Since the beginning, the focus of the member events has been on the networking of partners and members. Members are given the opportunity to present their motivation, strategies and activities in the context of Open Banking. Due to its topicality and momentum, this member event focused on the topic of customer onboarding and KYC. The contributions from Intrum, Berner Kantonalbank, Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen and the University of Bern as well as the panel discussion shed light on the topic and the efforts to build a trust network (more on this in this news article).
Current activities OpenBankingProject.ch
OpenBankingProject.ch has made a successful start to 2022 and has gained three new members: Intrum, Oper and PXL Vision. The publication of the State Secretariat for International Financial Matters (SIF) on the Digital Finance Fields of Action 2022+ from February is particularly exciting in the context of Open Banking. The SIF is monitoring the activities in the area of Open Banking and is considering a regulation to open up data access via standardised interfaces if sufficient progress is not made in the coming months.
Contribution Member Intrum
For Martin Honegger, trust among market participants plays an important role in the context of open banking. Through trust and standardised, interoperable APIs, data can be exchanged easily and efficiently in ecosystems and added value can be jointly offered to the customer. Intrum believes in ecosystems and is therefore involved in various committees and projects to enable these added values for customers together with other companies (e.g. Swiss Telco Fraud Pool, Credittrust.ch, Swiss Signing Ecosystem).
Contribution Member Berner Kantonalbank (BEKB)
Today, BEKB is confronted with various challenges in the context of its onboarding of private clients. The new branch format (meeting zone, client advisor as host) is now to be used to bring the onboarding process up to scratch. Among other things, the Qualified Electronic Signature (QES) could play an important role in achieving a standardised, automated and cross-channel opening process. This benefits not only BEKB, but also its customers. They can open the desired account with BEKB quickly and conveniently, regardless of the channel.
Contribution Partner Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen (BEI)
The BEI conducts practice-oriented research and research-related consulting and thus supports the development of business models in ecosystems. Today, 30% of the worldwide turnover of companies is already generated in business ecosystems and an increasing trend towards collaboration can also be seen in the financial sector. In this context, customer data in particular plays a decisive role. Through them, a comprehensive and value-added service offer can be jointly offered to the customer. For this collaboration to work in ecosystems, open and standardised APIs are needed.
Contribution Partner University of Bern
In the EU, the GDPR is a hotly debated topic. Private individuals are to gain sovereignty over their data thanks to efforts in the areas of data portability and data liberalisation. In Switzerland, the revised Data Protection Act (nDSG) is expected in September 2023, which will also contain provisions on data portability. This results in a need for action on the part of companies, including banks, to implement this in the interest of the customer by means of a cross-company trust network. Through standardised APIs, data portability can best meet the required conditions of time and economic efficiency.
Discussion Panel "Banks as Data Providers in Cross-Sector Trust Networks
The panel consisting of Renato Gunc (Unifiedpost), Martin Honegger (Intrum) and Samuel Stucki (BEKB) was moderated by Thomas Zerndt.
The discussion panel was introduced by the presentation of the management summary of the workshop series "Customer Onboarding and KYC". Since June 2021, more than 30 companies have been working on building a trust network for cross-company cooperation along the life cycle of bank customers. (read more in this news article).
Does the cross-sector use of customer onboarding and KYC mean a significant simplification for customers to find their way in the digital space? Absolutely! Especially the younger generation, who often have several financial applications and banking relationships, find it annoying to go through the entire opening process again and again.
Today, the entire market still tends to be very paper-heavy and inefficient. Just think of the 400,000 active postal receipt books that are still in use. Today, the banks tend to move forward in small steps in their process adaptations. For example, counter closures are being substituted with an expansion of the ATM network. Customers tend to switch to the alternative that appears to them to be the simplest (ATM) instead of the supposedly most efficient solution (e.g. Twint). The banks' fear of losing customers due to changes in their offer usually prevents them from taking larger steps to adapt (e.g. a bank completely abandons cash dispensing).
Do the banks still have the trust of their customers? According to surveys, yes, but the question is for how much longer. If you think about the expectations of the young, digitally affine generations with regard to banking and compare how today's retail banks are positioned (extensive branch network), there is a prominent gap. In the future, the banks' business models will have to be integrated into the cross-sectoral value creation processes. In this way, the banks can already be there for their customers when their needs arise (e.g. an instalment loan at the checkout in the furniture shop) and accompany them in the future as an anchor of trust. These new business models are particularly favoured by cross-industry cooperation in ecosystems and require open and standardised APIs as a basis.
Outlook OpenBankingProject.ch
The Open Banking Summit will take place this year on Thursday, 25.08.2022 (from 4 pm) and over 80 people have already registered. Ana Climente (BBVA), Marie Walker (Open Future World) and Manuel Kunzelmann (Migrosbank) are among the inspiring speakers at the event.
We are already looking forward to organising the next members' event on Wednesday, 09.11.2022. If you are not yet one of our members, please feel free to contact us here!
