At the Open banking Summit 2024 with over 150 participants and top-class speakers, the OpenBankingProject.ch once again demonstrated its importance as a vital business network in the field of open banking. Building on the success of recent years, the Open Banking Summit took place on August 21, 2024 at Google in Zurich. The event offered a plethora of insightful presentations, innovative use cases, and exciting discussions and provided a benchmark for the future of open banking in Switzerland and beyond.
Opening remarks
The summit kicked off with a warm welcome from Gregor Kaelin, head of financial services at Google Cloud, who hosted the event, and Thomas Zerndt, CEO of the Business Engineering Institute St.Gallen (BEI), highlighting the importance of customer-centric approaches in the open banking initiative and emphasizing the role of shared knowledge and collaboration within the community.
Open banking in an international context
Starting the next agenda section “open banking in an international context”, Dr. Maurizio Singh, head banking & digital ecosystems at DSGV, provided a retrospective look at the development of PSD regulations in Germany. After five years of PSD2, he evaluated both its positive effects such as increased security in payment transactions, the creation of new use cases, and additional annual revenue in the EU payment market through TPPs as well as improvable aspects such as the high drop-out of open banking users due to repeated consent requirements, the lack of fundamental changes in the data economy of financial institutions and insufficient communication of customer benefits. He also discussed planned further developments in the context of PSD3, PSR & FIDA.
Open banking in a national context
The second agenda section, "open banking in a national context", was initiated by Nicolas Brügger, deputy head of capital markets & infrastructure at SIF, who provided an overview of Switzerland's stance on open finance. He reported on three goals for open finance in Switzerland: innovation capability, customer self-determination and competitiveness, which are to be achieved through common standards, the opening of interfaces and scalable solutions.
Following Nicolas Brügger's insights, Michael Müller, partner und co-founder of Acrea, and Prof. Dr. Kerstin Windhövel, managing director at wincon, presented the concept of “open pension” to address the concerns of the Swiss population regarding retirement planning and the need for transparent, comprehensive tracking systems, which is currently absent in Switzerland compared to many European countries. Müller and Windhövel emphasized the need for a collaborative approach to its deployment, combining top-down support from regulatory authorities with bottom-up pilot projects by community stakeholders.
Impulses for digital customer centricity
In the next event slot "impulses for digital customer centricity", several use cases to be implemented were presented, showcasing the practical applications and benefits of open banking.
Prior to these, Eva Selamlar presented FIND, which was initiated on behalf of the Federal Council on the basis of the Digital Finance Report to strengthen the Swiss financial center, as a concierge desk for financial innovation. The FIND ecosystem brings together numerous players from academia, public institutions, and industry representatives, among others, and addresses the following fields of action: digital assets, open finance, market, AI, sustainable finance, infrastructure technologies and financial education. Selamlar emphasized the importance of initiative like the OpenBankingProject.ch and confirmed the vision of consent driven data sharing within a cross-company trust network.
Martin Honegger, director at Intrum, Thomas Zerndt and Peter Schäuble, CEO at Euro Spider, started the use case pitches with the overarching framework – an open API customer relationship – of the use cases presented. Its aim is to establish standardized building blocks that enable an open customer relationship in the network, e.g. through credentials that can be used across use cases for customer identification in the context of account opening, leasing a car, renting a flat or for buying alcohol.
The first use case “consumption” was presented by André Renfer, managing director at partes, giving the example of the reuse of customer data in the context of opening a customer account with a retailer, ordering and paying for consumer products, integrating financial products such as credit payments and the processing of defects and returns.
Eliane Albisser, head of product at Contovista, presented the second use case “taxes”, whereby a Tax Assistant is to be developed to support the completion of Switzerland's complex tax regulations for individuals. Using a central platform with open APIs, it will be possible to select tax-relevant accounts and assets and import them onto the platform, where existing personal data and all tax-applicable transactions will be automatically transferred for the tax return after customer confirmation.
The third and fourth use cases, “renting” and “home ownership”, were presented by Daniel Baur, CEO & Co-Founder of eMonitor. Since finding a new home is often tedious and involves around 40 people until a rental contract is signed, the aim of the use case is to digitize the application process and get to the rental in just 5 clicks, consisting of the application, know your customer process, credit score request, signing the contract and providing further banking services such as rental deposit accounts. Similarly, the use case is applied to the purchase of real estate in just six clicks, covering the application for the property, the know your customer process, a financial passport and the subsequent reservation, down payment and financing of the property.
Patrick Humbel, consultant at Ergon, presented the last use case “Wallet” using the example of the Swiss eID based on the concept of Self Sovereign Identity, enabling citizens to hold authenticated credentials for their identification in their own wallet and to issue these in a self-determined manner without media discontinuity, for example at onboarding processes.
Panel discussion
To conclude the Open Banking Summit, Prof. Dr. Ulrike Baumöl, professor at the University of St. Gallen, moderated a panel discussion with Dr. Maurizio Singh, Eva Selamlar, Samuel Scheidegger, CPO at Finnova, and Nicolas Brügger on their personal insights and industry perspectives on open finance. Each panelist shared their personal “wow experiences” satisfying their customer needs, ranging from seamless onboarding processes in digital banking to advanced data insights for the customer. Finally, the discussion also emphasized that the success of open finance depends on financial services being more accessible, intuitive, and tailored to individual needs through collaboration in the context of public-private partnerships.
Conclusion and outlook
The Open Banking Summit 2024 highlighted the rapid progress being made in the field of open banking and open finance. The event showcased not only the strategic insights and regulatory developments but also practical applications that are beginning to reshape the financial services landscape. As we look forward to the next Open Banking Summit on August 21, 2025, we anticipate further advancements and the unveiling of new initiatives that will continue to drive the evolution of the Swiss financial center.
