On the 20th of October 2022, twimbit in partnership with F5 and Kyndryl organized the inaugural “Bank of Tomorrow Asia Pacific Summit”. We were thrilled to have Ketan Samani, China Development Financial and Arvid Swartsenburg, UOB TMRW Digital Group chat with Manoj Menon, twimbit to discuss their aspirations and vision for the future.

Title: Building and Scaling Ecosystems

Speakers:

• Varnika Goel, Research Director and Co-Founder, twimbit
• Ketan Samani, Group Chief Digital and Innovation Officer (EVP), China Development Financial
• Arvid Swartsenburg, Head of Partnerships & Strategy, UOB TMRW Digital Group

Building banking ecosystems for greater customer experiences

The effects of digitisation in creating visibility for an ecosystem cannot be understated. Today, consumers are overwhelmed with the number of financial services available at their fingertips. Even so, consumers are always searching for more, shedding a huge responsibility unto banks on how they can use ecosystems to build growth.

In the case of UOB, the primary strategy is to be digital-first, as seen with its successful launch of digital banks in Thailand and Indonesia. Ecosystem partnerships have also been essential to UOB’s strategy in creating stronger customer relationships.

“Travel, e-commerce, telco, or e-ride hailing, we want to be there. We want every opportunity to interact with customers, be a part of their digital lives and remain invisible all at the same time.” – Arvid Swartsenburg, Head of Partnerships & Strategy at UOB TMRW Digital Group.

Ecosystem partnerships powers banking forward

Partnerships are broadly split into two categories, with each serving a distinct purpose:

1. Capability partners enable banks to seamlessly implement capabilities regarding data, AI or credit into banks’ operating model to accelerate growth.
2. Commercial partners accelerate the bank’s reach by developing use cases that benefit the bank, partner and the end-customer, ensuring a synchronous relationship with value on each part.

The benefits of ecosystem partnerships are that they create scalability, making it easier and more intuitive for consumers to understand complex services, such as life insurance. The value it provides is immense, especially today when consumers want to better understand the value exchange in the products and services they buy.

For example, UOB successfully launched e-commerce loans enabled through a third-party capability partner. The partnership between UOB and the Fintech is twofold in that:

• UOB can act as a data aggregator and gain complete customer information to perform credit underwriting better.
• Fintech can help UOB market quicker and cheaper because of its established APIs.

UOB can now rapidly scale and aggregate data, working through its partners to leverage that data into a compelling use case. Hence, it is evident that partnerships are essential for ecosystems to flourish.

Creating more value with ecosystems

“Creating consumer value at touch points higher than any other available should be banks’ top priority, as it is where consumption will go up.” – Ketan Samani, Group Chief Digital and Innovation Officer (EVP) at China Development Financial.

With consumers desiring better education about financial services, ecosystems will most likely play a part in creating more value through inclusion. In the long term, the banking industry can expect a generational change, in which digitisation, financial inclusion and economic growth to mature significantly.

Finding new ways to measure success in banks

Firstly, banks must redefine their operating models before even considering to implement success measures in owning an ecosystem. Only then will there be new measures of success to track.

In UOB, partnerships expect to contribute to 50% of its growth. And despite the banking sphere’s stringent regulations and paper-thin margins, banks must rethink value creation. To help, there are three new key success measures that banks can integrate into their operating models.

• Sharing value needs to be an essential integration into banks’ service for its partners
• The customer experience needs to be easier and more intuitive for customers to understand
• Ensuring longer engagement times among customers in the platform to monetise customers’ time and data better