Banks, be bold! A step-by-step guide to moving from legacy to open banking

Abstract

This paper shares the experience of Hellenic Bank in pursuing revenue opportunities by forming strategic alliances to leverage diverse knowledge and capabilities to build value for customers at pace. To get there, the bank has embraced the idea that it cannot do it all itself, and that there are significant advantages to partnerships with others. In this way, the bank has been able to benefit from the agile expertise of third parties while contributing its resources and experience. In two years, it has managed to transform itself from a traditional, legacy system bank to a bank with a leading position in innovation. This proves that the banks that will lead as disruptors are those that adopt a new ‘ecosystem’ approach to banking services and technology development, rather than going it alone. According to the World Retail Banking Report 2017, 1 91.3 per cent of banks and 75.3 per cent of FinTechs expect to partner with each other in the future. Open banking, as its name suggests, is a great way to start. As stated elsewhere, 2 application programming interfaces (APIs) can be an important enabler to ensure frictionless partner integration. They facilitate innovation by allowing third parties to build entirely new apps that can be combined with the bank’s products, services, data and processes. And that means that the bank will be able to expand its customer-facing touchpoints in a really efficient way.