FAB Directors Gautam Dutta, Head of GTB Cash Management Product Innovation, and Tariq Hoodbhoy, Head of Treasury Advisory Services, explain how technology helps create an exceptional user experience.
Global Finance: How do you improve user experience using application programming interfaces? [APIs] and microservices architecture?
Gautam Dutta: Improving the user experience is critical for FAB, and the integration of API and microservices architecture is an essential part of this endeavor, including in enterprise cash management solutions. Through the use of APIs, key innovation providers such as FAB can provide real-time data access and seamless connectivity between different banking services of the treasury/ERP system. This facilitates faster and more efficient payment and cash management operations, giving corporate treasurers immediate visibility and control over their financial transactions.
Microservice architecture further contributes to the user experience by enabling the development of modular, scalable and independent services that can be quickly updated or replaced without disrupting the entire system. The flexibility of our modular approach ensures new features and enhancements can be implemented quickly, improving the overall user experience by providing corporate treasurers with more responsive, reliable and tailored payment and cash management solutions. With strategic initiatives such as API-based message tracking, APIs and microservices architecture will continue to gain momentum, as we see with FAB’s major customers deploying APIs for various payables and receivables services.
female friend: Can you tell us something about your white label treasury management system? [TMS] and why did you decide to make it pay-as-you-go?
Tariq Hoodbhoy: FAB decided to launch a white label TMS after assessing the market and finding a gap. As our business customers grew, their reliance on Excel backfired and simple tasks such as understanding or consolidating balances took much longer and were occasionally prone to errors. In keeping with FAB’s ‘customer first’ ethos, we decided that a white label TMS would help corporate customers manage their treasury with greater control, efficiency and a better platform to manage risk.
When we discussed the TMS proposition with customers, we discovered that their needs varied. Some just needed the dashboard to gain insight into their balances, while others simply wanted access to the TMS to view and monitor their loans. The flexibility offered by the system allowed us to build the modules customers needed, charging them only for what was used. As their business matures and they need more features, we can swap or add modules and train them accordingly. This approach ensures that customers are not overwhelmed by the entire system and only pay for what is needed, rather than purchasing a system in which they have only 20% of the features implemented. We also provide a user acceptance test for our customers [UAT] environment that can replicate their production profiles for testing when they’re unsure if it’s time to scale up. Once they feel comfortable, they can replicate the model and put it into production.
female friend: How did your banking-as-a-service offering for neobanks come about, and what benefits do they get from offering your banking services?
Dutta: FAB is at the forefront of digital and technology adoption and is positioned to unlock the open banking opportunities that are reshaping the global financial services landscape by leveraging BaaS. We have started providing neobank customers with effective solutions to streamline and facilitate cash deposits, check deposit services and cash withdrawals using FAB’s regulated infrastructure. BaaS is the end-to-end solution that allows neobanks and other third parties to connect directly to a bank’s system, like ours, via APIs, allowing them to build banking offerings on top of the providers’ regulated infrastructure. Given the limited or no branch network model of many neobanks, it is beneficial for everyone to leverage FAB’s extensive reach and robust infrastructure through its BaaS solution. Neobanks can expand their service offering in a completely seamless manner, allowing their customers to easily manage their banking needs regardless of their location. FAB’s BaaS proposition is designed with simplicity and convenience in mind, allowing neobanks to provide their customers with effortless and secure transaction processing. In addition, FAB provides a dedicated support structure for neobanks through dedicated contact centers that route their customers’ queries to a robust, full-service, digitally seamless solution.
