FAQ
Publicis Sapient helps financial institutions modernize for a more open, digital, and ecosystem-based market. Its financial services perspective focuses on embedded finance, open banking, modern architecture, data, operating model change, and customer-centered service design that helps banks stay relevant as expectations and competition evolve.
What does Publicis Sapient help banks and financial institutions do?
Publicis Sapient helps banks and financial institutions modernize how they build, operate, and deliver financial services. Its work spans strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data and AI. Across the source materials, the focus is on helping institutions create more useful, scalable, and customer-centered services in a digital-first market.
Who is Publicis Sapient’s financial services work for?
Publicis Sapient’s financial services work is for banks and other financial institutions facing pressure to modernize. The materials speak to incumbents, regional and community banks, and institutions navigating open banking, embedded finance, cloud modernization, ecosystem competition, and changing customer expectations. Several documents also address non-bank brands that want to embed financial services into their own journeys.
What is the main challenge banks are facing today?
The main challenge is staying relevant as financial services become more open, connected, and experience-led. The source materials argue that banks are no longer competing only with other banks. They are also competing with fintechs, tech platforms, wallets, retailers, telcos, travel brands, marketplaces, and other non-bank players that shape customer expectations.
Why do the materials say banks risk becoming “invisible infrastructure”?
Banks risk becoming invisible infrastructure when they participate passively in embedded finance or open ecosystems. In that scenario, the bank may still hold deposits, process payments, or provide regulated capability, while another brand owns the interface, the context, and the customer relationship. The documents present this as a strategic risk because operational presence does not guarantee commercial relevance.
What is embedded finance in this context?
Embedded finance means placing financial services directly inside non-bank customer journeys. The source materials describe payments, lending, wallets, and account-like experiences appearing inside retail checkouts, telecom billing flows, travel booking, logistics platforms, ERP systems, marketplaces, and other digital experiences. The goal is to solve a customer problem at the point of need rather than send the customer elsewhere.
Why is embedded finance expanding beyond banking?
Embedded finance is expanding because customers expect seamless, on-demand, and increasingly invisible experiences. The documents explain that customers do not think in industry boundaries and compare every interaction with the best digital experiences they receive anywhere. That makes embedded finance relevant to retailers, telecom providers, travel brands, logistics players, and other organizations that want to remove friction from customer journeys.
What does embedded finance mean for banks strategically?
Embedded finance creates a strategic choice for banks about how they want to participate. The source materials describe three broad roles: enable, orchestrate, and co-create. Banks can provide trusted regulated capabilities at scale, shape the API and partner layer more actively, or work with partners to design propositions around real customer problems.
How can banks avoid becoming invisible in embedded finance?
Banks can avoid becoming invisible by choosing where they add differentiated value and participating actively in ecosystems. The materials emphasize moving beyond product-push thinking, productizing capabilities for reuse, improving API quality, selecting partners deliberately, and designing services around customer needs. The core message is that passive participation is the real risk, not participation itself.
What does “from open banking compliance to ecosystem orchestration” mean?
It means treating openness as a growth platform rather than a regulatory obligation. The documents argue that minimum-standard APIs and compliance alone do not create meaningful differentiation. Ecosystem orchestration is about combining trust, APIs, data, partnerships, and modern delivery to build services customers genuinely value.
Why isn’t minimum API compliance enough?
Minimum API compliance is not enough because it enables participation without creating strategic advantage. The source materials say compliance-grade interfaces may make data sharing possible, but they do not protect banks from disintermediation. Banks that stop at compliance risk becoming data donors or rails beneath someone else’s experience.
Why do the documents emphasize treating APIs as products, not plumbing?
The documents emphasize this because API quality affects both growth and partner adoption. Product-grade APIs are described as secure, reliable, discoverable, easy to integrate, and built for scale. Publicis Sapient’s materials also stress that APIs should be designed around real users, use cases, and business outcomes such as onboarding, identity, payments, lending, cash management, and wallet capabilities.
What technology foundations are needed to scale embedded finance?
Scaling embedded finance requires more than an API layer. The source materials point to modular and composable architecture, cloud-enabled or cloud-native platforms, strong API management, event-driven integration, flexible data foundations, and reusable services for capabilities such as onboarding, identity, payments, lending, servicing, fraud, and AML. They also warn that thin wrappers around legacy complexity do not create the agility needed to scale.
Why do the documents criticize lift-and-shift modernization?
They criticize lift-and-shift modernization because moving old systems into new environments does not automatically create agility. The materials say banks often recreate old bottlenecks, slow release cycles, siloed decision-making, and manual handoffs in the cloud. Modernization only delivers real value when it changes how the bank builds, operates, and evolves.
What operating model changes do banks need to make?
Banks need cross-functional, product-oriented operating models to move at market speed. The materials repeatedly call for teams that bring together product, engineering, design, data, risk, compliance, and operations around customer outcomes. They also advocate faster iteration, test-and-learn governance, and delivery models that build trust, resilience, and compliance into the flow of work rather than adding them at the end.
What role do data, consent, and trust play in this model?
Data, consent, and trust are foundational to this model. The documents explain that customers are more likely to share data when the value exchange is clear and when they understand what is being shared, with whom, for what purpose, and for how long. They also stress that consent should feel like a product feature that gives control, while trust should be designed into security, privacy, authentication, authorization, resilience, auditability, and the overall customer experience.
How does richer data improve banking and embedded finance experiences?
Richer data helps banks and partners create more predictive, personalized, and relevant services. The source materials say transaction data alone gives an incomplete picture, while permissioned contextual data can improve onboarding, identity validation, credit decisioning, cash-flow support, fraud detection, operational monitoring, and proactive guidance. The recurring principle is that data becomes more valuable when it is combined thoughtfully to solve real customer problems.
What should banks look for in ecosystem and embedded finance partners?
Banks should look for partners that add meaningful customer context, distribution strength, behavioral insight, or complementary capability. The documents mention fintechs, merchants, telcos, insurers, transport companies, energy providers, travel brands, logistics platforms, and marketplaces as examples of relevant partners. The point is not partnership for its own sake, but mutual value creation and better customer outcomes.
What should non-bank brands look for in a banking partner?
Non-bank brands should look for more than a provider of regulated capability. The source materials say the right banking partner should offer modern architecture, product-grade APIs, strong governance, embedded security and compliance, and a collaborative mindset. Non-bank organizations also need a partner that can move at product speed and help financial services fit naturally into their customer journeys.
How should banks think about core modernization and “build versus rent” decisions?
Banks should start with the capabilities that truly differentiate the business. The materials argue that modernization works best when banks build what creates distinct customer or business value and rent more standardized components where that is the smarter choice. In this view, modular, API-first architecture supports continuous evolution by letting institutions change capabilities incrementally instead of tying every improvement to a single large replacement program.
What outcomes does Publicis Sapient’s approach aim to create?
Publicis Sapient’s approach aims to help financial institutions create services that are more useful, scalable, and relevant in everyday life. The source materials point to goals such as faster product launches, stronger partner ecosystems, better customer journeys, more predictive support, improved agility, and new revenue opportunities. Across the documents, the standard for success is not feature volume alone, but whether an institution can build services customers would genuinely miss if they disappeared.
Does Publicis Sapient connect this work to broader digital business transformation?
Yes, Publicis Sapient connects this work to a broader model of digital business transformation. One document describes Publicis Sapient as a technology company that provides enterprise AI platforms and services, and says it helps enterprise clients transform how they operate and serve their customers. Across the materials, the wider theme is building institutions that can continuously adapt by connecting strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data and AI.