First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) managing directors Gautam Dutta, head of GTB Cash Management Product Innovation, and Tariq Hoodbhoy, head of Treasury Advisory Services, explain how technology helps create an exceptional user experience.
Global Finance: How are you improving the user experience utilizing application programming interfaces [APIs] and microservices architecture?
Gautam Dutta: Enhancing user experience is paramount to FAB, and the integration of API and microservices architecture is a vital component in this endeavor, including in corporate cash management solutions. By adopting APIs, key innovation providers like FAB can offer real-time data access and seamless connectivity between various treasury/ERP system bank services. This facilitates faster and more efficient payment and cash management operations, providing corporate treasurers with immediate visibility and control over their financial transactions.
Microservice architecture further contributes to the user experience by allowing the development of modular, scalable and independent services that can be quickly updated or replaced without disrupting the entire system. The flexibility of our modular approach ensures that new features and improvements can be rapidly deployed, enhancing the overall user experience by providing corporate treasurers with more responsive, reliable and customized payment and cash management solutions. With strategic initiatives like API-based message tracking, APIs and microservices architecture will gain further momentum, as we are seeing with FAB’s marquee clients, who are implementing APIs for various services involving payables and receivables.
GF: Can you talk about your white label treasury management system [TMS] and why you decided to make it pay-as-you-go?
Tariq Hoodbhoy: FAB decided to launch a white label TMS after assessing the market and finding a gap. As our corporate clients grew, their reliance on Excel was backfiring and simple tasks such as visibility or consolidation of balances was taking much longer—and was occasionally prone to errors. In keeping with FAB’s “customer first” ethos, we decided that a white label TMS would help corporate clients manage their treasury with greater control, efficiency and a better platform to manage risks.
While discussing the TMS proposition with clients, we found that their needs varied. Some just needed the dashboard for visibility of their balances, and others simply wanted to access the TMS to view and monitor their loans. With the flexibility provided by the system, we were able to carve out the modules clients needed, only charging them for what was used. As their business matures and they need more features, we can switch or add modules, training them accordingly. This approach ensures clients are not overwhelmed by the entire system and are only paying for what is needed, rather than buying into a system where they have only implemented 20% of the features. In addition, we provide our clients with a user acceptance testing [UAT] environment that can replicate their production profiles for testing if they are unsure of whether it is time to scale. Once they are comfortable, they can replicate the model and put it into production.
GF: How did your banking-as-a-service offering for neobanks come about, and what benefits do they get from offering your banking services?
Dutta: FAB is at the forefront of digital and technological adoption and is positioned to unlock the open banking opportunity that is reshaping the global financial services landscape through the leveraging of BaaS. We have embarked on providing effective solutions to neobanks’ customers in order to streamline and facilitate cash deposits, check deposit services and cash withdrawals using FAB’s regulated infrastructure. BaaS is the end-to-end solution that allows neobanks and other third parties to connect to a bank’s system, such as ours, directly via APIs so they can build banking offerings on top of the providers’ regulated infrastructure. Given the limited or no-branch network model of many neobanks, leveraging FAB’s extensive reach and robust infrastructure through its BaaS solution is beneficial for all. Neobanks can expand their service footprint in a completely seamless manner, ensuring their customers can conveniently manage their banking needs, irrespective of their location. FAB’s BaaS proposition is designed with simplicity and ease in mind, thus allowing neobanks to offer effortless and secure transaction processing to their customers. In addition, FAB provides a dedicated support structure for neobanks through dedicated contact centers that route queries raised by their customers for a robust, full-service, digitally seamless solution.
