On the 6th of June, Mobiquity launched their daily banking accelerators using Mambu as the core engine during a vibrant Money2020 off-site at the Amsterdam-based Mobiquity HQ. Keynote speaker Jim Marous, top 5 influencer in banking: “Like Mobiquity and Mambu, get your solutions to the market faster, better and scaleable. These are the two key components: speed and scale.“  

Takeaways

  • 80% of functionality that banks provide to their customers is common, leaving 20% opportunity to differentiate
  • Leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities of existing vendors results, cost effectiveness and speed and leaves more budget to spend on true differentiation.
  • Jim Marous challenges us to ‘embrace change, take risks and disrupt ourselves in response to the digital disruption in banking’
  • The biggest challenge, Marous says, is ‘that what we sell doesn’t go to market the way we sold it and the way the client buys it‘

Van de Venn’s key message to banks is that they are not as unique nor as special as they might like to believe – which could be a good thing for their IT budget! Van de Venn: ”Many CIO’s are increasing complexity, because they feel they are special. They are very special, but not that different!” Van de Venn states that 80% of the functionality that banks provide to their customers is common, leaving about 20% opportunity to differentiate. The best strategy, therefore, is to use an out-of-the-box approach for commonalities, which allows a bank to maximize its budget on the 20% that makes them stand out from the crowd. Van de Venn’s takeaway: ‘Use the experience of your vendors for an out-of-the-box approach.’

Last year in October, Mobiquity released its Digital Banking Features Radar, which revealed banks have only 20% of flexible functionality to impress customers by innovating and differentiating their digital banking features against that of their competitors. Mobiquity’s Digital Banking Features Radar analyses the ‘must haves’, ‘delighters’ and ‘differentiators’ of digital banking features to understand emerging trends that support a frictionless customer experience.

Leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities

Mobiquity builds digital banking value propositions and architectures, typically using components from modern third-party software-as-a-service vendors, thus solving the challenges of any remaining legacy hardware. Van de Venn: “Mobiquity builds the commonalities in a very efficient way by leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities of existing vendors. There are many that we work with, such as Mambu, that have powered many successful digital banks. That allows us to have more budget for the differentiation, the other 20%.” This results in a process of maximum differentiation, characterised by cost effectiveness and speed.

“We ensure we have a deep understanding of our customer so we can provide an additional layer on top of those commonalities that are in line with their brand promise and crucial to their success. We also fully embrace the concept of composable architectures, setting up the architecture so components can be easily interchanged. If there is better technology for a particular area, you can easily replace it. We have put a lot of our energy into designing and architecting experience accelerators to create a solid digital banking foundation, from which we help banks iterate towards delighter and differentiation features.”

Composable cloud banking

This is where Mambu (www.mambu.com) comes in, the providers of the composable cloud banking platform that powers financial change. Its clients compose the banking experience best suited for them and their customers, powered by Mambu’s SaaS cloud banking platform.

Composable Architecture is an approach in which you select the best-of-breed components and compose them into a fit-for-purpose architecture with the flexibility of changing individual components when required. In this way, Mambu leverages modern digital banking platform vendors with an out-of-the-box approach, an eco-system of fintech services and a flexible custom layer for client specific needs. With 250 customers and approx. 95 million end users, Mambu operates in 65 highly regulated international markets with global banks and regional market leaders in financial services.

Partnering for success

Since 2020, Mobiquity and Mambu have partnered to provide a complete suite of offerings for financial services institutions looking to embrace a digital transformation. Mobiquity have set up and designed a general framework, consisting of components like workflows and other building blocks that accelerate the setup of a new bank, ensure a short time-to-market and make use of proven best practices. Using this method, Mambu’s API-enabled architecture allows banks to plug in integrations for simple, streamlined and automated customer journeys.

Their strategy is to further democratise digital banking offerings through delivering value propositions that create unique customer experiences and reflect the contemporary behaviours of the customers they serve. Van de Venn: ”At Mobiquity we design, deliver and market digital banks that provide real value.”

‘Embrace change, take risks, disrupt yourself’

Real value. Changing customer needs. Transformation. Leadership. The speech delivered by Jim Marous, the internationally recognised financial industry strategist, boiled down to these drivers of change. “Are you prepared to embrace change, take risks and disrupt yourself in response to the digital disruption in banking?” We live in times of unprecedented opportunities, he says, but ‘we’re all being asked to change, and that’s uncomfortable, because change sucks.” More than ever, we need to disrupt ourselves.

Jim Marous explained that our expectations of what a bank is, and how customers will engage with financial services has changed immensely over the past several years. And that change will only happen faster in the future. “Like Mobiquity and Mambu, get your solutions to the market faster, better and scaleable. These are the two key components: speed and scale. And it requires trust. We trust them to innovate and to do what they do better than anybody else.”

Scary or opportunity?

It’s indisputable that technology has been the driving force behind this change. Enter ChatGPT, which has taken over the news cycle since launching in November 2022. Its AI version of human conversation has created optimism and debate around the opportunities and risks associated with this technology. How can conversational AI impact banking as we know it, from an operational and customer experience perspective? What is the scope of this change and what are the challenges? Jim Marous: “Is that scary or an opportunity? Are you building your organisation in a way that it can withstand ChatGPT?”

The US has just experienced the fastest bank run in history. Jim Marous: “We’re doing banking every day in a different way, so we have to build banks in a different way.“ The biggest challenge, he says, is ‘that what we sell doesn’t go to market the way we sold it and the way the client buys it.

Making an organisation future-ready

Jim’s overall message is that digital banking transformation is the most important overarching initiative in financial services today. Broad in scope and never-ending in execution, the process of making an organisation future-ready for digital is a necessity for success. Jim Marous: “Again, we need to embrace change, take risks and disrupt ourselves. That’s not going to be comfortable but essential for survival and for being successful.”

Download Mobiquity’s Digital Banking Features Radar: https://www.mobiquity.com/insights/interactive-digital-banking-features-radar

About Jim Marous

Named top 5 influencer in banking, Jim Marous is an international speaker, co-publisher of The Financial Brand, owner and publisher of the Digital Banking Report and host of the Banking Transformed podcast. He has spoken to audiences worldwide on the impact of change to the banking industry. Website: www.jimmarous.com

About Mobiquity

Mobiquity, part of Hexaware, combines the best of human-focused design and data-driven technology, helping you drive meaning for your business and relevance for your customers. Website: www.mobiquity.com

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