On November 13, the members of the OpenBankingProject.ch met for the eleventh time to discuss current developments in the field of open banking in Switzerland and to take a look into the future together. The event offered exciting insights into the latest advances and chal-lenges in the sector. In this blog post, the most important highlights and insights of the day are described.
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In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.
In today’s article, we will address the last three myths. If you missed the last article about myths 1 and 2, check here.
Myth 1: The cloud always saves money
Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals
Myth 3: Once you’ve chosen a cloud provider, there’s no going back
Myth 4: Software in the cloud makes you more innovative
Myth 5: Cloud migration is too complex
In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer the typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.
In today’s article, we will clarify Myth 1 and Myth 2:
Myth 1: The cloud always saves money
Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals
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In collaboration with Swisscom, we have created a series of articles to address the typical cloud myths in the banking context. We try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.
In today’s article, we clarify the current market trend and the different cloud models that are available.
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Fan tokens have established themselves as an innovative digital asset class that forms an interface between cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and the sports sector. They enable a new form of fan participation and offer exclusive benefits such as co-determination rights in club decisions and access to special rewards and games. These blockchain-based assets, which have already been issued by 81 sports organizations – including prestigious clubs such as FC Barcelona and Manchester City – have found their way into various sports such as combat sports, motorsports, tennis and rugby and offer far more than just speculative value . This blog post describes the concept of fan tokens and how they impact fan engagement.
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At the Open banking Summit 2024 with over 150 participants and top-class speakers, the OpenBankingProject.ch once again demonstrated its importance as a vital business network […]
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Note: This blog post contains excerpts from the article “ Data Value Creation Matrix — Options for Organizations to Create Value from Data”. Available at: […]
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The transfer of the AI paradigm “Foundation Models” in the language domain leads to Large Language Models (LLMs), which can be used to communicate in natural language and can be used in a variety of ways for different tasks due to their “broad training”. However, this requires adaptations of the models for the specific application domains. In this second part of his blog series, Wilhelm Niehoff presents the three method areas of In Context Learning (ICL), prompt engineering and fine-tuning that are used for this purpose. By addressing and using the LLMs, however, design-related weaknesses such as hallucinations, lack of topicality and expertise in detailed topics occur. In addition to the three method areas, there are “up-to-date” approaches such as DSPy and TextGrad, which aim to relieve the user of the task of constructing prompts. Accordingly, the weaknesses are eliminated by adding further components that are coordinated by LLMs.
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In recent months, the BEI has analyzed the future business models of asset management companies in Germany and Switzerland and has published a study. In the process, interviews were conducted with asset managers and, as a result, recommendations for action and business models of the future were defined. The aim of this study was to understand and explain the current state of the art and potential developments.
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OpenBankingProject.ch is currently organising a series of workshops on the topic of “digital customer proximity”. Around 40 participants from 30 companies from the financial sector and beyond are examining various target images and use cases on how banks can use concepts such as open banking or embedded finance to position themselves closer to their customers. The aim is to support end customers with digital service access outside of banking and to assist them with banking data, products or services. In this blog post, Stefan Knaus presents the workshop series, the results of the first events to date and the content planned for the future.
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From 2019 to 2024, the global volume of digital data generated or replicated annually almost quadrupled – a trend expected to persist (Tenzer, 2024). Technology companies are demonstrating how data is being used to generate revenue that often dwarfs physical assets. Neglecting data can put companies at a significant disad-vantage in the future, leaving them behind data-driven competitors. However, many companies do not utilize the majority of their data and face issues such as data breaches and data silos (DalleMule & Davenport, 2017). The key is to develop and implement data strategies. This blog post presents a categorization for data strategies and their relevance for digital companies and banks in particular.
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Since the launch of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the US in January 2024, Bitcoin has become accessible as an asset to a broad institutional investor base. This marked a significant milestone on its journey as a monetary asset. The next major step in Bitcoin’s development as an investable asset is to unlock yield generation opportunities (similar to dividends on stocks or coupons on bonds). The first part of this two-part blog post introduces Bitcoin as a new type of monetary asset and the need for productive use of Bitcoin and analyses how initial approaches in this area led to the 2022 crypto credit crisis.
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If you look at today’s bank customers, they are always digitally active in their respective living environments. McMakler provides an example of positioning in customers’ living environments. If people search for design ideas for self-built furniture on Pinterest, for example, McMakler displays real estate offers that match their known living preferences. This happens in the context of a cooperation between McMakler and over 400 banks. Under certain conditions, banks can therefore offer their services in the respective living environments of their customers. However, this option is only one alternative as to how banks or individual banking divisions can position themselves strategically. In Stefan Knaus’ blog post from October 24, 2023, we presented four different strategic role profiles in the context of open banking. Now we would like to take a look at current market developments and which use cases have driven banks forward. We will also classify the terms “embedded finance” and “contextual banking”, which are frequently used in this context.
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Large language models (LLMs) have made a quantum leap in the field of natural language processing (NLP) over the last five years, both in terms of understanding (natural language understanding, NLU) and generation (natural language generation, NLG) in the development of communication with computers. With ChatGPT, the general public has also become aware of this. The possible uses in companies are beginning to become more and more relevant. A small series of articles will describe the emergence, integration possibilities in processes and effects of LLMs. In this article, the history of the development of LLMs up to their current status will be outlined, with the aim of presenting strengths, weaknesses and manifestations in the next article on this basis.
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More and more companies are entering into partnerships to achieve benefits such as cost reduction, standardization, flexibility and increased quality. Such relationships are essential in order to remain competitive in a complex world. Nevertheless, numerous examples show that failures with far-reaching consequences can also occur. This blog post shows the factors that make partnerships successful and the norms that need to be met.
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The digital revolution has reached the business world, and procurement management is no exception. The latest study by the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen, “Digitalization in Procurement Management”, sheds light on how profoundly digitalization is changing this area. This blog post summarizes the key findings of the study to shed light on the opportunities and challenges that digital transformation brings for companies.
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At the beginning of January 2024, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in New York approved the first Bitcoin spot ETFs for trading and distribution in the USA. The approval of ETFs in the US further contributes to the availability of digital assets on the broader investor market. Financial institutions can therefore increasingly assume that the demand for digital assets will change. How have banks in Switzerland positioned themselves in the context of digital assets and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each positioning? Based on observations and interactions in the Swiss market, these are categorized in this blog post.
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The first part of this blog series described different ways in which AI can affect individual professions. To analyze the impact of AI on the Swiss economic sector, a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative study on the exposure of individual professions to AI was conducted using a task-based view. The second part of this article series summarizes the results of this study and presents implications for policy and management.
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Digital transformation presents organizations with the challenge of developing an adaptive culture and harmonizing traditional business practices with digital offerings, whereby a comprehensive willingness to change and learn as well as a holistic approach to corporate management are crucial for an efficient transformation.
The following blog post presents a possible approach to analyzing a holistic transformation. The Capability Compass.
The third and final part of this series of blog posts examines the suitability of strategic role profiles in the context of open banking (individualist, producer, distributor, and platform) for Swiss banking groups. The article illuminates that the size, business environment and geographical focus of the individual financial institutions have a significant influence on the choice of a suitable open banking strategy. It also presents business models of the future and analyses how big banks, cantonal and regional banks and private banks could position themselves with their service offering in the future.
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Less than 15% of business ecosystems are successful in the long term – the main reason for failure is weaknesses in the governance model. It is therefore time to question which governance mechanisms are fundamentally available for business ecosystems and whether there are any application examples (successful or failed). The following blog post looks at a possible catalog of incentive and control mechanisms for business ecosystems.
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In the context of Open Banking, four different role profiles can be distinguished that banks can assume: Individualist, Producer, Distributor and Platform. The role profiles are differentiated with regard to the distribution and creation of services and allow banks to put together a tailored, new business model in the individual banking areas. In the second part of this three-part blog post series, the individual role profiles will be described in detail and their impact on a bank’s business model will be illustrated.
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In order to implement Open Banking, the European Union has been pursuing a regulatory-driven approach with PSD2 since 2018. In contrast, Switzerland is currently one of the few countries like the United States, Argentina, South Africa, and China to pursue a market-driven approach. However, last December, the Swiss Federal Council addressed Swiss financial institutions with a clear message and wants to accelerate developments around Open Banking. The first part of this three-part blog post series presents the impact of Open Banking on the business model of Swiss universal banks.
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After the successful Summit 2022, the doors opened again on August 24th at Google in Zurich for this year’s Open Banking Summit 2023. With over 100 participants and top-class speakers, the OpenBankingProject once again proved to be one of the enterprise networks in the context of Open Banking. This blog post summarizes the content of the Open Banking Summit 2023.
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The Competence Center Ecosystems of the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen develops solutions for relevant problems from practice. In the context of this blog post, the overall research goal of the re-search area Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is presented. This research goal is to develop a frame-work that demonstrates and supports the methodological approach of DLT implementations to enable companies to adequately address relevant requirements of the implementation process of a DLT.
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