Don’t believe the hype: how transparent is your core?
Following the publication of the One Core to rule them all column, I’ve had a lot great feedback. One bit of feedback was that this mythical core should also be transparent! Immediately this made sense to me – after all, one of the key benefits of the internet is that it has brought us transparency.
In a world that is increasingly open (open source, open data, open banking) vendors should increase their transparency too
However, this is not just about advertising your products online, it’s much more. Whether it is cloud-native core banking system from a vendor or a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) offering from a bank, surely there should be greater transparency. Aside from product collateral, what do I mean?
Firstly, there is pricing transparency. As consumers, most of us hate sites that don’t display prices. Yes, I understand that some things are more complex than doing your grocery shop online, but if you can buy a house online surely you can buy software online. Indeed, true Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions that are genuinely sold “as a service” always display pricing. Generally, they have tiered pricing to suit all customers.
Next is documentation. By nature of using these platforms via APIs, providers should provide open access to API documentation and sandboxes. This will scare many that assume competitors will troll their documentation and steal their ideas. However, it also puts legitimate developers off from trying out solutions. They don’t want to go through lengthy enrolment only to find out the solution doesn’t meet their needs. Nor do they want follow-up sales calls. Great examples of open access to developer resources include Mambu and Griffin. Griffin does require registration for sandbox access but it is only a short form.
Before you subscribe to any online service you probably wonder just how reliable the service is. So, the next area of transparency, especially for true SaaS solutions, is system performance. This should provide a broad range of metrics but the key one is availability. Furthermore, if a service goes down, you’d want to see the reason for the outage and what was done to resolve it. Again, Griffin wins the prize for providing both availability and support tickets and resolution for downtime. Mambu provides availability for both its sandboxes and production instances.
One area that I haven’t found great examples for is a product roadmap. Every big tech company – from Microsoft to Google – share their product vision and roadmaps to help organisations prepare for the future. Of course, these are subject to change and, again, there could be a fear of competitors stealing ideas. But as with all ideas it is proven execution of ideas that matters, not the idea itself.
Open forums to discuss the roadmaps are also important, and not just to discuss what is on the roadmap but also what isn’t and why.
One final area of transparency has to be customer/user feedback. Again, I have not found any great examples. Most banks or fintechs may use expensive subscriptions with various analyst firms. Whilst these provide some assurance, it’s worth noting that none of the mainstream analysts actually install or try the software, to the best of my knowledge. They rely on questionnaires completed by participating vendors to make competitor analysis/comparisons. There isn’t a possibility of these being biased or inaccurate, is there…? Gartner’s peer review and ratings platform, Peer Insights, goes somewhat towards providing customer reviews but I feel vendors should have open reviews on their own sites.
Whilst I’ve not done an extensive review of core banking software vendors or BaaS providers to see how they all fare on transparency, it seems to me that Griffin is the leader in this space at present.
This week, I’m just saying that in a world that is increasingly open (open source, open data, open banking…) vendors need to increase their transparency and reduce their marketing hype.
The internet has made buyers much more aware of vendors hiding behind their marketing. This transparency has shifted the notion of “buyer beware” (caveat emptor) to seller beware “caveat venditor”.
About the author
Dharmesh Mistry has been in banking for more than 30 years both in senior positions at Tier 1 banks and as a serial entrepreneur. He has been at the forefront of banking technology and innovation, from the very first internet and mobile banking apps to artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR).
He has been on both sides of the fence and he’s not afraid to share his opinions. All opinions are his own – feel free to debate and comment below!
He founded proptech start-up AskHomey (sold to a private investor in spring 2023) and is an investor and mentor in proptech and fintech. He also co-hosts the Demystify Podcast.
Follow Dharmesh on X @dharmeshmistry and LinkedIn.
Read all his “I’m just saying” musings here.
