Dec 21, 2020: Open Banking Wealth Management w/ Plaid

Written by Gertjan De Wilde

We have a lot to share this week and hope you're ready for all of our announcements! Please see below for your weekly update. As part of our passion to continue providing you with industry-leading information on the open banking segment globally. This update will have the weekly additions to the Open Banking Tracker (Banks, APIs, TPPs, etc.), and a look at how the Open Banking framework of APIs can revolutionize the wealth management industry.

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Our Current Coverage

  • We track 2,079 banks providing open banking services! (+79 from last week!)
  • 1,005 APIs currently tracked on our platform! (+1)
  • 404 TPPs in the ecosystem! (+3)
  • 85 Global markets covered! (+2)
  • 35+ API Aggregators! (with more coming very soon...) (+9!)
  • Track over 60+ data points for all open banking projects!
  • One new expert partnership! (+1) w/ Platformable!
  • And we are growing on a continuous basis... ๐Ÿš€๐Ÿš€๐Ÿš€

Weekly Developments (Dec 7th to Dec 13th):

We initiated coverage and provided open banking information for:

We initiated coverage on 9 new aggregators!


Open Banking Use Case Spotlight: Wealth Management w/ Plaid

This year, the market volatility unleashed a tsunami of retail investors flooding stock markets, trying to capitalize on the biggest market dip in a decade. Consequently, the onboarding process with many brokerages and wealth management shops extended from the usual few days to as long as a month in some US and Canadian cases. Many retail investors became acutely aware of how inefficient the legacy systems are. They watched the markets climb while not yet able to trade since the brokerage's employees couldn't scrutinize the account application forms at volume.

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These brokerages could have benefited from the open banking framework that allows the user to freely move their information through incumbent bank APIs into the broker's systems to speed up the onboarding process โ€” offering a much faster and more positive user experience at a reduced scrutiny burden on the broker. Going further, brokerages' wealth management arm can gain direct access to the client's existing portfolio information with aggregation services like Plaid.

โ€œPlaid enables financial advisors and wealth management platforms to aggregate held-away account information to deliver more holistic financial advice. Firms can also use Plaid to better grow AUM through streamlined ACH account funding โ€” with conversion rates that often far exceed the competition.โ€

Even digital-native wealth management platforms, like Nutmeg, can benefit from the open banking movement through the rise of banking super apps, like Revolut. As these apps become more prevalent and offer an ever-expanding suite of services, the wealth management industry can make account information available through APIs, which means that users could access their checking, savings, mortgage, and investment accounts from a single application. Non-connected accounts will seem archaic and cumbersome to use by comparison.

What's the key takeawayโ€ฆ

The open banking information sharing over APIs has to go both ways. The broker needs to ensure that their serversโ€™ account data is accessible by account aggregating services while they pull KYC data from those same places. As users become more accustomed to controlling their data and how easy it makes their signup for new services, they begin to expect this level of service to transpire to all corners of the financial services spectrum. Brokerages have an opportunity to use the open banking movement to simplify how they add new users to their platforms, reduce the fees they charge, and make investing more accessible to people that would never have thought about the markets.


Feedback

Please feel free to email us back with any coverage or data requests to implement or improve our current data set! We are a customer centric provider and want to make sure our users are as satisfied as can be!

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Have a great week and stay safe!

The Banq team

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