Tell us how Finastra leverages its ‘Finance is Open’ DNA to address the pressing issues of financial exclusion, enhance financial resilience, and foster sustainability initiatives.
When it comes to building a global financial system that is inclusive, resilient, and sustainable, challenges remain. For example, we still have large unbanked or underbanked populations around the world. Black swan events, including extreme weather in the Middle East and elsewhere, have become more frequent. Plus, trillions of dollars continue to be poured into fossil fuels, and institutions face increasing pressures to reduce their environmental footprint while helping their customers do the same. At Finastra, we believe that finance is open, and this enables us to help tackle these challenges. A good example is Finastra Essence, our digital banking platform, which combines rich, broad, and deep banking functionality with advanced technology, and supports seamless integrations with our vast fintech ecosystem through open APIs. Through this holistic offering, we’re helping institutions to equalise finance, enabling more people to access banking services, whether in the poorer sections of society or those with unique needs not served by traditional, monolithic banking. Additionally, banks can increase agility, make more informed decisions, effectively manage risks, and evolve quickly with change. We’re also supporting sustainability initiatives. With our solutions, banks can, for example, extend their lending practices to cover items such as electric vehicles or solar panels and offer personalised suggestions about the best products, for which grants are available and recommended installers. By enabling BaaS and embedded finance, we can also help banks embed these loans at the point of sale to create seamless user journeys.

: What changes are we seeing in consumer demands, in terms of access to instant and personalised services?
We live in an age where everything is in demand. Whether finding a film to watch, ordering food to our doorsteps, connecting with others via social media or ordering transport, we have access to a range of services and content at our fingertips. When combined with increasing time pressures in our daily lives, the result is a much lower tolerance for friction in user journeys, which permeates banking too. Consumer demand for instant, technology-driven, and personalised financial services has never been greater. This is evident around the world, particularly in the Middle East, which has a young population and one of the highest rates of smartphone penetration worldwide. The appetite for on-demand, digital services is reflected in recent payment trends. In the UAE, for example, noncash payments were estimated to account for 73 per cent of the total transaction volume in 2023, up from just 39 per cent in 2018. Consumers also expect services that are tailored for them, factoring in individual values or needs related to their financial situation or education. Importantly, they expect them to be delivered via the channels that they prefer, whether that’s through an app or embedded within another user journey that the bank does not own.

Additionally, how does Finastra navigate the rapidly changing technological landscape in the UAE to assist banks in adapting to personalised financial services quickly?
The UAE is home to a thriving technology and fintech environment, fueled by initiatives such as Dubai Vision 2030. In fact, the UAE fintech assets under management value is expected to grow from $3.16bn in 2024 to $5.71bn by 2029, at a CAGR of 12.56 per cent. While technology has always been a major component of financial services, the pace of innovation and change that we’re seeing today is both a big opportunity for banks and a major challenge. If they move too quickly or with the wrong strategy, they could be faced with increased operational risks and decreased customer retention. As banking is sophisticated and evolving rapidly, institutions need a core banking solution that combines rich, broad, and deep banking functionality with advanced technology. A solution that has the banking capabilities built-in, is ready to deploy immediately and has the architecture needed for a digital world. A solution that can rapidly plug and unplug apps from ecosystem partners, bringing new capabilities online fast. And this is what we’re providing to banks. Whether it’s cashless payments, delivering services on the platforms or channels consumers prefer, or providing services that align with values – such as sustainability or Islamic finance – our solutions and open ecosystem ensure that banks can adapt quickly and securely, meaning they can continue to offer the personalised services that matter most to their customers.

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