Banks rethink business models as fintechs play catch-up

On October 22, Anand Chawra was a session speaker at the Digital & Open Banking Conference. The conference gathered over 130 executives from top banks and companies across the region and hosted an impressive line-up of speakers which included senior bankers and senior partners from consulting firms. Chawra’s session aptly titled Defining a winning open banking strategy discussed winning strategies based on the open banking model for incumbent banks. In his presentation, Chawra noted that "instead of opening channels, banks keep closing opportunities" and that "most retail banks assert that they are 'open' to open banking but what counts for being open, varies". To successfully compete with agile upstarts, he cited three winning strategies – strengthen the core business with third party functionality, become a partner of choice for top-end financial products, and implementation of both strategies will lay the ground for the bank to launch larger innovation ventures and disruption models.