While most of the industries are going all out on innovation, the pace at which the Banking and Financial Services industry is adopting it is not as encouraging. A major reason being having to focus a lot more on security and compliance. Since they are already on a back-foot, they need to make the most of it when it comes to accelerating technology innovations - and a key factor here is seamless API integration.

What are APIs?

In its fundamental form, an API i.e. Application Programming Interface is a software proxy. It enables two applications to talk to each other. A technology interpreter, if you will. As we head towards unexpected weather changes, you are likely to google the weather in your place. But as we all know, Google itself is not into the weather business, so it derives this data from third party integration services.

Banks have been on the route of digitization for a while now. APIs are the intermediary to enabling whatever combination of applications a bank chooses to adopt.

Now that we have a fair ideas of what APIs are, here’s why it's time for banks to rethink their API strategy:

In its fundamental form, an API i.e. Application Programming Interface is a software proxy. It enables two applications to talk to each other. A technology interpreter, if you will. As we head towards unexpected weather changes, you are likely to google the weather in your place. But as we all know, Google itself is not into the weather business, so it derives this data from third party integration services.

Banks have been on the route of digitization for a while now. APIs are the intermediary to enabling whatever combination of applications a bank chooses to adopt.

Now that we have a fair ideas of what APIs are, here’s why it's time for banks to rethink their API strategy:

1. New perspective on the API landscape

Strategic thinking is a must for banks to understand what resources will be closed, open, internal, and external. An effective API strategy allows the collaborations and integration of various applications without any constraints. This strategy in turn drives down development and maintenance costs as API layers create a versatile toolkit of building blocks that can be assembled and reassembled as and when needed.

2. Putting the Act into Action
   An ideal API should consist layers of:

• Core APIs that retrieve fundamental information from systems
• Journey APIs that hook up various bank products and services
• Experience APIs that allow constant user interactions for customers as they migrate among banking services

Together these layers ensure flexibility - when requirements change, the implementation of individual apps can be altered without altering the main system.

3. Embracing new allies and services
   Open APIs allow banks to create new opportunities for outsourcing services with minimum effort. A well-implemented API strategy makes room for the possibility of working with a third party that may have top commodity technology products for purchase or rent.

A well-structured API strategy can help banks to unburden the pressure of monolithic technology and allow them to be flexible for meeting new customer expectations and requirements.

How can Neebal help?

We have successfully designed API integrations for several organisations using MuleSoft in order to synchronize multiple systems and integrate them with other technologies such as SAP. Start your API journey with us now.