4 must-haves for your digital banking

We have spoken to industry experts about frequently requested must-haves in their product areas and which unique offerings to look for. In addition, they shared their insights about promising innovations in the business.

You don’t want to skim, but get right to the point? These are the product areas we are talking about:

• Payments & cash management
• Capital markets & investment banking
• Trade & export finance
• All-in-one banking platforms
  

The must-haves

The most important factors when choosing a cash management partner are connectivity and multi-banking capabilities: “Offering various options like SWIFT SCORE, EBICS or Host-2-Host are crucial,” explains Philipp Höfer, Cash Management at RBI.

For large multinational companies, a centralized and harmonized payments and account reporting offering is key to ensure reliable group-wide liquidity management. Additionally, real-time cross-border capabilities like SWIFT gpi have become the new normal in international payments space.

What’s unique?

“What sets us as RBI apart here is our longstanding experience in our CEE markets,” Philipp says, “Creating cross-border cash pool structures to help optimize our customers’ interest income for instance is one of our strong suits.”

Incidentally, the Raiffeisen network is not limiting. A strong open banking approach is fostered: RBI’s API offering is already pre-integrated into renowned treasury management solutions such as TIS or within the SAP ecosystem, making the consumption and onboarding a real plug-and-play experience.

Innovation radar

Premium Open APIs offer many new developments for Cash Management and Embedded Finance – providing real-time account information via APIs is no longer a future trend but actually happening with renowned business customers to support their real-time treasury needs.

According to Philipp Höfer, another big focus in his area will be creating a full end-to-end digital experience for electronic bank account management across RBI Group, which is planned for 2024.

The must-haves

Complex and fast-paced, the capital markets and investment banking area needs to meet high expectations in the digital realm. “As a regional bank you need to be able to serve and integrate end-to-end with market-standard solutions, especially regarding flow business,” tells us Ferdinand Waldstein-Wartenberg, responsible for Markets & Investment Banking Business Development at RBI, “When it comes to more complex solutions, direct contact is much requested – as well as harmonized offerings across the banking group.”

What’s unique?

What is a unique offering that has recently been developed? “Our user-experience driven FX-platform R-Flex is very well positioned, as it perfectly fits the needs of smaller to larger legal entities on their cross-border journey in foreign exchange connected to online banking,” Ferdinand states, “It is currently rolled-out in Romania and Croatia, plus ramping up in Hungary – further CEE countries to come.”

Innovation radar

Meanwhile, the currently ongoing ‘platformication’ trends in the MIB sector foster positive disruption: “With our investment into the vc trade platform (being a European central marketplace for private debt), we are about to redesign the market standard for end-to-end execution in debt issuance processes.”

The must-haves

The digital must-haves in this area depend on the size of the company, explains Werner Klapka, Trade Finance RBI: “Very large corporates expect multi-banking solutions or API connectivity for requesting new transactions or regular reports. For smaller companies, front-end solutions are much more fitting to ensure a transparent overview.”

What’s unique?

A recurring theme in customer needs is end-to-end processing – also in trade finance. “We get very good client feedback about the digital process flow for requesting new guarantees in our eTradeOn solution,” reports Werner, “Customers really like to use digital signatures for new application forms.”

Some insurance companies have started providing ‘eAvale’, where clients enter their details on the front-end, all necessary checks are done automatically, and the final issued guarantee is delivered on the platform. “RBI is currently evaluating to implement a similar feature.”

Innovation radar

As for trends and innovations, the sector is very much alive. “Over the years, we have seen shooting stars, but also interesting digitization projects that failed because client interest was not there. Wherever we identify a need, we decide to go for this initiative together with our customer.”

Current routes worth exploring according to our experts are AML or ESG initiatives for trade finance, as well as automated document checking and multi-banking. “We have no established trade finance multi-banking channel in Austria – as RBI, we would wish to establish one with all major companies.”

The must-haves

When opting for business banking platforms rather than independent solutions, the clear must-haves are single sign-on, digital signatures and paperless processes (as far as possible). Transparency and processing speed are additional decision-making factors.

Herbert Auinger, Head of Group Corporate Digital Transformation at RBI, explains what sets one solution apart from the other: “Digital platform offerings are standard these days, the features are what make the difference. For us, digital onboarding (like eKYC or group account opening) is a big focus, and we are surely an industry leader in our region.”

What’s unique?

Many banks – many platforms. How can companies that work with various business banks deal with this? “This is in fact an important issue,” confirms Herbert, “for suitable use cases like eBAM (electronic Bank Account Management) direct system integration can be an answer. However, due to the maturity and available feature scope of most common ERP and Treasury Management Solutions, not every use case qualifies for such a direct approach. Meanwhile, customers who follow a house-bank approach benefit from one central e-gateway and all their banking business at a glance.”

Innovation radar

On the innovation side, Herbert and his team constantly work on expanding group-wide solutions for international customers. “Group eAccount Opening is already in place – a possible expansion could be Group eKYC in the future.”

One thing is for sure in digital business banking: Constant evolution. To optimize financial and treasury management efficiently, it is worth keeping an eye on developments and trends – for both banks and customers. Our experts all confirm that customer feedback is the most valuable commodity in their business. Identifying needs in an open dialogue will be the key for sustainable digital product innovation in the years to come.