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Assaf Tayar, Managing Director at BCG Platinion, explains what insurance trends you should be paying close attention to in 2022. 

For businesses to set effective plans and goals, they must have a full understanding of their operating environment, trends and challenges. Of course, while the pandemic has been the obvious major source of disruption to the insurance industry, firms need to reflect more widely on how conditions have impacted their operations. In particular, the pandemic accelerated digital transformation across the world. For the insurance industry, the role of technology across all aspects of the business is essential, especially as more people take up flexible working or decide to work remotely for the foreseeable future. These new developments are forcing business leaders to re-evaluate how their business operations and user experience fit with what customers expect in a technologically advanced world.

In this piece, I share some of the insurance priorities to consider and even respond to this year. 

1. Cloud will become essential

Today, more leaders in the insurance sector now understand the value of cloud computing. In fact, estimates predict that the cloud computing market size will reach $1.2 trillion by 2028. Keeping up means the industry will begin to take a cloud-native approach, like many other industries that are already using the technology as part of their business infrastructure and operations. 

This will come as no surprise to anyone as most of today’s software solutions are cloud-native. Whether it’s to access the plethora of third-party solutions available, improve efficiencies or increase cost savings, this trend will continue to gain momentum. As such, we’ll continue to see insurance companies look for solutions that help them accelerate their cloud migration efforts.

2. InsurTech solutions will lead the way

Just as the banking industry was revolutionised by FinTechs, the insurance industry is joining the digital revolution. InsurTech, this year, will be key to modernising technology stacks to get the most value from IoT, data and cloud, meaning InsurTech will become the norm. 

Yet this means SaaS-based solutions built on APIs will need to be put in place to deliver personalisation on a much greater scale. Due to the level of competition in the market, the modernisation of the insurance industry will continue to grow at a fast pace. The sector's maturity will depend on the richness of solutions InsurTech makes possible. With the most modern, effective systems, this growth will enable businesses to provide convenient and direct value propositions to both customers and clients.

3. A wider ecosystem will be API driven

More and more new platforms are being built daily and we’re already seeing the development of microinsurance products that can be plugged into different marketplaces. As a result, this drives product simplicity, as well as ensures focused customer engagement and services.

The acceleration of this trend will continue in 2022 and the insurance sector will take a larger role in this wider technology ecosystem. Next, the focus for business leaders will be to gain value from the technology, which will require better use of APIs and the development of partnerships with open architecture. For example, with health insurance like Vitality, premiums are flexible if customers make healthier lifestyle choices, like going to the gym regularly. It’s here that open APIs are vital to track and verify customers’ patterns, for example through connecting to customers' fitness apps. In some parts of Europe, this has already begun to happen and will become even more prominent in 2022. 

4. Data management will be used at scale

According to the Global Consumer State of Mind Report 2021 by Trūata, 76% of global consumers believe that brands need to do more to protect their data. And the need to have effective and efficient solutions to cope with GDPR, cybersecurity and the like, when managing data has never been more crucial. 

Insurance organisations will start to see huge benefits from using data platforms once they’ve moved their IT infrastructure to the cloud. Although there won’t be an explosion of new technologies in this area, we’ll see insurance companies deploying more effective solutions at scale and leveraging it to fulfil its true potential in 2022.

5. Cryptocurrency payments will continue to surge

Our financial ecosystem is currently undergoing an evolution and insurance organisations are developing and embedding into tech more than ever. Currently, some insurance players are building payment mechanisms by leveraging crypto solutions, while others offer cryptocurrency protection. For instance, in the US, auto insurance company Metromile announced it will soon let customers pay with cryptocurrency and even receive pay-outs in digital currency. 

In 2022, there will be even more growth in technologies that enable alternative ways of making payments. We’ll start to see smaller players in InsurTech provide instant payments that don’t even exist right now. It will still take time for there to be a global cryptocurrency market, but blockchain will continue to provide new opportunities that will impact the insurance industry.

6. Working with other industries will remain important

Insurance has played an important part in several different industries, but this will increase in 2022 for the automotive and healthcare industries specifically.

In the automotive industry, many modern cars have various IoT sensors which collect data on how a car travels. The telematics of the data is embedded in the car, meaning data can be sent back to relevant organisations – such as an insurance company – if an accident were to occur. Over time, this technology and data will continue to grow and insurers will have a much more sophisticated approach. Here, AI will play a big role, and this will be driven by the insurance sector.

There’s also a huge opportunity in the healthcare industry. There is a growing ecosystem of services and devices available to help individuals live a healthy life and recent findings from CCS Insight suggest that Covid-19 led to a 20% growth in smartwatches. As more products enter the market, having the right solutions to store and process data and ensure it’s compliant, will be key. 

Karoline Gore gives Finance Monthly an overview of promising Candian fintechs to look out for.

With the rest of the world sprinting toward the inclusivity and diversity of fintech, Canada is catching up swiftly. It is the inclusivity of cashless transactions and peer-to-peer lending, in particular, that are catching the attention of the Canadian market. So it isn’t surprising that Canadian fintech is now attracting a rather diverse age demographic with 46% of them being over the age of 40, according to TransUnion Canada.

In response to this growing demographic, Canadian fintech companies are rolling out some very exciting developments. So which companies are making a splash, and how?

Talem Health Analytics and Ownest Financial

Two Canadian fintech companies are front and center in Holt FinTech Accelerator’s 2020 Cohort list. Talem Health Analytics, based in Nova Scotia, has helped insurers streamline data and empowered them to detect and avoid fraudulent attempts through their AI injury causation tool. They also help insurance firms map out rather accurate recovery trajectories so they can better develop plans to suit their clients. The Calgary-based Ownest Financial that cut down the internal processing time of their partner lenders by 90%. They partnered up with 125 Canadian lender companies to give consumers an easier time to shop around for mortgages, personal loans, and even car financing, to mention a few. They also boast that their clients need about 70% less paperwork, making the whole lending experience swifter and less complicated.

MindBridge’s AI Reducing Financial Risk

Surprisingly, only 45% of consumers feel confident that they can spot and identify errors in financial statements before turning them into reports, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. The Canadian fintech MindBridge has developed an AI that rapidly scans and identifies anomalies in financial statements and reports. This helps organizations and consumers reduce their financial risk and avoid damaging credit scores. MindBridge’s AI is effectively transforming how accounting can be done, streamlining the auditing process, and improving financial management for businesses and their owners, and private consumers.

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AptPay’s Faster Cash Disbursement

The Canadian fintech AptPay is making a splash in the UK. They’ve partnered up with Mastercard to facilitate an accelerated cash disbursement processing for businesses in various industries and sectors. It is through AptPay’s Application Programming Interface (API), that companies and businesses can integrate Mastercard Send to start payouts. Through AptPay’s compliance services, businesses and their employees can be assured that their transactions are secure and are compliant with the rules set for their particular industries. The API will also enable real-time digital payments that can be linked to banks. The best feature is that payments can be rejected, approved, and reversed by recipients—so they are not simply inert in the whole process.

As consumers and businesses are fully realizing the convenience, inclusivity, and safety of cashless transactions, it is the job of fintech companies to provide better services and processes. Thankfully, Canadian fintech is paying attention and is setting its own trends through its developments and initiatives. The coming months will be a truly exciting time for Canadian fintech and consumers should pay attention.

Simon De Broise, Senior Associate at Collyer Bristow, examines the likely impact of the acquisition on the two companies and the financial sector as a whole.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority recently cleared the global card network Visa’s acquisition of Plaid, a US-based fintech, whose primary business is to act as an ‘aggregator’ in the payments sector. The deal, first announced in January of this year, is another interesting tie-up between a fintech and one of the established card networks, and the jury is out on whether this move will help or hinder the open banking movement. The acquisition comes at a somewhat difficult time for Visa, as we recently learned that it is being investigated by the European Commission after complaints of anti-competitive behaviour from e-money providers.

Plaid’s aggregator business provides third-party apps and financial institutions with secure access to consumers’ bank accounts, either by means of the aggregator entering into Application Programming Interface (or API) agreements with the consumer’s bank or by managing the consumer’s banking login details directly (a method that banks are now clamping down on for obvious security reasons).

The benefits of this deal for Plaid are plain to see. The aggregator market is competitive and the issuing banks (i.e. those ultimately sending payments from consumers’ accounts) are in a strong position to decide how and when, and with whom, they do business. For instance, the ‘scraping’ of consumers’ online banking details by aggregators for use with other institutions is increasingly considered by banks to be unnecessarily risky from a data security point of view. This means aggregators entering into an API agreement, which are notoriously difficult for aggregators to negotiate, and so the tie up with Visa is likely to put Plaid in a much stronger negotiating position when it comes to doing business with the large retail banks.

The aggregator market is competitive and the issuing banks (i.e. those ultimately sending payments from consumers’ accounts) are in a strong position to decide how and when, and with whom, they do business.

How the deal benefits Visa is more difficult to see. This is certainly not the first time that Visa has made a relatively large investment in a fintech company – it took a stake in the hugely successful Klarna in 2017 - but, in the scheme of Visa’s existing customer base and market share, the purchase of Plaid seems unlikely to have a big impact on the business. One view is that Visa is positioning itself for the greater adoption of ‘open banking’ (the idea that consumers and SMEs allow financial institutions access to some, or all, of their banking data, which in turn provides them with more advantageous terms on certain products and services). As noted above, this would certainly boost Plaid’s power in the market, in particular when dealing with retail banks, and some suggest that this could lead to a more standardised approach to agreeing APIs, thereby making it easier for other participants also and facilitating the development of open banking more generally.

Another view is that the acquisition has little to do with facilitating open banking for all, but rather that Visa is attempting to control the development of open banking in a way that suits its strategic goal of becoming the ‘network of networks’. The argument goes that the purchase of Plaid simply provides Visa with a further avenue through which to channel its existing business - which is to earn revenue from payment transactions. Precisely how it might do this is not yet clear, but it is quite possible that Visa could introduce a revenue raising measure that is something similar to the interchange fees that are currently levied on card payments.

The European Commission’s investigation into Visa may or may not impact on its strategy for Plaid, but, in any event, how Visa develops it aggregator business will be watched closely in the payments sector. Banks, whilst still in a relatively strong position to dictate business terms, will be conscious that the game has changed somewhat given the scale that Visa can now apply to Plaid’s business operations. Others in the sector, fellow aggregators in particular, will hope that the direction of travel will eventually provide them easier access to banking data and, with it, further opportunities in the open banking market.

Jan van Vonno, Research Director at Tink, looks more deeply into the trends currently altering Europe's financial sector.

Convenience and ease have become the new normal for consumers and the demand for better, more personalised digital experiences in the financial industry has skyrocketed. Thanks to PSD2 and the UK's Retail Banking Market Investigation Order, Europe has been leading the way with its open banking initiatives — representing the beginning of a journey to democratise money management, empowering everyone to access the right products and services to meet their financial needs.

Over the last few months, Tink has been reporting on the attitudes and sentiment of Europe’s financial institutions towards open banking, with our research revealing that 61% of financial executives feel more positive towards open banking than last year.

This is extremely encouraging — particularly considering the current climate we find ourselves in. With COVID-19 accelerating the shift toward digital channels, we expect this positivity to continue to grow as more financial institutions concentrate on the digital transformation of products and services.

However, our research also revealed that 46% of financial executives aren’t confident that the benefits of open banking are widely understood within their organisations. So clearly the industry has more work to do. To reap the full rewards of open banking, it’s essential for financial institutions to remain nimble, open-minded and strategic in their approach. Here are three things they can focus on.

Thanks to PSD2 and the UK's Retail Banking Market Investigation Order, Europe has been leading the way with its open banking initiatives.

Create a clear open banking strategy

Adoption of open banking starts with the belief that it will create value. Once financial institutions embrace this, the next step is to implement a clear and detailed open banking strategy which can be translated into concrete business objectives.

To do this, they need to embrace change — educating people at all levels of their organisation on the benefits of open banking and incorporating it into the product, service and technology roadmaps of their business. Thankfully, 59% of respondents indicate that they already have a clear strategy in place, while 58% view open banking as an opportunity.

It is important that financial institutions also look to embrace the role of a TPP — consuming APIs to enhance their current products and operations and leveraging the available data to improve customer acquisition, accelerate onboarding, increase conversion, lower risk, and improve customer satisfaction rates. A great example of a company that is doing just this, is Nordea — who are going beyond PSD2 and aggregating all their data (e.g. investment, savings etc). In addition to this, they have successfully created a business-to-developer (B2D) open banking strategy to produce APIs and create better solutions for their customers.

It’s important to note that while some financial institutions approach open banking as a long-term strategic play, there are also a growing number who see the opportunity for short-term, quick-win value creation. There is no right or wrong way to approach this as both offer their own rewards. Ultimately, the most likely scenario is that financial institutions’ open banking journeys will begin with more elementary open banking use cases, eventually evolving into more sophisticated use cases over time.

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Allocate budget (no matter how large) wisely

While the positive shift in attitudes is a solid indication of the importance of open banking, it doesn’t fully reflect the significance of the movement. The real proof is in increasing budgets that are being invested in open banking initiatives across Europe as the industry mindset moves from compliance to value creation. According to our data, open banking investment budgets for European financial institutions are typically between €50-€100 million, with 63% saying open banking budgets have grown since last year, with annual spending rising by between 20%-29%.

Of course, not all financial institution decision-makers have access to this level of budget. The key here is to focus on the low-hanging fruit and taking advantage of open banking by operating as a TPP. In doing so, executives can experiment with elementary use cases with clear outcomes before proceeding on to more advanced and exploratory use cases. In addition to this, creating an open banking scorecard can help measure the impact of investments and set clear parameters that help to navigate the open banking journey.

While the positive shift in attitudes is a solid indication of the importance of open banking, it doesn’t fully reflect the significance of the movement.

Forge fintech partnerships

What became clear through our research is that the general confidence in open banking isn’t purely reflected by the understanding of the opportunity it offers, the strategy, or the sum of investments. It’s also indicated by the number of partnerships that financial institutions have formed with fintechs to help accelerate innovation and realise their objectives. 69% have increased their number of fintech partnerships in 2019, while the majority of executives are also working with more than one partner.

Such partnerships are invaluable, as they can provide financial institutions with the technology, expertise and vision to drive open banking value creation — creating both short and long term value for financial institutions and, in turn, for their customers. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that in order for partnerships to truly work, fintechs must be able to navigate the complicated procurement process and onboarding requirements that many larger banks have in place.

What it boils down to, is this: 2020 will be the year of value creation as the industry starts accepting there is considerable money to be made in open banking. The winners will be the banks that place a relentless focus on building clear strategies, using existing budgets wisely and prioritising fintech partnerships. This, in turn, will lead to a host of new use cases springing up across the customer journey — with institutions leveraging open banking data to improve customer acquisition, accelerate onboarding, increase conversion, lower risk, and improve customer satisfaction rates.

A huge opportunity lies ahead; the benefits of open banking are now ripe for the picking.

So why did blockchain adoption take so long compared to other new technologies such as cloud and AI? The slow adoption in highly regulated, complex markets such as the financial services industry shouldn’t come as a surprise. Blockchain is suited for complex, collaborative, multi-party, and critical application use-cases. This is another big reason why blockchain adoption has taken much longer than some predicted, as Rob Coole, VP of Cloud Technologies at IPC, explains below.

Next-generation blockchain

Next-generation blockchain organisations are leading the way showing how the technology can be used intelligently for the world we live in today. For example, R3, an enterprise software company, is working with an ecosystem of over 200 financial institutions, regulators, trade associations, professional services and technology companies to develop Corda, a Blockchain platform designed specifically for businesses to deliver two interoperable and fully compatible distributions of the platform that addresses issues such as transactional certainty, data privacy, and scalability limitations.

Gartner predicts that blockchain will be fully scalable by 2023. IPC’s sense of the future of blockchain, particularly in the enterprise space, is just as positive. We are seeing customers truly learning about the practical reasons to deploy, leading to more investment in time and money in blockchain.

Importance of complementary partnerships

Both application service providers and subscribers should partner with service and product providers at an operational level integration to be ahead in the blockchain curve.  Real value is provided with the integration and support from the hyper-scale platform community such as Microsoft Azure and AWS together with open industry platforms, such as IPC’s Connexus Hub, that creates end-to-end solutions that solve business problems. The importance here is APIs. We believe in a API partner integration approach which gives institutions the ability to easily access data, provide insights and inspire innovation for the market need.

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Service providers, like IPC, can play a critical role here by supporting operationalisation in the systems-oriented context. Such providers are a natural connector embedding connectivity to key market participants. IPC, for example, enables access to all asset classes with over 2,000 sell-side firms, 4,000 buy-side firm and 75+ exchanges in its vast, diverse ecosystem.

What’s next?

COVID-19 has provided a ‘new normal’ that is impacting every aspect of our lives. Though this pandemic is devastating from a health, societal and economic perspective, blockchain may help the global economy rebound. The World Economic Forum believes technology such as blockchain “will benefit all countries currently impacted by COVID-19”, as it provides an efficient approach to reduce trade cost on a global scale.

Digital initiatives such as blockchain is non-partisan and open to all which allows users to act quickly at low cost with low barriers for innovation - all valuable factors in supporting the economy in an economic downturn. So, although blockchain adoption was slow in its early stage, 2020 seems to be the year blockchain comes of age.

Dermot O’Kelly, Senior Vice President, Europe at Finastra

Think your organization hasn’t embraced AI? Think again. The reality is that there are hundreds of applications of artificial intelligence embedded in everyday organizational life. From pay-per-click ads to social listening, chatbots to lead scoring, biometric security to network attack detection. As Europe at Finastra's Senior Vice President Dermot O'Kelley outlines below, the chances are that your organization is already relying heavily on AI for a range of functions. 

It’s true that many of these services may be provided by third parties connecting directly to systems via open APIs. The organization therefore doesn’t need to become the expert. In fact, there is a proliferation of external experts as AI becomes ever more accessible. In less than two years, training time for machine vision algorithms dropped by over 99%. It went from three hours to just 88 seconds – whilst computational costs dropped from ‘thousands of dollars to double-digit figures’.

It therefore comes as no surprise that organizations are looking at how they can benefit from the AI revolution, to help boost areas such as operational efficiency, security, predictive capabilities, product development or customer satisfaction.

In less than two years, training time for machine vision algorithms dropped by over 99%.

Leading the way is the financial services sector, not least because of the vast amounts of data held by legacy organizations, but also in response to the changing expectation of consumers. Tech giants created new models of engagement, platforms that consolidated services and captured data to further fuel predictive capabilities, and this expectation of convenience is now shifting to financial services, where consumers are now more than comfortable with concepts like robo-advisory. Institutions, regardless of whether they’re providing retail services, lending, trade finance, wealth or any other line of business, are racing to adopt similar models without relinquishing customer data.

As data proprietors, the world of opportunity that AI affords any organization is immense. Data is the new currency as we enter the fourth industrial revolution, and all AI applications rely on huge amounts of data to function well. So, why aren’t all organizations rushing to embrace AI?

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The intelligence race continues unabated, with escalating VC investment in AI and new, exciting applications that are having tangible success. Still not sure what Artificial Intelligence can do? Very soon it will be easier to recall the few things the technology can’t do.

Money is a sensitive subject when it comes to the legal world. This is why governments are having a difficult time adjusting their policies to allow the utilization of emerging technologies to enhance traditional financial services. Add to that the boundless possibilities and unexplored scenarios of the results of adopting these technologies, then you have more people opposing the idea instead of championing them.

For instance, many proponents have shown the superiority of using blockchain technology in carrying out cheaper and more secure financial transactions through cryptocurrencies. But until today, most governments still don’t know how to respond to the growing market.

The challenge now lies with traditional finance companies who can only benefit from using these technologies for more efficient systematized operations. If these organizations can adopt these tech while assuring the authorities about the consistent quality and security of the service, they can help speed up the changes in the existing guidelines and policies.

This infographic by Prototype discusses the various technologies that are disrupting the financial industry.

That is why, when the Competition and Markets Authority ordered the implementation of so-called Open Banking almost three years ago, everyone excitedly welcomed the prospect of upstart new banks and other fintech companies using technology to challenge the Big Five. Here Kevin McCallum, CCO at FreeAgent , talks to Finance Monthly about the different ways big banks are making the most of Open Banking.

More than a year after roll-out began, however, it looks more like the little guy is not yet making the inroads expected. In the new Open Banking race, it is the incumbents which are still leading the field.

When the CMA found insufficient competition in banking, it was no surprise - almost 90% of business accounts are concentrated with just four or five institutions, while 60% of personal customers had stayed with their bank for more than a decade.

The central solution was to be Open Banking, starting with requiring banks to allow rivals and third-party services access to customers’ account data - subject, of course, to the necessary permissions. This, the theory went, would spur competition through innovation - we would see banks reduced to interchangeable commodity services, mere infrastructure providers, with nimble, agile third-party services innovating on top, spurring the banks in to action.

In the same timeframe, we have certainly seen the emergence of digital-only challenger banks like Starling, Monzo, Tide and Revolut. While all of them offer 2019 features like savings round-ups, spending analysis, budgeting and merchant recognition, most of the innovation has happened within the walled garden of the traditional account.

Starling and Revolut are already registered for and engaged with Open Banking. Starling is now supported by MoneyDashboard and Raisin UK, while Revolut’s API is supporting connection to many third-party apps. But it’s fair to say the upstarts were expected to dive in to Open Banking faster and deeper than this, some consider them to be behind the curve.

What we have seen, instead, is the big banks leaning heavily in to Open Banking.

HSBC was amongst the first to offer account aggregation, the practice through which consumers can access account data from rival banks, inside a single provider’s own app, initially through a separate Connected Money app.  Barclays, Lloyds and RBS/NatWest have since gone as far as offering the facility inside their core apps.

Of course, the big banks are incentivised to pull in rivals’ account data. Being the first port of call for all finance matters is attractive, whilst account data from other institutions can be used to aid product marketing and lending decisions.

In truth, we have begun to see the first signs of innovation amongst third-party services which plug in to those accounts. CastLight is helping lenders more quickly understand customers’ affordability, Moneybox is helping users round up spending in to savings, Fractal Labs uses knowledge of account activity to help businesses better manage their cash. We have even seen a large bank powering such new-style services in the shape of TSB’s loan comparison service, powered by Funding Options, which surfaces products from across providers.

But, even so, these use cases are not a step-change from the kind we already had before, albeit using less sophisticated methods of data collection. At FreeAgent, where we have offered bank account integration through more rudimentary means for several years now, we sense strong customer demand for efficient, API-driven bank account access. Most onlookers, and digital-savvy customers of the new-wave banks, expected more than this by now.

Why has the pace of Open Banking innovation to date been relatively underwhelming?

First, only the UK’s nine largest banks were mandated by the CMA to make account data available through APIs by the January 2018 deadline.

Ironically, the upstarts have been relatively more free to sit back. Indeed, unlike the legacy holders, they have no burning platform they need to quickly save; for them, the future is growth.

In fact, though, as smaller, less-well-resourced entities, they also have to plan out their investment more carefully than wealthier institutions, rather than dive headlong in to costly initiatives. Monzo is on-record as saying it will embrace the possibilities slowly, exploring whether to build features like account aggregation “in 2019”. When you’re a bank - even a cutting-edge, agile one - move fast and break things is a hard mantra to follow.

Furthermore, actual technical implementation of Open Banking is, shall we say, non-trivial. Adoption is complex, and far more complex for account providers than for third-party accessing services. In many cases, writing native code to enable integrations, whilst it may be considered messy, has been more straightforward than adopting Open Banking APIs.

Finally, the big banks, the “CMA 9”, have pushed compliance with Open Banking right down to the wire. Whilst they have been first to the punch, had they managed to launch sooner it may have encouraged the upstarts to compete more quickly.

It won’t stay like this forever. The Open Banking timeline has been an ironic inversion of the class of companies we typically expect to be canaries in the mineshaft of technical trailblazing. But banking innovation is about to become more evenly distributed as the balance between big guns and small players levels out.

From September, all banks, even the smaller ones, must be compliant with Open Banking standards. That is going to be an interesting moment for the new wave - can you really be considered the plucky upstart when you are subject to the same compliance framework as the lumbering giants?

Further regulatory compulsions on the big banks - and one in particular - could further spread Open Banking innovation downstream.

As part of conditions attached to its £45 billion government bail-out during the banking crisis, RBS has been compelled to funnel £700 million in previous state aid in to measures supporting business banking competition.

This so-called Alternative Remedies Package includes several pots of innovation funds, and the scheme’s independent administrator has just made the first innovation awards - £120 million to Metro Bank, £100 million to Starling, £60 million to ClearBank. Metro is promising “radically different” business banking, including “in-store debit card printing, lightning-fast lending decisions, fully digital on-boarding, integrated tax”; Starling says it will build “full suite of 52 digital banking products to meet the needs of all sole traders, micro businesses and small SME businesses”.

Even more awards are due to be made through 2019, likely spurring new use cases for Open Banking, and more besides, that many had not yet dreamed of. This level of funding is going to be an enormous catalyst for the kinds of companies that are really well placed to deliver.

The pace of technology adoption doesn’t always happen as quickly as it sometimes can feel.

Sometimes a great idea can take a long time to bubble up and gain widespread adoption. Shortly after the invention of the horseless carriage, Michigan Savings Bank is said to have forecast: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty - a fad.”

Technology becomes successful when innovation becomes normalised, when enough adoption has been seen that what, once, was considered new fades away and becomes part of the furniture.

Although we have spent the last couple of years talking about the Open Banking initiative, and although its roll-out has been slower than expected, this should not distract us from the likelihood that, in a short while, the innovation and adoption cycle around it will have accelerated to the extent we see many, many new use cases all around us spurring more services and more competition.

The ultimate test of Open Banking, then, will not be who is first to market - it will be when we no longer talk about it at all.

As an enabler for increased competition and customer choice, open banking is transforming the banking sector for consumers, challenger banks, FinTechs and traditional players alike. The UK’s version of the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), open banking is forcing UK banks to open their data sets via secure application programming interfaces (APIs), resulting in them re-positioning their services away from being one-stop shops for financial products, to open platforms, where consumers can embrace a more modular approach to banking by allowing third parties to access their financial data directly.

As we enter the second full year of an open banking environment, Kevin Day, CEO of HPD Software, the asset based lending and factoring software platform, discusses the opportunities and challenges that the sector is likely to face in 2019. 

Rapid and significant innovation in financial services to grow the market considerably

Open banking’s data sharing rules are aimed at developing new technologies and innovation, which have been advancing at a rapid pace, and which is expected to continue, resulting in increased competition between banking providers and FinTechs. The open API data, which includes account aggregation, improved financial management, credit scoring thin-file customers and integrated lending and accounting platforms allows companies to create bespoke products and target potential customers in a completely new way.

Through such innovation, customers will be able to quickly compare accounts, helping them to understand where to find the most suitable products. Financial management meanwhile could now be offered by an array of financial service providers, from established banks to charities, in a move that encourages customers to shift from traditional ‘under one roof’ banking services to specific, individualised services that are suitable for their personal financial situation. The potential revenue opportunity across a range of SME and retail customer propositions is estimated by PwC to be £2.3bn at the end of 2018, of which £1.8bn could be cannibalised by existing or new players in the market, with the remaining £0.5bn representing new revenue opportunities. Based on forecasts for adoption across the same markets over the next four years, PwC expects incremental revenue will total £1.3bn, where £5.9bn is ‘revenue at risk’.

A lack of homogenous technical standards may make operating processes susceptible to corruption and companies need to be clear on how they will safeguard their data against fraudulent activity.

Enhanced industry collaboration

Another considerable advantage of open banking is the enhanced industry collaboration that will result from data sharing as providers, traditional banks and FinTech companies will between them be able to offer something that the other cannot. With so many players in the financial services industry, the formation of partnerships between banks and their FinTech competitors will result in increased choice for customers, and will help both players to survive and expand their services in a rapidly evolving industry. Any new products formed through such forward-thinking partnerships will likely see the benefits at both ends of the spectrum.

Traditional customer platforms are going to change

Open banking will enable a new league of consumer profiling that will require minimum effort to find the most relevant information on products and services across the industry that are tailored to their individual needs and history. From personalised investment solutions to retail overdraft decoupling, the shift in data optimisation will become the new normal, altering the way traditional price comparison platforms operate. This movement won’t stop there: bank account and transaction data can provide an opportunity to collaborate across different sectors where retailers, utility providers and tech companies can function together on aggregated data platforms.

Access to consumer data increases responsibility around security

The opportunities created by initiatives such as open banking, which have the potential to transform the industry, of course come with responsibilities, and one of the major challenges will be around managing risks related to security. A lack of homogenous technical standards may make operating processes susceptible to corruption and companies need to be clear on how they will safeguard their data against fraudulent activity. Any major data breach is likely to negatively impact retail customer uptake – many consumers consider their financial data more personal than their medical information. With complex chains of data access, both banks and FinTechs must also consider the obstacles associated with responsibility for any security breaches, and ensure that their software is able to identify, predict and react to risks or breaches in good time.

By bringing third-party providers into the banking system, there is a considerably increased risk of scammers gaining access to customer information.

Liability becomes an issue

By bringing third-party providers into the banking system, there is a considerably increased risk of scammers gaining access to customer information and the finance provider will be liable, unless there is evidence of fraud or negligence. With both banks and FinTechs alike facing increased security threats, without proper legal clarification, it’s inevitable that finance providers will do what is necessary to push liability on third parties.

Open banking is still a relatively new initiative

A lack of awareness and education around the capabilities of open banking will be its greatest challenge in the short term. Finance providers will need to convince customers of the benefits of sharing their data in the first instance, and as yet, banks are not marketing open banking, which directly impacts the ability for it to innovate and provide new propositions.

While the corporate sector and SMEs in particular seem far more willing to embrace open banking, consumer review body Which?, has found that 92% of consumers had never even heard of the initiative. As such, banks and FinTechs need to embark on a considerable education programme for consumers to better understand the benefits of open banking and how it can help them take control of, and better manage their finances, from monitoring spending to making better savings and investment decisions.

For finance providers in the Asset Based Finance space, there are opportunities to leverage efficiencies from open banking, in particular in the area of cash processing with the potential for virtual bank accounts to streamline cash reconciliation. There are also value added services that can be offered to SMEs to assist them with other aspects of running their businesses. Finance providers will need to have an open mind and be prepared to collaborate with FinTechs and other technology providers.

Once banks have stronger propositions to offer their customers, they will become more vocal and the lack of awareness will gradually cease to be an issue. For the financial services industry and new entrants alike, it is important that all parties embark upon this education programme with the proper systems in place for proper levels of monitoring, security and scalability to ensure a success of the industry.

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When it comes to trading globally, banking access and reconciliation can be remarkably complex. Not only do businesses interact with a range of financial institutions to track funds across multiple bank accounts, they are also required to reconcile accounts receivable and payable transactions throughout the global supply chain. Funds may get lost in transfer and invoices can be difficult to reconcile – forcing valuable personnel to deal with unnecessary complexity rather than driving progress.

 

Introduced in January, the UK’s Open Banking initiative changes this. The launch of Open Banking is set to radically change the way consumers, businesses and banks pay and get paid, and how they manage their data. The introduction of a unified Application Programming Interface, or API, across financial institutions creates a foundation in which data can be seamlessly and securely shared in real time.

 

The beginning of an era

While the UK regulations are only mandatory for the top nine banks in the country, the initiative is gaining wider traction. A growing number of UK financial institutions outside the mandated nine banks are volunteering to open their APIs to Account Information Service Providers (AISPs) and Payment Initiation Service Providers (PISPs), recognising the open approach will enable them to offer new services and become more competitive pre settlement funding.

In the new world of Open Banking, an AISP can consolidate reams of bank account statement data and deliver it to the customer in a single interface, making it perfect for treasurers of multi-banked organisations. Payment service users – whether they are individuals or businesses – are now able to instruct their banks or payment service providers to share their bank balance and transaction information with regulated AISPs. In addition to displaying this information on a user-friendly dashboard, the AISP can convert all this transaction data into the required format and send it to the customer’s ERP or Treasury Management System.

Similarly, before the introduction of Open Banking, businesses and consumers would have to log into each bank separately to initiate payments, using different workflows and security protocols. With the advent of Open Banking, individuals or businesses are now able to mandate their multiple banks or payment service providers to accept payment instructions via their PISP’s app.

 

Making things easier for suppliers

Through initiatives such as Open Banking, as well as the New Payments Architecture which aims to modernise the UK payments infrastructure, we’re likely to see the development of modern Inheritance Loans payment services. One innovation to look out for is Request to Pay.  This will see the introduction of sophisticated electronic invoicing into the payment system, making it easier to pay and get paid, with more flexible payment options in terms of timings and partial payments.

Instead of a Direct Debit, where money is simply taken from a bank account, the Request to Pay mechanism will issue a request to the payee. They will have the option to pay in full immediately, pay later or arrange a payment plan. Designed partially to accommodate the trend towards more flexible work and the rise in the ’gig economy’, it offers greater flexibility to individuals and is likely to reduce the risk of non-payment or default.

Where cash flow once existed in a complex ecosystem of different financial systems, businesses will now be able to enjoy greater simplicity. The potential for a single dashboard that unifies all accounts in real time while securely and effectively reconciling invoices with seamless, integrated incentives will help maximise supply chain value.

 

Beyond UK borders

The innovation potential of Open Banking does not stop here. In London, unprecedented levels of collaboration between banks and FinTech providers highlight the mutual benefits of combining a bank’s scale, large customer base and economic muscle with the fast-moving and innovative skills of smaller FinTech firms.

Innovations under way include apps to help consumers find the best investment or borrowing offers in the market, and tools for businesses to manage their cash more efficiently or forecast working capital requirements more effectively. And this is just the start. Competition will intensify with new entrants, offering innovative value propositions and new business models.

Other markets are also directing an API-driven open banking agenda. In Europe, the revised Payment Services Directive, PSD2, was also launched in January 2018 and comes into effect from September 2019. Australia will introduce Open Banking in June 2019 for the country’s Big Four banks. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has announced an Open API Framework which paves the way for banks to share data with third-party providers. Similarly, Canadian authorities are exploring the introduction of Open Banking soon after the launch of its Real Time Rails programme. The Monetary Authority of Singapore is also encouraging banks to adopt a voluntary transition to Open Banking. And in the US, a number of the large banks already voluntarily offer open APIs to third parties, pre-empting the regulators by using APIs as a competitive advantage, rather than mere compliance with a mandatory change.

 

We are seeing the early stages of a seismic industry migration that will come into full force over the next five years. The emergence of innovations with the potential to drive simplicity and increase flexibility are turning a once complex web of financial institutions into unified tools to maximise value creation. At Bottomline Technologies, we thrive on maximising the benefits of innovation, leveraging the UK’s head start to help our global clients fully realise the immense potential of open banking.

 

From AI to all things IoT, Russell Bennett, Chief Technology Officer at Fraedom, discusses with Finance Monthly the top five technologies that are already making waves in the banking sector.

Over the past five years, technology has fundamentally changed how the financial services sector operates. Many retail banks already successfully cater to customers’ digital needs. Business banking is now beginning to follow retail’s lead – and here we outline five of the top technologies transforming commercial banking today.

  1. Biometrics and security

When adopting new payment methodologies, banks must strike a balance between ease-of-use, ease-of-access, and security. We’ve already seen that consumer payment methods using biometric authentication becoming mainstream and it won’t be long before corporate clients expect the same.

Extending this functionality into corporate cards has the potential to make commercial payments more seamless and secure. Mobile wallets that defer to personal attributes to make secure payments on cards offer a potential route forward.

  1. Artificial Intelligence

Automation is dramatically increasing the number of financial transactions in an organisation. However, while it can track and store more processes than humans can – and more accurately – it currently can’t provide the next level service many clients are coming to expect of their financial partners: planning and modelling.1

AI is rapidly establishing itself as the missing piece of the puzzle that takes the data flows created by automated transactions and knits them together to discover patterns. All this is important to commercial banks because patterns in spending and efficiency can potentially deliver valuable insights to help clients improve their financial health.

  1. APIs

Customers’ demands, and expectations are moving rapidly, so there is growing pressure on the banking industry to provide new, easy-to-use, frictionless digital services fast.

Application programming interfaces (APIs) provide the technology to exchange customer data with other parties in a simple and secure way2, facilitating rapid innovation in products and services. Creating new applications such as voice banking, P2P, loan processing and risk management and using APIs as building blocks, is now seen as the best way to keep up with the innovation challenges facing the financial industry.

Fintechs have dominated the API landscape by creating apps that have challenged and often surpassed solutions made by the banking industry.

To keep pace, banks now need to either invest heavily to develop this technology themselves or partner with fintechs in a bid to be more effective and efficient.3 By working together and taking advantage of APIs, banks and fintech firms can enhance the customer experience much more than either entity could do on its own.

  1. ePayables – Crossing over from the Consumer to the Commercial World

The use of different payment types is partly a response to the consumerisation of our financial experience. Corporate clients can’t understand why payments should still be a laborious process of raising invoices and purchase orders, requesting printed cheques or bank transfers and creating lengthy payment terms.

Instead, the immediacy of a card – real, virtual or embedded in an app – ties all the above elements together. It gives unsurpassed traceability and is easy to add to financial management software.

Historically, paying by using a card has been seen as a debt generator. However, using payment cards as a substitute for invoice terms makes them a useful tool both to enhance a company’s working capital positions and to improve traceability, security and the level of control that can be placed on business spend.

  1. Expense Management Systems (EMS)

An Expense Management Systems (EMS) is just one of many tools that can be brought together into a single financial view, helping businesses gain greater control over expenditure. Unlike written expense policies and separate transactional management software, an EMS embeds expense policies into the technology, allowing real-time reconciliation and approvals to take place.

Up to now, retail banking has been ahead of the game in embracing new technologies and digital disruption but corporate banks are now grasping the need to take advantage of the latest technologies to ensure commercial clients reap the same rewards - from workflow efficiencies through to intuitive, mobile first experiences, a trend that is only likely to accelerate in the future.

As of this month, the revised second Payment Services Directive (PSD2) is in force and set to cause significant disruption within the European payments & banking sector. The first and foremost disruption is the possibility of Open Banking, as the legislation now allows a level playing field for PSPs to operate.

From data and cyberattacks to market competition, there are lots of opportunities and challenges to confront, but are Your Thoughts on the prospects of Open Banking? Below Finance Monthly hears from a record number of sources on the introduction of PSD2, each with a different take.

James McMorrow, Head of Payment Strategy, Global Transaction Banking, Lloyds Banking Group:

It is still very early days. Open Banking is now live and we are working with regulated third parties. What’s immediately clear already, from a client perspective, it has laid the groundwork for a range of new financial services solutions for consumers and businesses.

Saying this, it’s still worth noting that we’re still very much at the beginning of the journey in the UK and Europe. PSD2 is now live, but new payment and account types will be added to the API channels throughout 2018 and 2019 to meet regulatory requirements.

However, what these solutions will look like in practice, who will be providing them and the rate at which businesses and consumers will adopt them is not yet clear. An important consideration for the entire financial services industry will be finding the right balance between ensuring customer security and developing an exceptional user experience.

Winston Bond, Technical Director EMEA, Arxan Technologies:

All banks are now required to share their Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, to third-party applications, however, many have still not been advised how to do this securely.

The principal weakness in sharing APIs is the simple authentication that is widely used by most API Management Solutions to confirm that the client app on a device is genuine and, has been authorised to utilise server assets. If a cybercriminal breaks through an app’s security and decompiles its code, they could potentially root out the encryption keys. Attackers can then trick the system into recognising them as a legitimate client, giving them access to anything the API is authorised to connect with.

To prevent attackers from exploiting an API in this way, banks will need to ensure they cannot access the cryptographic keys it uses to authenticate itself, by using code obfuscation, for example.

As we’ve said before, the onus really is going to be on the banks. The PSD2 regulation makes it clear that they are responsible for the ownership, safety and confidentiality of their customers’ account data. Consequently, banks are going to have to do everything they can to maintain their well-founded reputation as leaders in security, including creating a united approach to ‘open banking’ as they work on their own solutions throughout 2018.

Gunnar Nordseth, CEO, Signicat:

By providing their users with a safe way to store identities and offering access to these through an API, banks can leverage the trust they have fought to establish and defend.

Unlike physical identity credentials, such as passports and driving licenses, a bank identity API can expose only the required attributes—a business can ask if someone is who they say they are, where their country of residence is, or prove that they are over 18 without needing access to additional irrelevant information. A focus on identity will offer banks an opportunity where previously there was only challenges.

Ryan Wilk, VP, NuData Security:

While open banking will allow a myriad of services for customers to take advantage of, it will also open them up to third-party vendors and therein lies the challenge. Securing the supply chain so that personal information is protected from attacks will take a herculean effort and one that has not been entirely successful up to this point.

The new European directive mandates the use of strong customer authentication (SCA) – two or more identification elements – to increase customer protection. One of the three pillars of SCA is biometrics technology. Physical biometrics provide a convenient authentication layer for customers, and passive biometrics help institutions detect and avoid screen scraping from third-party providers who try to access customer accounts through the bank interface. With a multi-layered approach that includes passive biometrics financial institutions can block screen scraping and provide a higher level of safety to open banking.

Daniel Hegarty, CEO and Founder, Habito:

Open Banking will be a fantastic innovation for consumers. However, with one in five people in the UK classifying themselves as financially illiterate, it also presents a pressing need to be implemented safely and securely. The consent-based data sharing that Open Banking will bring, will enable many to potentially save thousands per year, for example by simply switching from their standard variable rate mortgage, to a fixed rate product. However correct data management is imperative - low levels of financial literacy, mixed with a new ease of financial information sharing, could put some at risk. Financial services firms need to continue to invest in technology and prioritise safe Open Banking implementation, for the benefit of UK consumers."

Alex Bray, asst. VP of Consumer Banking, Genpact:

While this is a potential goldmine for fintechs which want to revolutionise the banking experience for customers, it poses significant challenges for banks which risk becoming a back-office utilities. In fact, a possible outcome is that banks could end up surrendering their direct customer relationships, becoming a commoditised payment back-ends as new aggregators or payment initiators swoop in. For banks to take advantage of PSD2, they will need to find a balance between openness, privacy and data protection. At the same time, they will need to improve their analytics so they and their customers can make the most of the huge amounts of new data that will become available.

Graham Lloyd, Industry Principal of Financial Services, Pegasystems:

As with all regulation, the unstated issue is what’s coming next in the pipeline, be it PSD3 or some other impactful directive. Beyond scenario planning, responding to the unexpected is all about the ability to change processes and technology rapidly and with minimal disruption. They must regularly redefine what it means to ‘promise’ and ‘deliver’, not just generating rich insights, but selecting the right recommendation and next best action within time and budget constraints. Also, operating models and IT should be quickly and painlessly changeable from a single point.

Jeremy Light, Head of Payment Services, Accenture:

Under the new regulations, banks will have to release customers’ financial data, with their consent by a few clicks online or through a mobile app. We found two thirds of consumers were reluctant to share their details with third party providers, and overwhelmingly trust their bank with financial information. Until new entrants to the financial services sector can earn consumers’ trust, banks can draw on their extensive heritage to secure an important early advantage. But, if banks move too slowly to adapt to the open banking landscape, they risk becoming back-end, transactional players, while retailers and third parties become the face of faster and frictionless payments

Victor Trokoudes, CEO and Co-Founder, Plum:

We anticipate a host of new providers coming to the fore in the wake of Open Banking. But these will be different to traditional banks, acting more like advisors to people’s financial life (from saving, to investing, to finding the right financial products). Users will still use their current provider to transact, but will manage everything else via these new wave of “added value” providers that are focussed on offering services that make their users better off.

Jessica Leitch, Principal, Adaptive Lab:

The biggest problem is that banks will start to lose access to their customers’ data. If you’re transacting purely through say Paypal or any other P2P payment platforms the banks not only can’t see what your spending your money on, they also can’t take advantage of overdraft, FX or other kinds of fees associated with financial transactions.  Losing this also takes away the data the banks use to feed their risk models.  Basically, it has the potential to disrupt the banks current prime account model as well as their payments value chain.

Lorenzo Pellegrino, CEO, Paysafe:

In this new world, fintechs no longer have to work within the limitations of legacy bank infrastructure. Instead, they can grasp the opportunity to refine their user experience, making it even more seamless and frictionless. More to the point, open banking — as well as the faster payments rollout in the UK and EU — may well result in card volumes shifting to online bank transfers, creating an environment ripe for disruption.

We also believe that services that allow users to send funds from their bank account in real time will benefit from these developments. And this holds especially true in Austria and Germany, where over 80% of all transactions are still cash- based.

But it’s not all roses. The price of payments is also intensely competitive. For businesses that have already achieved scale, large volume at low margin makes economic sense. For the rest, there will be a need to differentiate based on the ability to keep transactions as seamless and frictionless as possible.

Christian Ball, Head of Retail Banking, GFT:

The APIs of tomorrow will give banks a means to let customers do complex things quicker, such as apply for mortgages at the swipe of a mobile touch screen.

Our latest research confirms customers are excited by the prospect of more personal services, showing that 67% of them would be more likely to take out a loan with a bank if it came with practical advice unique to them. But to achieve the level of innovation required to stay relevant in an Open Banking world, banks need to be able get their customer data in order. Specifically, they need to get better at processing and segmenting customer data, which can be done through greater understanding of transaction metadata. This data can be described as the holy grail to unlocking the customer experience, and being able to use it properly will enable banks to understand what services customers actually want, and subsequently help to uncover new revenue opportunities.

Alastair Winsey, Regional Director EMEA, Thousand Eyes:

When a business’ network becomes unruly and far-reaching, locating the true origin of a problem, degradation issue or even a DDoS attack can take the best part of a day. This is due to the number of third-party providers that cloud computing ultimately relies upon to create an application ecosystem enabling a wide range of services ranging from payments to text and voice notifications. By providing true instant visibility of a complete network path including corporate networks, the internet and connected APIs and Cloud Provider apps, companies can shrink this time from days to mere hours, enabling them to quickly remedy any problems. The dawn of Open Banking in 2018 will make network health a vital component to business success in the finance industry.

Alexander Beattie, Enterprise Director UK & Ireland, Anomali:

From an overarching cyber security perspective, a major concern is the fast-growing number of new organisations who are now authorised to handle sensitive information. Whereas this data was previously held in the hands of a few well-known and visible organisations, under pressure to adhere to regulatory standards and security measures, now the same data will be shared with numerous other, relatively unknown, untested organisations.

This may create a greater chance for fraudulent activity, as Threat Actors explore the weak links in this new enlarged target-rich environment. Undoubtedly, this plethora of new market entrants will be held accountable and will have to adhere to regulation, to safeguard the security of the data they handle. To ensure this they will be investing heavily in the state-of-the-art cyber security systems and processes to try and stay ahead of the curve.

Nick Caley, VP financial services and regulatory, ForgeRock:

PSD2 and Open Banking will democratise the payment services industry by creating more choice for consumers, in turn opening up possibilities for innovation and changing the relationship between consumers and payment service providers for good.

While a lot of the discussion has been focused on how this change will put more pressure on the established banks from tech-savvy fintechs, it is often overlooked that retail banks do have considerable advantages over new players entering the market. For instance, the big retail banks have had decades to build trust with their customers, and they have a strong track record of protecting customer data. This foundation of trust is something that emerging fintechs will need to try and replicate if they are to succeed in the long-term.

Vanita Pandey, Vice President Product Marketing, ThreatMetrix:

Any new payments schemes governing payment initiation service providers (or PISPs) will need to be carefully crafted. Existing payment infrastructures are based on years of heavy investment, with specific operating regulations, settlement protocols, liability measures and pricing structures mutually agreed upon by innumerable parties. Many of the risks associated with a wholesale migration to a new schema can be mitigated by the use of risk-based authentication that preserves the balance between security and convenience.

With all the investment retailers have made in backend processes for one-click payments, it is critical that final directives include provisions for risk-based payments, so retailers can maintain friction-free customer experiences while securing all one-off and recurring transactions.

Camilla Sunner, Managing Director for the Global Partnership Business Unit, Valitor:

When you think about the number of options we now have to purchase goods when we are shopping, it is incredible. On top of that, the process involved in making a payment is highly complex. The fact is, we no longer expect to be faced with numerous decisions in a store or online. We want a simple equation where the consumer buys, the merchants sells, and payments shouldn’t even need to be thought about. PSD2 will help us along that path, making payments quicker and easier by opening up banks’ data.

However, the responsibility for steering this change shouldn’t just lie with the regulators. Traditional businesses need to focus on working together to build one uniform high-tech payments pipe that will ultimately make buying and selling less complicated.

Edward Berks, Director of Banking, Fintech and Ecosystem, Xero:

Open Banking means three major changes for accountants and bookkeepers – better access to digital bank feeds, slicker payments and new tools to empower accountants to predict when a business might need more working capital. The smartest banks and fintech players are already recognising the important role that accountants play in supporting businesses through this transition. Competition for mind-share among accountants will amplify in the coming months as new services and experiences become available across banking, payments and lending.

The most forward thinking accountancy firms, regardless of size, are finding ways to deliver great value and services to their growing client bases by embracing digital.

We would also love to hear Your Thoughts on this, so feel free to comment below and tell us what you think!

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