Leon Muis is Chief Business Officer at Yolt. Yolt are the smart money platform behind the award-winning app & Europe’s leading open banking provider, Yolt Technology Services (YTS). Leon will be joining the panel discussion ‘What are the Strategic Opportunities Afforded by Open Banking?’ on December 4th at FinTech Connect.
Can you tell us a little bit about Yolt Technology Services?
Yolt Technology Services is the leading Open Banking provider in Europe, building, managing, and maintaining AIS and PIS connections for top financial institutions and ambitious tech businesses.
Our mission is to innovate and drive the financial industry forward by bringing the benefits of open banking to even more businesses across Europe. We built Yolt Technology Services based on the 18 months of expertise and capability in making Open Banking API connections which power the Yolt app.
What is your relationship with ING?
Yolt is an ING venture, which means that we combine the stringent security measures of an established bank with a future-facing fintech mindset. The founders of Yolt launched the market leading smart money app in October 2016 and went on to launch Yolt Technology Services in September 2019. It’s through the best of both of these worlds that we’ve been able to build a trustworthy, adaptive and reputable business from the ground up.
What do you think will drive Open Banking adoption over the next year to 18 months?
Open banking is changing finance by opening up the industry – putting power and control into the hands of consumers. Ultimately though, it offers the potential to improve the way that the finance industry works for both businesses and their customers. Companies will be able to reduce business risk by gaining clearer insights of prospective customers, as well as being able to offer more tailored services, while consumers will benefit from being able to take ownership of their data and choose who they share it with. As more and more businesses leverage the power of Open Banking and enter the market, the use of Open Banking by both businesses and consumers will become more mainstream.
Open Banking offers much greater flexibility to both providers and users, and we envisage that over the next 18 months adoption will be driven by greater personalisation to customer needs, as well as more targeted propositions.
How is Yolt Technology Services leveraging the evolving principles of Open Banking?
Yolt Technology Services isn’t just leveraging the principles – we’ve helped to guide them! YTS is proud to be one of the main driving forces of the changes brought on by Open Banking; empowering businesses, financial institutions and FinTechs to drive technology forward and serve their customers in new and innovative ways.
What is Yolt Technology Service’s USP in the increasingly competitive Open Banking landscape?
From early on, the founders behind Yolt worked closely with the Open Banking Implementation Entity, other Third-Party Providers, and financial institutions to shape and launch Open Banking in the UK. With the Yolt app in January 2018 becoming the first ever Third-Party Provider to successfully make an open banking API call. Just under two years later, we’ve now made over 300 million, accounting for almost 50% of all API traffic.
In September 2019, the Yolt founders launched Yolt Technology Services – taking the technology that powers the market leading Yolt app alongside their expertise and learning to enable like-minded businesses to also benefit from the opportunities derived from open banking.
As well as holding the API market share, we’re also practicing what we preach. YTS is a B2B brand but thanks to our smart money app, we have real-world experience of what works for banking and finance customers in terms of features and user experiences.
We can also boast a more stringent security approach to many other start-up FinTechs thanks to our relationship with ING, and the established security measures put in place through this partnership.
Where do you see the future of personalized banking experiences?
When it comes to the future of the personalisation that Open Banking can bring, the possibilities are really endless. For financial institutions, fintechs and other potential parties, the limit is only their creativity!
Ultimately, Open Banking means that users will be able to receive a more tailored service from financial providers, and our YTS technology is here to help companies identify where personalisation can offer the greatest business value. And in my view, Open Banking is only the start of the journey towards first Open Finance and eventually Open Data, when consumers really own and have full control over all their data, which can be used to serve them in ways unimaginable in the present day.
Do you think we are yet to see the killer UX in financial services?
We believe that there are quite a few applications in the market which offer a substantially better UX compared to existing financial services providers. However, we also believe that with the rise of AI and the move towards more and more open data, financial services applications will arise which are currently unthinkable. It is in the very nature of Fintech to keep improving and to keep challenging the status quo, therefore, by definition, we will see continuous improvement and progress in financial products and services. And this should in the end, benefit consumers.
We are very excited to host you in London in December to take part in our Open Banking panel discussion at Fintech Connect, who will you be looking to meet and hear from whilst at the event?
We’re really looking forward to FinTech Connect 2019, there’s not many opportunities to bring together so many game changers in this evolving landscape, all in one place. We look forward to meeting businesses who are thinking about how Open Banking might empower their business and are looking for an easy solution to make this happen, with the help of the experts behind Yolt.
Register for FinTech Connect on 3–4 December at ExCeL, London.
