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The future of money #openbanking

The future of money #openbanking

By Vijay Jaswal, CTO, Middle East & Turkey, Software AG

Vijay Jaswal 3

These three numbers tell a story.  They are from Gartner’s annual publication 2021 CIO Agenda:  A banking perspective.

  • 53% of bank CIOs assess that their business performance is ahead or far ahead of where it otherwise would have been had COVID-19 not become a global pandemic.
  • 69% of banking survey respondents report that business leaders are asking IT to implement higher-value and more strategic initiatives. 
  • Banks that have increased their use of digital channels to reach customers are 3.5 times more likely to be a top performer than a trailing performer. 

Of course, banks have been transforming for years, and the black swan events of the financial crisis and now the pandemic have only accelerated that transformation. One of the consequences of the acceleration of the pace of innovation is that the pace of commoditization has also accelerated. 

Given the increase in both retail and commercial customers adopting digital channels and self-service facilities, several banks in the region have also recently launched their own digital banking offerings. The demand for new digital products and services will continue to increase.  Each time customers are exposed to an improved digital experience or service, their expectations for all experiences are reset to a new, higher level.​

And while customer expectations are increasing faster than ever, new competitors continue to enter the banking arena. All banks need to examine the value they deliver or risk becoming disintermediated from their customers and serving as back-end utilities to nimbler customer-facing digital competitors. 

As such, innovation in the financial sector to enable market players on the journey towards new paradigms remains vital. Moreover, financial services technology is also currently in the midst of a profound transformation as CIO’s prepare to embrace the next major phase of transformations. Across the world, public sector entities are embarking on new initiatives, and in the region, too several initiatives are underway. In KSA for instance, the Saudi Central Bank plans to go live with open banking during the first half of 2022 as it will. The issuance of licenses for non-banking financial institutions in KSA raised the total number of companies licensed by The Saudi Central Bank to 15, exceeding the FSDP target (3 licensed companies by 2020). 

In Saudi Arabia, the central bank released an open banking policy in January 2021 as part of its bid to diversify financial services. This is a goal set in the Financial Services Development Program (FSDP), which is part of the national development plan, Saudi Vision 2030. This follows a series of initiatives since 2018 to promote financial sector innovation nationally and regionally. In particular, payment innovation has accelerated following the adoption of the FSDP. Since 2018, the number of Saudi FinTech start-ups has gone from 10 to over 60, of which about 40% operate in payments.

Several factors make the Saudi market ripe for disruption by open banking. The relatively small number of banks means that adoption and standardization could occur faster than in other markets. The country’s relatively young population has adopted payment technology enthusiastically. The budding FinTech ecosystem has strong backing from the government and the central bank. Moreover, the country already has a state-of-the-art payments infrastructure that Saudi Payments, created by the central bank, is continuously modernizing. In particular, Saudi Payment’s Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment system, known as Sadad, has facilitated precisely the account-to-account transfers that can become a launchpad for open banking.

Open banking is a chance for stakeholders to leverage the data related to financial transactions to access new ways of managing money. Customers will benefit from better financial products and services by bringing all accounts into a single dashboard and creating smoother journeys into daily banking activities.

Data are securely shared, and customers have a choice to approve access to third-party providers to offer explicit and informed consent. Further, open banking will enhance trust both in customers and market participants, namely banks, fintechs, leading direct innovation and developing new products and services – either in-house or in collaboration with third parties. This move will increase financial players’ value proposition, build more revenue streams, sustain financial inclusion, competition and access to credit for a larger portion of individuals, contribute to increased financial health and awareness, help lower-income customers rationalize expenditures, encourage control over financials, and secure efficient management of financial information and transactions. 

What if you could outsource differentiation and sell through new channels? You could collaborate with partners in your ecosystem to create new services that deliver new, differentiated value. You could also make your services available to be sold through new channels – those of your partners.  Not all countries have mandatory open banking like in the EU.  But the driver for open banking is not exclusively regulatory: it is competitive necessity and future growth. It is the ‘new oil’ of customer data and it goes beyond payment initiation.

It demands that your infrastructure does things it was never designed to do – open access to customer data, transactional, demographic and several other elements that have always been protected for years and decades. As ecosystems evolve, these elements are becoming vital assets for partners to empower them with new and unfamiliar elements features that haven’t even been in one’s control. Having said that security and governance will remain the topmost priority as these assets get delivered and are presented through an outward facing set of APIs.

The Middle East’s open banking scenario is currently quite interesting and exciting with financial entities preparing ahead of the commencement of comprehensive policies. Banks are maximizing the enhanced customer services and increased revenue aspects of open banking in the lead-up to comprehensive open banking regulations and guidelines. Several open banking initiatives in the Middle East region are well underway. In Saudi Arabia, in line with the country’s Vision 2030, the Saudi Central Bank recently approved the open banking policy to benefit the Kingdom’s fintech companies as vital enablers of faster transmission of credit and capital to fuel the country’s GDP growth, reduce oil dependency, diversify the economy, and develop public services.

Take, for example, buying a home. Even before a customer applies for a mortgage, a bank could act as a trusted advisor through their mobile banking app to help a prospective homebuyer plan for success.  Closer to the time of purchase, the bank could introduce a series of partners to the customer: realtors; lawyers; insurance companies; movers; school advisors; landscapers; as well as a mortgage approval tool. The bank’s value to the customer is redefined as engaging in a home buying experience – not just getting a mortgage.

Naturally, the key to succeeding in open banking is data. Whereas in the past, banks were monoliths completely focused on keeping client data safe inside, open banking, by definition, requires sharing data with the outside.

To prepare for open banking, must have an intimate understanding of each client’s behaviors and be able to deliver real-time, dynamic, contextual, and scalable experiences. To make the most of all that open banking has to offer, it’s vital that banks build, manage and publish well-secured APIs to partner ecosystems that enable authorized access to data and services. By controlling the flow of data through open APIs, banks can mitigate competition risks, and at the same time offer customers a wider and more easily customized set of services – and drive future growth.

Key to the success of open banking will be the flexibility with which it is implemented and managed via a variety of APIs in response to future opportunities to partner, create new value, and generate revenue. It is happening but is a sea of change and therefore will progress steadily and will eventually transform the world of financial services –revolutionary apps, dramatic changes, and tectonic shifts in the global and regional sector. 

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