Deutsche Bank opens its tech to third parties
Building an ecosystem of APIs
Deutsche Bank has accelerated the opening of its IT systems to third-party service providers across its corporate and investment banking and private and commercial banking divisions.
The bank says it is building an “ecosystem” of application programming interfaces (APIs), which will enable third-party providers – for example, fintechs – to develop new services and applications using the bank’s client data.
It aims “to establish the broadest possible range of applications linked to its data and systems – expanding beyond traditional financial services”.
Thomas Nielsen, chief digital officer at Deutsche Bank’s global transaction bank, cites companies like SAP, Amazon and Apple that “have created ecosystems around their platforms and systems, allowing third parties to play in their gardens”.
The financial services industry, he feels, “is now undergoing the same evolution”.
“This gives banks much greater potential for innovation and growth than they can generate by being single product-oriented. This will play a central role in driving the platform economy in banking,” adds Nielsen, who sees numerous opportunities for applications serving commercial clients right across cash and risk management, trade finance and securities services.
Deutsche Bank’s investment bank is building on the existing Deutsche Bank Application Programming Interface (dbAPI), which was launched in the private and commercial arm of the bank last year, and which is already linked to “numerous” external applications, according to the bank.
Deutsche Bank is calling on a broad range of partners, from “financial service providers that want to enhance existing applications with the aid of bank data, or firms that want to build completely new solutions based on that data”.
