Low Code/No Code for Open Banking: Accelerating Compliance and Innovation

Open banking is fundamentally reshaping the financial services landscape, compelling banks and fintechs to open up their data and services through secure APIs. This shift, driven by regulatory mandates and evolving customer expectations, is not just about compliance—it’s a catalyst for innovation, customer-centricity, and new business models. Yet, the journey to open banking is complex, requiring rapid adaptation to evolving standards, robust security, and seamless integration with legacy systems. Low code and no code (LCNC) platforms are emerging as powerful enablers, helping organizations accelerate their open banking strategies while reducing cost, risk, and time-to-market.

The Open Banking Imperative

Open banking regulations require financial institutions to provide third-party access to customer data and payment services, with customer consent. This is unlocking new opportunities for collaboration, competition, and value creation. However, compliance demands agility: banks must quickly develop, test, and deploy APIs, ensure data privacy, and maintain a high standard of security. Traditional software development approaches can be slow and resource-intensive, making it difficult to keep pace with regulatory timelines and market expectations.

How Low Code/No Code Platforms Accelerate Compliance

LCNC platforms offer a visual, drag-and-drop approach to application and API development. By abstracting much of the underlying complexity, these platforms empower both technical and business users to build, modify, and deploy solutions rapidly. For open banking, this means:

Faster API Development: Pre-built connectors, templates, and reusable components allow teams to quickly assemble and expose APIs that meet open banking standards.
Rapid Prototyping and Iteration: Business and IT stakeholders can collaborate in real time, iterating on API designs and customer journeys without lengthy development cycles.
Automated Compliance Controls: Many platforms embed regulatory requirements—such as consent management, data masking, and audit trails—directly into workflows, reducing the risk of non-compliance.
Seamless Integration: LCNC tools are designed to integrate with legacy systems, cloud services, and third-party platforms, making it easier to orchestrate data flows and ensure interoperability.

Fostering Innovation in Customer-Facing Services

Open banking is not just about meeting regulatory requirements—it’s about unlocking new value for customers. LCNC platforms enable banks and fintechs to:

Experiment with New Products: Quickly launch and test new digital services, such as personal finance dashboards, payment initiation, or account aggregation, without heavy upfront investment.
Personalize Experiences: Leverage customer data to deliver tailored recommendations, offers, and insights, enhancing engagement and loyalty.
Respond to Market Changes: Adapt to new regulations, customer needs, or competitive threats with agility, updating APIs and services in days rather than months.

Overcoming Legacy and Integration Challenges

Many financial institutions are held back by aging, monolithic core banking systems that are costly to maintain and difficult to integrate. LCNC platforms help bridge this gap by enabling modular, cloud-native architectures. This approach allows banks to decouple critical functions from legacy cores, migrate incrementally, and integrate seamlessly with fintechs and ecosystem partners. The result is greater agility, scalability, and resilience—key attributes for thriving in the open banking era.

Practical Insights: Governance, Collaboration, and Enablement

To maximize the benefits of LCNC in open banking, organizations should:

Adopt a Collaborative Mindset: Bring together business, compliance, and technology teams to co-create solutions, leveraging the accessibility of LCNC platforms.
Focus on Governance: Establish clear guidelines for API design, data security, and change management to ensure consistency and compliance as development accelerates.
Invest in Enablement: Provide training and support to empower a broader range of employees to participate in digital innovation.
Measure and Iterate: Use built-in analytics to monitor API usage, customer adoption, and compliance, refining solutions based on real-world feedback.

Real-World Impact: Publicis Sapient in Action

Publicis Sapient has partnered with leading financial institutions to harness the potential of LCNC platforms in their open banking journeys. Through these engagements, several key benefits have emerged:

Reducing Time-to-Market for Compliance: Banks facing aggressive regulatory deadlines have leveraged LCNC solutions to automate the creation and management of open banking APIs. By using pre-configured modules for authentication, consent management, and data sharing, institutions have been able to achieve compliance in a fraction of the time required by traditional development. This not only reduces operational risk but also frees up resources to focus on value-added innovation.
Enabling Innovation in Customer Experience: With compliance as a foundation, banks are using LCNC platforms to rapidly develop new digital products and services. For example, customer onboarding journeys, personalized financial dashboards, and third-party integrations can be built and iterated upon with minimal coding. This approach allows banks to experiment with new offerings, gather customer feedback, and refine experiences in real time—driving higher engagement and loyalty.
Improving Collaboration and Agility: LCNC platforms break down silos between business and technology teams. Product owners, compliance officers, and developers can work together in a shared environment, visualizing workflows and making changes on the fly. This collaborative model accelerates decision-making and ensures that solutions are aligned with both regulatory requirements and customer needs.

Governance Considerations

As LCNC adoption accelerates, governance becomes critical. Organizations must:

Define clear roles and responsibilities for API development and management.
Implement robust controls for data privacy, access, and compliance within the LCNC environment.
Ensure that all solutions are auditable and meet regulatory standards for security and transparency.

The Publicis Sapient Perspective

At Publicis Sapient, we see LCNC as a strategic accelerator for open banking transformation. By combining deep industry expertise with modern engineering practices, we help financial institutions harness these platforms to achieve rapid compliance, drive innovation, and create new sources of value. Our approach integrates strategy, product, experience, engineering, and data to deliver end-to-end transformation—from ecosystem strategy and API management to platform modernization and partnership enablement.

The future of open banking belongs to those who can move fast, adapt continuously, and put the customer at the center of every decision. LCNC is a key enabler on this journey, helping banks and fintechs not only meet regulatory requirements but also lead the market in customer experience, innovation, and growth.

Ready to accelerate your open banking strategy? Discover how Publicis Sapient can help you leverage low code/no code for compliance and innovation.