Speakers at a roundtable discussion stressed introducing API based Open banking so that more people can be brought under banking services.
They said open and API banking, a new concept that is getting very popular in both developed and developing countries, is reducing the cost of traditional banking and increasing new revenue opportunities for tanks.
The roundtable dialogue on API and Open Banking: Way for New Service Innovation for Banks and Fintech companies was Organized by the BASIS Standing Committee on Fintech recently at a ity hotel.
High officials of 20 leading commercial banks and over 30 fintech entrepreneurs attended the roundtable.
Bangladesh Bank Executive Director Md. Khurshid Alam chaired the roundtable while Selim Hossain, Chairman of Association of Bankers (ABB) was the Special Guest.
Fahim Mashroor, Chairman of BASIS Committee on Fintech and CEO of Bdjobs.com moderated the discussion.
Speakers urged the urged the Central Bank to introduce supportive guidelines and required a standardization process so that banks and fintech companies can share data based on customer consent keeping data privacy and security.
The session emphasized that any financial transaction data is owned by the customer or user. Banks or mobile financial services are only custodians of the data. If any user wants to share the data to any third party to get any financial services like loans from any other financial organization, the custodian banks should make provision for that data sharing.
Todd Schweitzer, CEO of Brankas, a leading open banking fintech company in the Philippines and Singapore, shared best practices of open banking in the Southeast Asian region.
Jayanta Bhoumic, Deputy Director of Payment Service Department of Bangladesh Bank gave another keynote on the topics and discussed the possible roadmap of API-based open banking in Bangladesh.
Redwan Ansary, CEO of Circle Fintech gave a presentation on the required policy support for enabling greater partnership between banks and fintech companies.
Chief Guest of the program Md. Khurshid Alam of Bangladesh Bank shared the Central bank's commitment to the required policy and regulatory support for open banking in Bangladesh. He also mentioned that the Central Bank will facilitate new innovation by young fintech entrepreneurs by giving them all kinds of regulatory support. He also advised banks for greater collaborate with local fintech companies. Fahim Mashroor, Chairman of BASIS Committee on Fintech and CEO of Bdjobs.com, mentioned that open banking is the best way to solve the big problem of low loan disbursement ratio of banks to the MSME segment. "The problem of high operation cost for banks for SME loan disbursement and repayment can be solved by open banking based digital lending".
Head of IT and Digital banking of a number of banks including Brac Bank, UCB, HSBC, Bank Asia, Islami Bank, Mutual Trust Bank, City Bank, Jamuna, bKash, Nagad, Upay and other financial institutions attended the program and discussed the topics.
BASIS President Russel T Ahmed, Vice President Fahim Ahmed along with over 30 BASIS member companies were also present in the roundtable.