Watch: How SocGen is leveraging emerging tech and startups to disrupt itself

French banking and financial services multinational Societe Generale's development centre in India is engaged in information technology research and development (R&D) as well as operations for the 155-year old firm. The close to two-decade-old Bengaluru centre is the largest such development hub outside of the firm’s headquarters in Paris.

Called the SG Global Solution Centre (SG GSC), the division's functions include application development and maintenance, infrastructure management, business process management, research and middle office and knowledge process management that support Societe Generale’s business lines around the world.

In an interview with TechCircle, Rathnaprabha Manickavachagam, director of innovation and digital transformation at Societe Generale Global Solutions Centre, says that over the last few years, the centre has transformed into an innovation centre that helps the financial services giant navigate the digital transformation for itself as well as enable its customers and partners to be able to use digital platforms and solutions. The India centre also has competency centres in design, digitisation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity among others.

"We are most relevant to the group's core-transformational objectives while adding digital experiences for customers. Usually, in large banks, we struggle to find appropriate business challenges to adopt emerging technologies. We are working towards disrupting that mindset internally," said Manickavachagam

The $28 billion banking giant has close to 160,000 employees globally around 10,000 employees in India and Romania. The Romanian team also reports to the Indian development centre. It also runs an accelerator programme called Catalyst, where it works with startups to create new financial products and solutions, a one of its kind of programme for the company anywhere in the world.