APIs and standardisation enabling interoperability and corporate banking & treasury transformation
The need for more modern solutions, automation and interoperability is imminent in corporate banking. Be it transaction banking or trade finance. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and standardisation are the keys to delivering end-to-end digitalisation and a wider corporate treasury transformation. The direction is there, while a lot of work is still required to achieve a world with less manual, repetitive paper/PDF/email/spreadsheet -based tasks.
As we move into the world of open data, open architecture and open APIs, these offer an enormous opportunity to streamline and automate processes. With structured data available in a central repository or accessible via APIs, predictive analytics and AI/ML capabilities can be applied on a wider scale vs. today with data stored in various spreadsheets on the file share and in systems with limited integration capabilities. Given that the world is still heavily file-based and relying on batch processing — one needs to be able to work in a hybrid mode, supporting both the legacy connectivity and the more modern APIs.
During the corporate and transaction banking conference organised by the FFE Fintech Ecosystem Ltd and Standardised Trust and ITFA, a couple of themes were pointed out by many speakers & panellists. “Interoperability” was probably the most used word when describing trade finance pain points, people were calling for “collaborative trade finance” and noted the importance of how “the systems need to talk to each other”. The need for standardisation is key in order to allow interoperability between the “digital islands”, mentioned as a challenge. APIs certainly offer a solution here when applied with modern & agile technology.
The new world requires new approaches and modern, easy-to-use and easily implementable solutions. At FinanceKey, we have created a treasury hub — an orchestration platform for connectivity, systems, data and workflows — helping treasurers to modernise and automate their work, collaborate better and achieve real-time operations. Being an API-first solution, FinanceKey offers solutions to any corporate banking API use case, and the capability to embed services where customers need these.
APIs are transforming corporate banking & treasuries - while businesses need to start modernising their treasury architecture to take advantage of the new digital capabilities. The bigger the push from banks’ largest customers towards more standardisation & interoperability, the faster we get there. FinanceKey is part of the movement as a member of the Common Global Implementation initiative for ISO20022 messaging.
