Strands’ Director of Technology discussed all things Open Banking on the latest episode of the FinTech Futures’ podcast
“My colleagues and I create products that help banks and financial institutions to get in the fintech race, and lead it.” Loud and clear. This is how Strands Director of Technology, Pablo Reyes, described our company’s mission in the latest episode of ‘What the Fintech’ podcast.
‘What the Fintech’ is currently on its second season and is produced by the team behind FinTech Futures and the Banking Technology Magazine. During the ‘Open Banking on the loose’ episode, Pablo Reyes joined Alex Hamilton, Deputy Editor at Fintech Futures, and Sharon Kimathi, Editor of FinTech Futures, to talk about Open Banking, his least favourite FinTech buzzwords, and unpack HSBC, Lloyds’ and Barclays’ latest financial results.
In the conversation, Pablo shared his insights on Strands’ Open Hub, the solution that won the 2020 Banking Technology Award for the Best Open Banking Solution category. “When talking about Open Banking, the first thing that used to come to mind is aggregating accounts, but that has changed completely,” Pablo said. “We have built an entire Hub that helps us connect, aggregate, synchronise and enrich data from all sorts of third parties. Not only financial data.”
Endless possibilities: From fitness rewards to tracking your carbon footprint
Open Hub can empower banks to help their customers lead a more sustainable and conscious lifestyle, which, according to Pablo, should be a priority for financial institutions: “This is something we have seen moving in 2020, maybe because of the Covid-19 pandemic and how it has made people rethink the way they live”. Open Hub allows banks to partner with third parties and aggregate valuable information that, for example, can be analyzed to figure out the environmental impact of a customer’s spending behavior or can suggest small rewards every time that a customer meets their fitness goals.
As for Strands’ priorities for this year, Pablo highlighted Strands’ efforts to make Open Hub simpler and easier to use, both for partners and clients: “We are rethinking the way Open Hub is operated – we are moving it to the cloud, rewriting our documentation and APIs… We are working to make Open Hub the most accessible solution in the market in its category.
“Hopefully this will allow smaller banks –who don’t have the resources or the time to operate complex systems and infrastructure– to use a platform like ours and get the same benefits than the big ones are getting,” Strands’ Director of Technology added.
Don’t miss the episode if you want to find out Pablo’s plea to completely banish his least favourite buzzwords in an exciting rendition of ‘Fintech Jail’! Do you agree with his choices?
