Three out of five Singaporean financial professionals call for open banking 

97% of respondents also said open banking is important to their businesses.

More financial professionals want ‘open banking’ as 56% of the Singaporean audience from amongst 785 professionals at banks and financial institutions surveyed across Singapore, Hong Kong, the US, UK, France, Germany and the UAE called it a ‘must have’ according to Finastra.

Finastra’s ‘Financial Services: State of the Nation Survey 2021’ revealed that open banking has become important to 97% of Singapore respondents’ businesses.

The survey also revealed that open banking has provided a number of benefits to their organization. 79% of Singaporean financial professionals said that open banking improved customer experience whilst 93% said it improved delivering new services. 

Meanwhile 57% said it improved internal systems. 71% said that it helps attract new customers whilst 64% have stated open banking has helped to attract different types of customers.

Meanwhile, Finastra also named Singapore as in the evolution in financial services and Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS), with almost half of respondents (47%) having deployed or improved their BaaS capabilities in the last year and a similar proportion (45%) looking to do so in the next 12 months – higher than in any other market surveyed. 

This investment activity is accompanied by some of the highest confidence globally in BaaS, with 87% of those surveyed expecting to see benefits in the coming year.

“Our research uncovered an overwhelming recognition in Singapore that Banking-as-a-Service has the potential to help financial institutions grow their business, bring new services to market faster and streamline company operations. The level of Banking-as-a-Service deployment in the last year shows that Singapore’s financial services sector is living up to its progressive reputation when it comes to technology. Through initiatives like Banking-as-a-Service and Open Banking, financial institutions in Singapore are laying the foundations for truly Open Finance, enabling banks to level up their technology capabilities like never before and provide ever more innovative and competitive services,” said Luc Hovhannessian, managing director of Finastra Asia Pacific.