• Why banks can trust the cloud and how fintechs can be trusted by deploying bank grade security

Although the cloud has certainly been around longer than any of us – and I enjoy a glimpse into infinity every time I fly - when we use the word these days in a business setting, we do refer to a real – yet intangible – environment where we host and share technology and data. As early as 1989 Apple set up a project to look into the next generation of computing whereby consumer electronics companies, computer and telecommunications companies had to collaborate. This resulted in a spin-off in which Andy Hertzfeld played a huge part and a few years later he wrote the now famous words on his invention Telescript:  “The beauty is that now instead of just having a device to program, we now have the entire Cloud out there, where a single program can go and travel to many different sources of information and create sort of a virtual service.”

Fast forward to the early years of 2000 when large enterprises started to explore cloud benefits. Needless to say, banks were not amongst the first movers. Risk averse and tightly regulated by parties, who for many good reasons are not normally known for breaking frontiers either, we cannot blame them. Yet, soon we saw banks starting to move non-customer centric or lower risk functions to various forms of private, hybrid and later public cloud.

Time to focus on the SME – embracing your business customers - the way they want – through your bank

The debate around Open Banking and its opportunities tends to go in two directions: the FinTech unicorns, a dialogue fuelled by the fintech community itself and the investors buzzing around the space and on the other hand, ‘Who will survive?’ the bank versus fintech/bigtech debate. Surprisingly the customer, despite age long expressions of customer centricity does not feature in either very prominently. And if one dives deeper, beyond the consumer level very little, by comparison, is heard.

On one of the quieter rainy summer days I got the clean-up bug. Time to empty the attic and say goodbye to old files, stuff really. The mobile shredder service was ordered, and boxes hailed down a number of very steep Dutch stairs. Physical exercise combined with a mental clearing out is a great way to reset during the holiday.

What SME bankers can learn from the recent Bain NPS Consumer Banking study: “In Search of Customers Who Love Their Bank”.

BankiFi features in the Paypers Open Banking Report on Tangible Value in Open Business Banking for Banks and Entrepreneurs

The Open Banking Report 2018 focuses on topics such as building trust, gaining consent and improving customer experience in Open Banking.

Read the fine points of how open business banking is good business for banks and entrepreneurs in our contribution to the Open Banking Report : "Tangible Value in Open Business Banking for Banks and Entrepreneurs".

 

PocketCollector available to streamline invoice issuance, payment and collection for the SME segment

Manchester/Amsterdam, 26 September 2018 – Today at the opening of EuroFinance in Geneva, BankiFi launches a new solution to support the needs of business banking customers instantly. The PocketCollector solution is available as a stand-alone service or as part of BankiFi’s consent driven multi-bank aggregator platform that forms the foundation for a range of value add business banking solutions. The company, founded by Mark Hartley and Conny Dorrestijn, aims to ready banks and other financial institutions for a new open banking world order.

Why and how banks can win in an open eco system
 

Meander with the ‘insatiably curious’ Conny through the Open Banking world: why banking and personal relationships fail or succeed, why trust is behaviour and not a word and how explicit consent might well turn out to be the active trust button banks have been looking for.

The bonding powers of free consent in relationships

Trust is in the end of the day the only real asset banks can offer their customers… Everyone agrees. Trust is the essential backbone of a happy relationship, be it a loving relationship as partners or lasting friendship. So far no one disagrees.Where it becomes tricky is in finding out how one translates trust into actions, from intention to active management.

Inside-Out bank focus & Outside-In partner focus: less risk, less cost, more speed

Now that we have hit the start button on Open Banking there has been plenty of debate and discussion around who will be the winners and losers. The majority of the discussion centres around the open ends, the security & data concerns and how regulators & banks are not ready for this brave new world. So once again, we swap out the opportunity for the threats for they are now top of mind. However, one then risks losing the strategic focus. I, for one, firmly believe that Open Banking is an opportunity, and not just because of the most obvious reason: the customer will most likely trust banks over other third party providers, not to mention the hate of hassle and change.

So, January 13th 2018 came and went and as we sit in early spring there has been not much more than a trickle of providers and customers making use of Open Banking and PSD2. One could argue that the reasons behind the somewhat underwhelming uptake is due to some of the big banks in the UK not being ready, and in Europe as a whole nothing will really happen until the RTS’ (Regulatory Technical Standards) come into force, sometime next year.