One of the leading technology firms in Southeast Asia announced recently that the Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP)’s plan to implement an Open Finance Framework in the country can bring us a step closer towards the direction of “holistic financial inclusion.”
Todd Schweitzer, CEO of Brankas, Southeast Asia’s leading Open Finance technology company, said that the company fully supports “the implementation of BSP’s Open Finance Framework as it can potentially change the lives of Filipino consumers and can lead us closer towards ‘holistic financial inclusion’ in the Philippines.”
Schweitzer also underscored the need for customer-consented robotic process automation (RPA), which he said is a crucial technology that the country’s finance industry needs.
“Customer-consented Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a crucial technology that the industry needs to get there. By allowing the safe and secure use of RPA, we as an industry can collectively enable Filipinos to avail of new and alternative financial products and services, offering them at better quality and at more affordable costs without compromising their financial consumer and data privacy rights,” he said.
Brankas is currently the leading Open Finance technology provider in Southeast Asia that provides API-based solutions, data and payments solutions for financial service providers (like banks, lenders, and e-wallets) as well as online businesses.
The company partners with banks to build and manage their Open Finance infrastructure, producing APIs for real-time payments, identity and data, new account opening, remittances, and more. With Brankas’ secure Open Banking technology, online businesses, fintech companies, and digital banks can use the tech company’s APIs to create new digital experiences for their users.
The BSP’s Open Finance Framework
In 2021, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) issued the Open Finance Framework providing the guidelines for enabling Open Finance in the Philippines and setting the standard across Southeast Asia.
The regulatory framework is aligned with the BSP Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap 2020-2023, which aims to strengthen customer preference for digital payments and promote more innovative and responsive digital financial services.
It also highlighted the central goals of Open Finance: greater competition in the financial services market, enabling more informed financial decisions for financial consumers, and encouraging financial consumers to exercise greater control over their data and finances.
Leading tech enablers in the financial services industry provide full support towards enabling Open Finance in the Philippines, a pioneering move in the region. They are advocating for an open discussion on the technologies that are necessary to achieve a vibrant Open Finance ecosystem and the aspirational goal of having bank-managed APIs securely available to verified third parties.
The use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to develop RPA-based APIs that accredited third parties can have secure access to could be transformative. Consistent with advanced Open Finance industries like the EU, US, and Australia, the use of RPA technology is both a necessary interim solution prior to bank-supported open APIs being made available by the thousands of financial institutions in the Philippines, and a necessary “fallback solution” to ensure financial consumer choice when bank-managed APIs are offline, underperform, or are otherwise unavailable.
While there are concerns and perceived risks surrounding RPA technologies, it is expected that open, fact-based discussion among industry and regulatory bodies will enable an Open Finance sector that protects consumers, empowers customer choice, and enables the next generation of Open Finance solutions.