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Banks in the Middle East region should not miss out on the current momentum to create API-driven ecosystem for their corporate and business clients, as it boosts the numbers and loyalty levels.
Banks of tomorrow have the ability to quickly create their own unique products and features, based on the extensibility of a digital banking platform and its open architecture. As a result, their clients are happy to use such extensive and comprehensive solution, which in turn allows the banks to keep existing customer base and acquire new clients.
Comarch has an extensive experience in delivering banking innovations and platforms augmenting both corporate and business domains, as well as loyalty management. Being able to work with top banks in the Middle East region such as NBB[M1] , Al Rajhi Bank, and Mashreq Bank, allowed the company to gain a sound understanding of the local industry and their corporate clients’ needs.
Expectations for flexibility and agility continue to rise, as both banks and corporate clients have begun to realize the value of open banking and an ecosystem-based approach. In response to the demand of such, the company launched its Comarch Open Platform (COP) for Middle East banks, to help them gain convenience for their clients, as well as more data and information about the platform users themselves. Essentially all of the data retrieved from third parties connected to the ecosystem can be analyzed by the bank, and used to prepare much more tailored content. Some of the immediate benefits and extensions can be – for example – early warning signs directed to the bank’s clients, informing them about potential delays of payments from the counterparties, allowing them to act quickly to proactively secure the funding, whether to insure the invoice, apply for a credit, or use factoring services against the invoice. In such approach, the banks can become true partners to their clients not only by providing extensive additional value added services such as business intelligence, ERP, data analytics, invoicing or insurance services, but they also can act as problem solvers, suggesting suitable and personalized solutions to any issues.
Digital experiences greatly impact the clients’ banking choices, and since banking platform UX and functionalities are often pointed out by consumers as the most important aspects of banking driving Net Promoting Score, such ecosystem of features and services in the open platform can significantly drive clients satisfaction levels. Happy customers are more likely to recommend the bank to their peers, and so these days it is also important to create a sense of community amongst the clients.
The technical aspects of Comarch Open Platform are the key ones, as the solution is fully based on microservices, to provide full technical compliance, and that includes – among other aspects – an API gateway, cloud-native solution, and a full DevOps stack. On top of the provided framework, Comarch also provides value added services, which are embedded in the platform, and enable corporate and SME clients to access and consume business processes and products such as cash management, trade finance, authentication, or payments, to name a few.
Those are just a few benefits of Comarch Open Platform. Others include, e.g., increased upsell and cross-sell, providing more data and a better understanding of the clients, so that banks can improve their offerings; a potential to open up new revenue streams from cloud services subscriptions, using partner services and adding various partners to the ecosystem; multiple quickly deployable modules; or better adaptation of partner offerings, based on the data from APIs exposed by different third parties.
Some invoicing services, for example, can be enabled through the system – in such case the client can see a full list of both receivables and payables, and perform various actions from the platform. When a bank decides to cooperate with a factoring company, if the client wants to improve their liquidity, they can apply for an advance payment to a given invoice – the data is transferred through APIs to given partners connected to the ecosystem, who can in turn provide their offer and conditions under which they would be able to discount this particular invoice.
The ecosystem development approach allows clients to stay completely emerged within the digital banking platform offered by the bank, so the clients have no need to search for other options. The bank of tomorrow should strive to build an ecosystem for their clients, offering wide range of personalized services. Such approach will not only be an additional form of the banks’ care for their clients, but will also allow for increased interactions and engagement, leading to both stronger customer satisfaction and higher revenues.
Comarch Open Platform - the omnichannel digital banking platform
