The SME Story
A dedicated hub for the regional startup and SME ecosystem
Interviews with entrepreneurs and insights from experts on how the regional SME ecosystem is evolving
What is composable banking?
Today, even the simplest banking service involves a complex orchestration of systems, transaction processing, decision-making, reporting, analytics, authentication, security and more. Instead of locking these functions together for dedicated applications and workflows, composable banking allows for separation of these functions so they can be combined and recombined in new ways to deliver new automated services and customer experiences.
Composable banking is an approach to the design and delivery of financial services based on the rapid and flexible assembly of independent, best-for-purpose systems. It helps banks create modern customer experiences to compete in the fintech era – and constantly evolve them to respond to change.
What is the difference between modular banking and composable banking?
Banking systems vendors have been touting modularity for years. What they really mean is a predefined suite of proprietary modules that extend the functionality of their core systems. They’re extensible but they’re not flexible or open. An apt metaphor is the jigsaw puzzle piece versus the Lego brick.
A modular approach, just like a jigsaw puzzle, combines different pieces into one pre-set picture. It is impossible to swap out pieces for better ones and the platform is locked into one vendor. On the other hand, composable banking combines independent components in any structure to create many different things. It is re-usable, and users can swap in or swap out any component. Additionally, composable banking follows a best-for-purpose approach with no vendor lock-in.
How does Mambu work with legacy banks and financial institutions?
Traditional banks can leverage Mambu’s cloud-native banking platform to replace their costly and complex traditional core banking systems. With Mambu, they can migrate, launch and service a new digital challenger proposition, lending or deposit portfolio, and reduce their time-to-market from several months to just a few weeks or even days in some cases.
How does Mambu address cybersecurity within the context of financial institutions?
Cybersecurity policy is becoming business as usual for banks and their executives are more confident today than they were five years ago that cybersecurity policies are well-designed and well-executed. And they need to be. At Mambu, security is embedded in all stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC) – from requirements engineering, programming and quality assurance to deployment, monitoring, alerting and incident management. We perform continuous internal security tests. These are further backed by external penetration tests from security researchers multiple times per year.
How do you see fintech evolving in the region?
As the digital world is gaining momentum, we see the proliferation of new digital banks and digital challengers across the globe. For the vast majority of existing banks, this rapid change can be perceived as an existential threat. But for some banks, whether they are startups, spinoffs and incumbents, change isn’t a threat at all. In fact, they see change as a major opportunity to build new digital banking propositions. They also take a fresh approach to it – instead of coding, they are configuring and integrating and instead of on-prem workloads, they are deploying in the elastic cloud. Essentially, we see more digital banks and fintech firms alike working as tech companies, rather than as banks.