and time again. So, appreciate the insights on that as well. And of course, about leaders and unlearning and relearning and continuing to push themselves in that. Thanks. That part of their career. So I’m not, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Amnah Ajmal: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks a lot. It was a pleasure.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Amnah Ajmal Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s podcast page.
