SG Financial Firms Support Open Banking, Fintech Collaboration

Financial institutions in Singapore are supportive of the Open Banking movement and fintech collaboration, according to a global survey conducted by Finastra, the third-largest fintech company in the world.

The survey, which was conducted prior to the Coronavirus outbreak among 774 financial firms and banks across the US, UK, Singapore, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and UAE, sought to gauge the sentiments of financial firms and banks to open banking, open application programming interfaces (Open APIs), and fintech collaboration.

Of the 110 Singapore-based firms that participated in the survey, 86 percent either committed to or considering opening their APIs in the next 12 months.

“Nearly all respondents said open banking is important to their organisation, with 89 percent believing that collaboration has made their business more efficient,” Finastra said.

But regulation is currently limiting progress, according to the survey result. More than half of Singapore participants agreed that ‘regulations are too tight’ (56 percent), while 90 percent called for greater global harmonization of regulation on innovation.

Two-thirds of respondents (66 percent) also want to see regulators create standardized best practices across the industry to help foster collaboration.

“It is encouraging to see that financial institutions are embracing the Open Banking model enabled by open APIs,” said Wissam Khoury, Senior Vice President and General Manager, APAC and MEA at Finastra.

However, Khoury stressed that regulation needs become a facilitator rather than a barrier going forward.

“I’m excited to see the industry make further strides towards enabling a truly collaborative model to drive the industry forward and enable true open finance,” he added.

The research also reveals that mobile banking is the top technology to be deployed by financial institutions in the next 12 months, as the country gears up to announce the successful applicants for its new digital banking licenses in the second half of this year.

Artificial intelligence and open APIs follow as the top technology of choice.

The survey was conducted online at the end of January 2020, amongst 774 financial institutions and banks across the US, UK, Singapore, France, Germany, Hong Kong, and UAE. These financial institutions represent a gross total of just over USD$4.7 trillion in turnover over the last 12 months, employ over approximately 4.9 million staff, and have approximately 110 million client/customer/member relationships.