Today we have technological prerequisites to raise the topic of open banking interoperability. Cloud infrastructure and cloud-based solutions are becoming more widespread in the financial sector, enabling API integrations. Regulatory push with the PSD2 directive and some standardization initiatives (like ISO20022) in the long run should bring positive effects for the financial sector.
Katalin Kauzli (CharlieIndia), during our latest CEE22 SME Banking Conference, gave a speech on why it’s important for banks. Open data ecosystems are the future, interoperability will decrease the efforts of integrations of different TPP solutions, as it’s much easier to exchange standardized data, and banks will be able to focus more on business and less on the technical side integrations.
“Interoperability is talking to each other without any barriers and additional efforts!”– said Katalin.
Watch full Katalin’s speech:
After that John Mark Williams (The Institute of Leadership and Management) started a panel discussion on Interoperability and Open Banking, for which he and Katalin were joined by Anna Kowalik (CRIF Poland), Pavel Ramert (CRIF Czech Credit Bureau). The speakers focused their attention on the pros of interoperability and open banking, but also noted the present weaknesses which should be definitively overcome.
Anna Kowalik mentioned that at the moment banks are rather at the beginning of their journey in open banking, especially for SMEs and other business customers. The technical standards are not harmonized, which is a big obstacle to qualitative implementation. Moreover, third-party providers should be integrated much easier with banks thus offering their services to different customers, including SMEs.
Katalin Kauzli added that PSD2 was supported by implementation guidelines, but the standardization of implementation wasn’t properly done in Europe. John pointed out that there is no global open banking standard.
Pavel Ramert suggested that banks should be motivated for facilitating progress because they have data, knowledge about the customers, and financial power. Katalin agreed that motivation and a desire to make changes are essential. Furthermore, she stressed that from the technical service provider perspective, the banks are slow, but in general they started to provide new services and if they will continue to improve their services, it will be an optimistic scenario for the implementation of open banking.
To learn more details, watch the full Panel recording:
