On 8 October 2020, Julian Schillinger spoke at the apidays Live Hong Kong Conference where he shared an insightful presentation on the future of banking. With a key focus on APIs and open banking, here are some of the key takeaways from his session.

Financial Institutions to Become Platforms
It’s all about platformification being key to the future of banking. For instance, specialisation is needed for banks to provide specific products or services. With that said, platform businesses play the role of digital matchmakers that help to facilitate interactions across a large number of participants. For example,

Whether it’s short-term transactions such as connecting buyers to sellers or longer-term collaborations, the interactions allows platforms to add value to its users and hence, attract more users through co-creation of value.

Financial Institutions and FinTechs to Become Part of Platforms
With banks’ growing need to connect to platforms, this also calls the need for smaller, more specialised providers. For example, data providers, account aggregators and quant services (such as Prive) enable these connectivities and ecosystems by building bridges for banks.

Financial Institutions Need to Develop API-First Thinking
To benefit from APIs, banks and financial institutions would need to develop and API-first approach to product development. An API-first approach provides many benefits including:

• - Reusability: Transforms all infrastructure into reusable components
• - Partnerships: Enables new business partnerships to form
• - Indirect: Open data and open source breeds innovation
• - API-as-a-Product: Banking-as-a-service can be monetised as a product
  
  

In A Nutshell
From enabling financial institutions to connect with businesses or enhance the products already offered, APIs could potentially transform the future of banking.