Patricia Hines will discuss how there are several emerging technologies transforming the banking industry, but two stand out with their potential to improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, mitigate risks, and increase revenues – APIs and AI. Secure, publicly accessible application programming interfaces (APIs) have been around for more than ten years in the financial services sector, but until recently banks were reluctant to publish open, external APIs for customers or third parties to readily access financial data. With regulatory initiatives well underway in the Euro Zone and the UK, it is clear that open banking APIs are inevitable. Banking APIs are on fire, with forward-looking banks moving beyond regulatory minimums, enabling value-added services by exposing a broad range of banking services through APIs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can help banks by applying newly capable technology in analytics, bots, robotic process automation, and report generation. AI has the potential to improve all parts of the bank, from front end, customer-facing areas; to the middle office; and through to the back office. While there's more smoke than fire today in banking AI, institutions must nevertheless develop a strategy for this set of rapidly developing technologies.