Latest Retail banking reports and research: Finextra Research

Report

Embracing Open Banking with Secure and Interconnected APIs

In financial services today, data is an asset. But only if it can be accessed, transformed and integrated securely into internal and external ecosystems. In the world of open banking the definitions of competitor, partner and customer are blurring. It is particularly important for financial institutions to have a cohesive strategy to manage the integrations that tie together their systems from back office to customer-facing channels. This needs to happen across lines of business and international operations, and be able to expose functionality and data to build innovative new services with third parties. Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have become the most accepted method for building systematic connecting points between an organisation and the outside world. They are often used internally as well, alongside more traditional internal integration patterns such as file transfers and middleware. The widespread use of APIs has led some to talk of the “API economy” as a way to describe the new business models emerging. Large organisations are transforming themselves to compete and partner with new service entrants such as aggregators while start-ups create new businesses by combining functionality provided by APIs from multiple sources. There are many drivers for organisations to develop an effective API strategy. Within financial institutions from the board level down there is pressure to continually modernise and embrace digital transformation to optimise costs, become more efficient at developing new products and services and boost revenue from customers that expect better, faster, anywhere/anytime service.

20 December 2019 646 downloads

Report

How to Protect and Grow in the Fintech Industry

A 3-Step Guide to Generating Revenue and Becoming Profitable. A monetisation strategy must be devised so that the company can decide what value will be created and who will pay, whether it is the customer, thirdparties that want access to the consumer or third-party beneficiaries who can derive value from the user. There is no universal formula for success that can work across all business models. The most common way of generating revenue is charging consumers. This would work well in a startup model as these organisations are unencumbered by legacy infrastructure and cost structures, so new financial services entrants can charge fees that are lower than what customers are accustomed to paying, while at the same time, continuing to create better user experiences. However, untrusting customers want more than a better customer experience and companies need to establish revenue sources that can be diversified over time. Additionally, financial services providers must give their customers a reason to bank with them and this can be done by ensuring defences are built against financial crime, providing analytically driven decisions and streamlining the lending process. With this in mind, there are three important steps to be taken to proceed towards long term profitability.

09 December 2019 426 downloads

Report

How European Retail Banks are Riding the Wave of New Technology

Retail banking is in the midst of change and technology is driving transformation, connecting physical and digital environments. Incumbent banks, challengers and neobanks are also focused on developing online and mobile banking services to meet the needs of the consumer, like the chatbot for retail customers, a conversational banking platform that most financial institutions (FIs) have launched. What retail banks are doing is challenging the status quo by adopting emerging technologies to combat issues that traditional financial institutions have faced for decades. This is just a drop in the ocean of the digital transformation that is to come.

18 November 2019 747 downloads

Report

The Future of Banking is Open

The open banking dialogue has at last moved on from compliance concerns and turned to what opportunities, as well as challenges, exist for banks. 2019 could be the year that open banking takes hold but only if banks are able to deliver value-added, premium services via application programming interfaces (APIs). These tools are still in their early stages of development but through robust testing, more standardisation, intelligent use of data and partnerships, banks can develop services that both enhance the user experience and generate new sources of revenue. Banks should be looking at what valuable services they can actually charge for, what services go beyond data capture and money movement and involve new lines of revenue – from online FX wallets to digital banking. They should also look at areas such as corporate banking that are ripe for disruption given that the current dashboard services on offer are typically basic and static. Download this new whitepaper from Finextra, in association with Token, as we explore the shift towards ‘premium’ API-driven banking culture, what drivers and challenges are shaping the developments, and what the new wave of open banking products and services might look like.

29 July 2019 1192 downloads

Report

The Critical Change You Need to Make to your Customer Engagement Strategy

Retail banking is currently undergoing a period of unprecedented disruption from a combination of new market entrants (challenger / digital banks and fintechs), demanding tech-savvy customers, regulatory change and the need to focus on cost reduction and efficiency. Additionally, there is a growing customer perception that banks are no longer relevant to their daily lives. This paper, produced by Finextra Research in association with Diebold Nixdorf, identifies the key challenges of a new future-proof strategy for retail banking and provide practical examples of what banks around the world are doing about them. The paper is supported with insights and information obtained at DN’s International Management Seminar 2018 (IMS 2018), held in Lisbon on 8th – 10th October and titled ‘Revitalise Retail Banking Agility - Embrace the Larger Ecosystem’ and contains 13 videos and multiple real cases from leading banks including BBVA and BPI. Drawing on presentations given at Diebold Nixdorf International Management Seminar by a diverse group of top bank executives, the paper explores the following themes: The key market trends forcing banks to accelerate their pace of change The need to create seamless consumer journeys that transcend a single physical or digital channel The agile innovation approaches and new philosophies on operational excellence and service delivery that are driving successful transformation programmes in real-world settings How the ultimate prize for a bank is to use regulatory changes such as Open Banking and PSD2 to position itself at the centre of a Connected Commerce ecosystem comprising a variety of partners – assuring the bank’s continued relevance to the key journeys of their customers.

27 November 2018 756 downloads

Survey

Payments Transformation: Jostling for Position in the New Digital Landscape

The world is moving ever faster. The willingness of consumers and businesses to tolerate any delay or inconvenience is rapidly approaching zero. Fintechs are entering the market at record pace with a focus on taking profits from any inefficient market. The banking industry is starting to move. From the rapid rise of instant payments to SWIFT gpi, banks are forming a competitive response to these market forces gaining market and mind-share. Download our fourth annual research paper by Finextra in association with Fiserv on the state of the payments market and the competitive challenges and pressures. It focuses on the challenges banks face in building intelligent experiences for their corporate and retail clients to meet their increasing expectation of speed, seamlessness and security. The survey sets out the various aspects of banks transitioning to meet the opportunities and challenges of the ‘faster / instant’ world; the market context (new competitors, new regulations, operation and technologies) with which the banks are contending, the key issues around instant payments and building the business case to support the investment required. This information is supplemented by a look at what’s happening with blockchain and distributed ledger technology. The research was undertaken in September 2018 and is based on a survey of over 100 financial services professionals from around the world.

24 October 2018 1522 downloads