COMMENTARY: OPEN BANKING A cog in the FS machine: Banks aren’t always driving the customer relationship
Switchinggears As Head of Investments at Banco Sabadell’s digital innovation hub InnoCells, Paula Blazquez Solano understands that banking’s role has fundamentally changed… her job is to make the most of that opportunity Open banking is redefining the role of institutional banks and, with it, comes the realisation that they can no longer automatically control the end-to-end customer journey. Sometimes they can only hope to be a cog in the system. Accepting that is core to Banco Sabadell’s attitude to digital innovation, says Paula
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TheFintechMagazine | Issue 17
Blazquez Solano, head of investments at its corporate venture arm and digital innovation hub, InnoCells. Tasked with leading the bank’s strategic digital agenda, it invests in startups related to its core business. And, as elsewhere in the financial services sector, open banking and the EU’s revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) have been key drivers of change and innovation at Banco Sabadell. But how they are leveraged varies between partnerships, says Blazquez, and the role the bank plays in the customer-facing relationship is no longer guaranteed to be the main component. “You stay ahead of the curve by staying relevant to your clients, and you have to understand you’re just a piece within the user experience or the customer journey,” she says. “Sometimes you’ll be an important piece, sometimes you’ll be just a smaller
one. But you have to make sure that you stay greased and engaged with the other pieces, that you function within that customer experience, and you match or exceed expectations in order not to be replaced.”
Investment strategy Among InnoCells’ recent launches is Nomo, a financial management tool aimed at freelancers that enables them to digitise and manage expenses and sales, create and send invoices, and has recently added an invoice financing service using a third party to alleviate cash flow problems through the pandemic. Since the end of 2018, Nomo has gained some 60,000 users – 40,000 of them over the past eight months – as freelancers continued to pay their bills and meet tax obligations during the crisis. www.fintech.finance