Switzerland’s Hypothekarbank Lenzburg goes open banking
Marianne Wildi, CEO of Hypothekarbank Lenzburg
Switzerland’s Hypothekarbank Lenzburg is opening up its Finstar core banking system to fintech firms with the use of APIs.
The bank has signed an agreement with German software firm NDGIT, which supplies the APIs, and the implementation at Hypothekarbank Lenzburg will be completed by the end of May. Once implemented, its data and services will be available for accounts, deposits and other banking processes.
Marianne Wildi, CEO of Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, says it chose NDGIT because of its “convincing, easy-to-integrate technology and the long experience of its API specialists”.
According to the bank, it has some fintech collaborations in place with Qontis, Advanon, Finform, EdgeLab, CreditGate24, Payrexx and Datalizard. The bank says these existing Finstar partner companies, which are already handling their operations via Finstar, can also use the new open banking platform.
In addition, the open platform will be made available to Swiss Fintech Innovations (SFTI), an independent association, as a sandbox. Hypothekarbank Lenzburg is a founding member of SFTI.
Jürgen Petry, co-director of SFTI, says it is working on a “unified Swiss API standard with a focus on banks and insurance companies” and the sandbox is “intended to make available a generally accessible API reference environment which, for example, can be used by SFTI members for test purposes”.
