APIs offer banks the chance to develop innovative services while protecting vital data
Banks have traditionally been cautious about sharing information, placing a high premium on security and customer privacy. The cost of such prudence: being slow to adopt new services and partnerships that can strengthen the loyalty of existing customers and attract new ones. But today the rise of application programming interfaces (APIs) offers banks the best of both worlds, making it possible to share software elements with key partners without exposing customer data or proprietary information.
In a new story produced by OnWindows, Peter Hazou and Guillermo Kopp talk about the new opportunities that banks have to collaborate with software innovators and specialists in new customer-facing services to find fresh ideas to anticipate and meet customers’ financial needs. Hazou, director of business development for Financial Services at Microsoft, points out that with the advent of new APIs that function on secured cloud platforms, it’s no longer practical — or necessary — for banks to try to create every new tool in-house. Kopp, financial services industry director for Latin America at Microsoft, observes that by embedding new offerings within the experience, banks can establish themselves as trusted advisors throughout all of a customer’s life stages.
Other service industries, such as hospitality and retail, are already using APIs to create new marketing partnerships and enable customers to benefit from a range of services within a single interaction. Banks are poised to join them in meeting — and even surpassing — the heightened expectations of new generations of customers.
