FAQ
Publicis Sapient helps banks think beyond open banking compliance and use APIs, data, consent, and partnerships to create more valuable customer experiences. Its perspective centers on moving from minimum-standard openness to ecosystem orchestration, where banks combine modern technology, stronger collaboration, and clearer customer value exchange.
What is Publicis Sapient’s view of open banking?
Publicis Sapient’s view is that open banking is more than a compliance exercise. The firm describes open banking as a shift in how financial institutions share data, build partnerships, and compete for customer relevance. In this view, regulated APIs are an important starting point, but they do not create differentiation on their own.
Why is compliance alone not enough in open banking?
Compliance alone is not enough because minimum-standard APIs do not create meaningful competitive advantage. Publicis Sapient argues that banks that stop at regulatory requirements risk becoming passive infrastructure providers while fintechs, platforms, and other non-bank brands capture engagement, insight, and loyalty. The bigger opportunity is to use open banking as a platform for growth.
What does “moving beyond compliance” mean for banks?
Moving beyond compliance means turning open banking from an obligation into an ecosystem strategy. According to the source material, that includes defining partnership goals, building targeted API capabilities, and creating services that customers genuinely value. It also means treating openness as a way to unlock new revenue, stronger customer relationships, and better market positioning.
What does Publicis Sapient mean by ecosystem orchestration?
Ecosystem orchestration means actively shaping how a bank participates in an open financial services market. Rather than simply releasing data, banks choose where to play in the value chain, which partners to work with, and how to combine data and capabilities to create new services. Publicis Sapient presents this as the next step after open banking compliance.
How should banks think about APIs in the post-open banking era?
Banks should treat APIs as products, not just plumbing. Publicis Sapient says product-grade APIs should be designed for clear users, use cases, and business outcomes. The content also emphasizes that APIs should be easy to discover, easy to integrate, reliable, secure, and built for scale.
Why does developer experience matter for banks?
Developer experience matters because ease of integration becomes a competitive advantage in an ecosystem market. Publicis Sapient notes that the banks most likely to attract strong collaborators are those that make onboarding, testing, integration, and support simpler and faster. Good developer experience helps a bank become a more attractive partner.
What risks do banks face if they stay passive in open banking?
Banks that stay passive risk becoming “data donors” or background rails in someone else’s customer experience. The source documents repeatedly warn that a bank can continue holding deposits and processing transactions while another brand owns the interface, context, and loyalty. In that scenario, the bank still participates in the market, but captures less of the value created around its own data.
What kinds of customer value can open banking enable?
Open banking can enable more seamless, personalized, and proactive services. The source material mentions examples such as easier onboarding through pre-populated and verified information, smarter money movement across accounts, account aggregation, improved cash management, and more timely guidance based on a broader picture of a customer’s financial life. The value exchange becomes stronger as the service becomes more relevant.
How does Publicis Sapient describe the shift from “bank first” to “life first”?
Publicis Sapient describes this shift as moving away from product silos toward real customer needs and life moments. Instead of focusing only on accounts, cards, or loans, banks should focus on needs such as managing cash flow, buying a home, avoiding financial stress, or planning for retirement. The idea is to design services around customer outcomes rather than traditional product lines.
What role do partnerships play in this strategy?
Partnerships play a central role because banks are not expected to generate every winning idea on their own. Publicis Sapient highlights collaboration with fintechs, merchants, telcos, insurers, energy providers, transport companies, and other data-rich organizations as a way to create better services through pooled data and complementary capabilities. The goal is mutual commercial value and better customer outcomes, not partnership for its own sake.
What kinds of partners are relevant in an open banking ecosystem?
Relevant partners can include fintechs, technology platforms, retailers, telcos, utilities, insurers, airlines, transport providers, and other organizations with meaningful customer context. The source material explains that each type of partner brings different strengths, such as specialist expertise, service design, customer reach, or additional data signals. Banks are encouraged to choose partners based on strategic fit and shared value creation.
Why is data so important to the open banking opportunity?
Data is important because it allows banks and their partners to understand customers more fully and design more relevant services. Publicis Sapient’s content explains that combining data from multiple sources can improve segmentation, refine predictive models, and support more personalized and preemptive experiences. The more thoughtful the data combination, the more useful the resulting service can become.
How should banks handle trust and consent?
Banks should treat trust and consent as visible parts of the customer experience. Publicis Sapient argues that consent should not feel like a legal obstacle course, but like a clear and empowering product feature. Customers should understand what data is being shared, with whom, for what purpose, and for how long, and they should be able to review, change, or revoke permissions easily.
What is the “data value exchange” in open banking?
The data value exchange is the idea that customers will share data when the benefit is clear, relevant, and immediate. Publicis Sapient’s source material says the more personal the data requested, the more explicit the benefit must be. If customers receive only a generic experience in return, the exchange feels weak, but if they receive less friction, better timing, smarter support, or more useful guidance, permission becomes more meaningful.
What capabilities do banks need to support this shift?
Banks need both technical and organizational capabilities to support this shift. Across the source documents, Publicis Sapient highlights modern API management, modular and cloud-enabled architecture, scalable data-sharing capabilities, strong consent and governance practices, and cross-functional execution across product, engineering, data, risk, compliance, and design. The firm also stresses that operating models must evolve alongside technology.
How should banks modernize for ecosystem participation?
Banks should modernize for orchestration, not just migration. Publicis Sapient says modular, composable, and cloud-enabled architectures make it easier to reuse capabilities, share data securely, integrate with partners, and launch services faster. The material also makes clear that simply moving legacy complexity into new environments will not create the agility needed for ecosystem leadership.
What business outcomes should banks measure in an API ecosystem?
Banks should measure business outcomes, not just technical activity. Publicis Sapient points to indicators such as partner activation, adoption, revenue generated, customer engagement, retention, conversion improvement, operational efficiency, and growth in ecosystem participation. The underlying point is that APIs should be evaluated by the value they create, not only by uptime or call volume.
What should banking leaders do next?
Banking leaders should define an ecosystem strategy and align business and technical priorities around it. The source material recommends identifying the customer journeys and partner types that matter most, extending beyond regulatory APIs to more purposeful API experiences, modernizing architecture, improving consent and trust design, and organizing teams around customer outcomes. Publicis Sapient’s message is that open banking opened the door, but the winners will be the banks that use it to build lasting strategic value.