APIs & a better set of headlights

Rapidly increasing demand for application programming interfaces (APIs) is changing the way financial services groups interact with their customers, helping drive a change in service mentality which provides banks with a unique forward perspective on client problems, described by ANZ’s Nigel Dobson as “a better set of headlights rather than a better rear-vision mirror”.

Speaking on podcast, Dobson, Banking Services Lead at ANZ, and Leigh Mahoney, Head of Wholesale Digital at ANZ Institutional, agreed APIs were part of a fundamental change in the way banks manage their technology.

“A lot of customers are saying, ‘how can I connect us to you in a really rapid, agile, modern way?’ Mahoney said. “And we're using APIs to do that.”

You can listen to an edited conversation of the conversation on podcast below.

Mahoney said APIs had been around for a while but only recently had they become “the flavour of the month” for customers, with ANZ recording a 79 per cent rise in usage of the tools over a 12 month period, in both balance or transaction reporting and payments.

He said customers enjoyed “being able to directly interrogate us [to] receive account balance reporting, whether at the start of day or intraday”, and that ANZ was easier to deal with “using modern formats as opposed to legacy formats”.

“Increasingly nearly every tender that we go to, we are being asked by customers, ‘Can we connect our systems to your systems via API to make payments?’” Mahoney said, noting this was the norm even for companies which had only relatively recently embraced digital services.

Dobson said APIs were part of a changing mindset toward data and technology as it applies to customers in financial services, which he said was playing out at ANZ as an “iterative” micro-service approach that allows the bank to be more reactive, rather than looking at customer issues retrospectively.

“It is a fundamental change in the way [ANZ] both delivers and manages our services and the way in which we can deliver technology,” he said. “[To] change in very small amounts, rather than large project-based changes that would otherwise have taken months or years.”

“We can be much more supportive of our customer needs and we can publish roadmaps and metrics which can give us better headlights rather than a better rear vision mirror.”

The experts also touched on the growing digital maturity of both clients and ANZ, the transition to open banking, and developing digital risk management. Listen to the podcast above to find out more.

Arun Kayal is Associate Director, Communications & Shane White is Content Manager, ANZ Institutional