Banks working overtime to ensure they have a wide array of APIs that are fit for the era of Open Banking are repeatedly surprised that a third-party is dishing out standardised APIs like candy; entirely gratis and all ISO20022 compliant.
Not-for-profit standards association the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) is largely to thank: last month it launched its API EXCHANGE; a digital library containing over 65 standardised API definitions, free to members.
(More are on their way…)
(One attendee at Sibos told Computer Business Review: “I think a lot of banks were genuinely surprised that this work is being done for them; that knowledge hasn’t filtered down to many, even among some BIAN members…”)
Janet Lewis, VP of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft
The library has been created by over 35 developers from across the BIAN member network of leading banks and technology vendors.
These include PNC, Microsoft, Citi, JPMC, IBM and Virtusa.
It aims to support banks that are building API-powered accessibility around customer offers and on boarding, payments, loans, mobile access and more.
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(Oracle has also made available a prebuilt repository of more than 1,500 REST APIs spanning payments, retail and corporate banking – and including specialised functions like multiproduct originations, retail customer financial insights, bulk payments, and trade finance – but only for its paying customers).
BIAN Signs Up JP Morgan, Microsoft Executives
With interest growing post-Sibos, the Frankfurt-based organisation this week announced that it had signed up heavyweights from Microsoft and JP Morgan to its executive board.
Andrew Henderson, Managing Director at JP Morgan
Andrew Henderson of JP Morgan Chase and Janet Lewis of Microsoft add depth to the team, as PSD2 deadlines loom.
Read this: As PSD2 Deadline Looms, Is It Time to Jump in a Sandbox?
With an award-winning 13-year career driving modernisation within Tier 1 banks, Henderson currently serves as a Managing Director at JP Morgan, leading the Engineering & Architecture for the Chase Consumer and Community Bank division. He was most recently responsible for building Chase’s new banking platform.
Lewis is the VP of Worldwide Financial Services at Microsoft, and runs the technology company’s drive to develop and execute financial services strategy. She brings more than 30 years of global financial services sales and executive management experience to BIAN, having grown and scaled numerous emerging and Fortune 500 companies.
Their appointment comes as BIAN also published the latest version of its standardised global IT architecture model, Service Landscape 7.0, which will provide further insights for the Industry on how to adopt the wide range of APIs contained within the Exchange into their banking platforms. Growth has also been seen in the increase in new members from across the world, with banks like Citi, Emirates NBD, BB&T, Greater Bank and Swedbank all joining this year.
Hans Tesselaar, Executive Director of BIAN said in a release: “2018 has been a milestone year for our organisation. We are noticing a much greater level of engagement from the global banking community as more organisations start to think about how to deliver innovation in the most effective way. Janet and Andrew’s deep knowledge in delivering transformational change within banks both on a practical and technological level will be a valuable asset as we progress further with our goal.”
BIAN’s work comes as in November 2017 the European Commission published its final technical standards on “Strong Customer Authentication” and “Common Secure Communication” under the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which we’ll refer to hereafter simply as Open Banking.
These rules come into force on 14 March 2019. They mean, in short, that if you want to do API-powered Open Banking or generally be part of a rapidly evolving new payments landscape, then you need to prove you can do it securely and many in the financial services sector look set to be working against the clock to ensure this.
