Industry after industry realises the importance of customer focus, digitalisation, collaboration and the focus on data.
The purpose of Open Banking is to facilitate more choice and better services for customers, both retail and business customers, an intelligent empowerment and to create a stronger economy. Open banking is an umbrella term that includes regulatory changes, open data, enabling digital technology and new innovative services.
Even if the financial services industry have been quite digitalised for a long time, their focus on customer, data and collaboration still have quite some steps to go.
When industries are not moving forward fast enough for the benefit of customers, regulators are sometimes stepping in, as they have done in financial services industries. Technology is also giving opportunities to service customers in much more intelligent ways. In financial services this all comes together under the name of Open Banking, in regulation term called PSD2. This transformational trend Open Banking will not only impact customers and their banks, but also major tech companies, life and pension insurance, public pension providers, fund management, retail, transportation, real estate, life style offering providers and more.
We will shortly discuss, explore and debate Open Banking, on an Open Banking Event hosted by FCG with more than 200 participants, which I have the pleasure to moderate. The event hosts experts and thought leaders as Gustaf Haag from Nordnet, Ulrica Claesson from Nordea, Lotta Lovén from Swedbank, Rikard Josefsson from Avanza, Simon Edström from Instantor, Patrik Göthlin from Bambora, Johannes Ivarsson from Smart Refill and Joel Nissess and Mikael Forsblom from FCG.
As the transformational trend Open Banking is in its startup phase many sources are contributing to insights being developed, a lot of startup companies are entering the scene, even if we as customers are yet to see the major benefits.
There are several players that could drive the market shift, as major tech, banking, FinTech or retail industries identified here “Four potential scenarios for the future of open banking” (AtKearney, 2017)
Sweden as a country is spearheading the Open Banking movement in the world, both in terms of Readiness and in terms of Potential as identified in a comprehensive World Payments Report (BNP Paribas and Cap Gemini, 2018)
And for a great deep dive with academic base, we can learn more in this book written by my two research colleagues Robin Teigland, Anthony Larson and team “The Rise and Development of FinTech: Accounts of Disruption from Sweden and Beyond”
Whatever happens, it will take proactive, brave and insightful digitally competent leadership to take part of the upcoming transformation, and at Digoshen we have seen other industries getting into the turmoil of digital disruption before. So it is time to start moving, and keep your eyes at the customer.
Open Banking is a broad transformational topic about Open Data, Trust and New Services entering the lives of us as customers, as well as impacting financial services, FinTech’s and many other industries. And the conversation has just started. Looking forward for FCG and us taking part of that conversation!