New platform components accelerate innovation for 9,000 banks and give Fintechs access to a global marketplace

Today, at Money 20/20 Europe, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Finastra announced the availability of the three core components within its FusionFabric.cloud platform for open innovation. Combined, the components accelerate innovation for 9,000 banks and financial institutions and give Fintechs access to a global marketplace:

• FusionCreator – A rapid development environment for financial applications with low-code capabilities and integrated API management tools
• FusionOperate – A management system to deploy and operate applications in a secure cloud infrastructure
• FusionStore – An online marketplace for banks to search, try and buy applications

Simon Paris, CEO at Finastra, said, “We firmly believe that collaboration is the new way of innovating and FusionFabric.cloud makes this possible.

The move to bank as a platform or banking as a service will redefine the future of financial services and we are at the forefront, bringing banks and Fintechs together to allow faster innovation at much lower costs. We are changing the way that financial services software is developed, deployed and consumed, like no one else – building the foundations of a completely new financial services ecosystem and marketplace, and thereby unlocking the potential of people and businesses alike. Our vision is to be the number one open platform for innovation in the world of financial services, and FusionFabric.cloud is already blazing a trail.”

FusionFabric.cloud already has over 60 Fintechs and providers signed up:

• Among the major financial technology solution providers embracing the FusionFabric.cloud early adopter program:

o    Accenture built a commercial lending solution that automates the lengthy deal onboarding process of credit agreements in Fusion Loan IQ by eliminating the need for manual data entry, reducing the process from two to three days down to minutes, while also reducing operational risk.

o    Thomson Reuters is embedding its instrument reference data into FusionFabric.cloud.

• Among the high growth Fintech start-ups using FusionFabric.cloud to start developing apps:

o    BankBI, Conpend, Conversation.one, Infotrie, ft consult in cooperation with SmartDataHub, HedgeSPA and Tradle.

The early adopter program has seen Fintechs reduce application development time from months to weeks. Users can bring innovation to market faster in the low-code, cloud environment, and sell applications without needing to build a global sales team or worrying about a scalable infrastructure. Pre-integrated developer tools and an API catalogue also speed application creation. Finastra’s initial API focus is on payments and retail banking to serve the immediate demand of PSD2 and open banking coming into force. Other APIs will be added in due course to cover the whole Finastra product and solution line.

As the model for bank innovation changes, FusionFabric.cloud makes it easier for financial institutions to transform their businesses, extend product capabilities and access innovation. Banks can now use FusionFabric.cloud to leverage their own development capabilities  to create and deploy applications on top of their core systems, and/or they can collaborate with Fintechs to build and access new capabilities they need quickly through Open APIs. This double catalyst for innovation, in conjunction with the breadth and depth of Finastra’s portfolio, adds significant value and provides unparalleled flexibility.

Recent research by Celent* reports that flexibility is where platformification could play a major role because it could give banks the vital tools they need to innovate. Gareth Lodge, Senior Analyst at Celent, said, “Of the financial institutions surveyed, nearly 40% of banks are using or actively investigating platforms. Furthermore, they saw the same benefits as we did, with 60% ranking the benefits of accessing new technologies and being able to build and test in an agile way either first or second priorities. […] Our conclusion then is that the industry is close to much wider use of platforms.”

The research also explores security and privacy as perceived barriers by banks, but notes that a tipping point is being reached, as only 12% of respondents said they were unlikely to consider platforms. FusionFabric.cloud is underpinned by Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s enterprise-ready trusted cloud platform. Spending over a billion dollars on security investments annually, Microsoft leads the industry in establishing clear security and privacy requirements and then consistently meeting these requirements.

Finastra is now welcoming banks, Fintechs and ISVs, universities, system integrators and individual developers to register interest and lead the next wave of financial services innovation with us.