Open Banking & Open API: The future of financial services in Asia at IDC

The IDC Financial Services Congress 2019 just wrapped up in Singapore and, although AI was a general theme, Open Banking & Open API was still a big focus for the audience.

Focus group roundtable: Open Banking & Open API

Axway returned to the IDC FCS this year with an encore of last year’s top topic. And the Focus Group roundtable was well received. Each table was packed with over 14 delegates.

This year’s discussion went deeper into the topic “How to make Open Banking successful” and “Are there best practices to implement Open Banking?” The 2018 topic was a higher-level approach around “Why should I do Open Banking and where is the risk to open my bank?”

Depending on the country and digital maturity, there is still the possibility of risk. However, it is now widely understood that local financial institutes are losing business to external, non-regulated, service providers if they are not open to collaboration with FinTechs.

Let’s start with a quick definition: FinTechs are technology-driven companies that provide financial services as part of the customer-focused business model and bypass banks in that process. For example, an online wedding planner service that provides micro-lending capabilities based on private lending.

Technically speaking, “collaboration with FinTechs” goes with providing certain services to the FinTech/partner ecosystem through APIs.

The Open Banking specification, in that case, is a subset of the broader Open API or Digital Banking Transformation, enforced by regulators to speed up the transformation. But there is a high variation of pressure and ways of enforcing depending on the country. Learn about opportunities abounding in Open Banking.

Let’s return to the question: “How to do Open Banking successfully?” This is feasible with a low amount of risk following the experiences of the API Management providers in other countries, namely the UK, Australia, and Europe. The pitfalls are widely understood even if avoiding these obstacles are sometimes uncomfortable for the banks. Read about the future of Open Banking.

API Management vendors and their service provider partners adopt best practices to improve their digital journey for API enablement. This begins with the Discovery of existing APIs, the Design of meaningful APIs, Deployment of APIs with ease, and Operating APIs with a consumer focus.

Open Banking specifications can help to find the right APIs and set a governance framework for financial service providers.

Banking and Financial Services are an ever-changing industry. Learn about the latest updates to the industry and how Axway helps FSI companies achieve more.