In the first series of Drive to Digital Events, AccessPay partnered with Lloyds Banking Group to present industry-first insight into the next generation of corporate banking solutions. With digital transformation becoming a focus for finance leaders, the event explored the ways business can achieve this by embracing Embedded Corporate Banking (also known as Corporate-to-Bank integration) as well as looking at the role API’s play in the digitisation process.
The 4th wave of Banking: Leading the digitisation of Corporate Banking
AccessPay explored how every-day banking has evolved much faster than that of corporate banking. Personal banking has become embedded within our daily lives, and over the course of time we have experienced what AccessPay calls the 4 waves of banking; starting in-branch, we moved to telephone banking and internet banking, before finally arriving at the embedded experience we have today.
“An example of the 4th wave of banking is paying for your taxis via the Uber app, or perhaps more fitting, personal banking apps. You can have oversight of all your bank accounts in one place. These apps serve up insights and analytics on your spending habits, however corporate banking hasn’t quite caught up.”
Hannah Davison, Sales Manager, AccessPay
Hannah goes on to explain that this is because corporate banking is a lot more complex;
“It makes innovation much harder compared to modern retail banking. Most corporates don’t have their banking embedded into their systems, and they can’t easily access financial products that they need to make important business decisions. But businesses are evolving very quickly, and access to banking services needs to adapt with them to continue to meet these needs.”
Hannah explains how AccessPay is leading the fourth wave of corporate banking and democratizing access to financial services for businesses. Empowering finance and Treasury teams with access to technology which takes the complexity out of business banking. Corporates can now have the same experience that we as consumers benefit from in our daily lives.
The event showcased the AccessPay platform; an all-in-one solution for corporates, allowing domestic and international payments, collections and transfers, processing payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable and treasury. Businesses can manage all payments and operations from one centralized location.
Using automation, corporates can experience more efficient, secure processes because it reduces the time spent on manual, repetitive activities and frees the team up to focus on higher value tasks.
Read more on Embedded Corporate Banking here
The event found that 42% of the audience’s challenges we around improving security of their financial data, and although many finance leaders know that digital transformation can help mitigate these risks, a staggering 60% of the audience said their biggest challenge in achieving finance transformation was down to finding and adopting the right technology to help them achieve this.
Adopting a more embedded, automated banking experience for corporates is still in it’s infancy. But, this not because the technology doesn’t exist, it’s because finance teams aren’t necessarily aware of the tech that’s available to them. The event highlighted that many finance leaders are still piecing together what true finance transformation actually means, and are looking for the right tools and technology to achieve this.
Watch the full event to see how Corporate-to-Bank integration supports these challenges with a real customer example, and we delve more into how the AccessPay solution connects and automates between your back-office systems and your banks.
The role of API’s in the digitisation process and why it’s on Lloyds’ Roadmap
Gavin McClean, Head of Cash Management and Payments Products, from Lloyds Banking Group’s role is to help customers digitize and streamline their payment infrastructure. Like AccessPay, his main goal is to drive digital transformation strategies for organisations, looking at ways they can embed digital solutions into their banking processes whilst making sure Lloyds Banking Group are offering their customers the best service when it comes to a more digitized, embedded banking experience.
Gavin delved into customer banking needs, and he noticed a trend between many of Lloyds’ customer needs; the focus being around self-service and real time data. Corporates are looking for an experience akin to personal banking (similar to what we discussed earlier) and this is where the role of API’s comes in.
For those of you who don’t know what an API is, here’s it in layman’s terms; API means ‘application programming interface’ and is essentially an agreement between one computer application and another to request and receive information or to initiate an action. Gavin used an on-screen example of a person with a mobile banking app where they want to know what the balance is across their bank accounts, in real time.
Like Hannah mentioned earlier, personal banking already uses leading edge API technology to give users a strong personal banking experience, in fact, API’s play a pivotal part in our everyday lives across a range of apps and services without us even realising, and that’s predominantly because we all use smart phones.
“As consumers and businesses are increasingly expecting things to be digital, to be self-serve and to happen a time and place of our choosing and not necessarily at our desk or in our workplace, society has created a need for these more real time digital self-service experiences.”
Gavin McClean, Head of Payments & Cash Management, Lloyds Banking Group
Gavin also elaborated further, as regulatory bodies know the strength digitisation can play in helping businesses mitigate risks across their finance operations, in fact, “some of the regulations within the financial services space has mandated the use of the technology for better compliance.”
For many businesses digitisation isn’t just a choice, it’s an expectation.
With API deployment and utilization now driving force for the bank, their aim is to provide better innovation and enhanced competition, giving their customers new experiences that are only possible because of API technology.
To find out more about how API technology can help drive more secure, efficient and real-time experiences for corporate banking, watch the full event on-demand now.
