Embedded Finance – Friend or Foe for the Financial Services Sector? 2021 | Finextra | 30 September 2021 | Online

As consumers demand more convenience, speed, and security from their online transactions, non-financial companies are seeing the opportunity to add to their service offering with white-labelled embedded financial services, tapping into the plethora of Banking as a Service (Baas) solutions that have emerged.

Today these are offered by a multitude of FinTechs, but these solutions often have limitations. FinTechs that do not have banking licences must work with a banking partner, in order to get access to the liquidity, licensing, and regulatory services they need. While this approach works for younger brands, as these businesses grow and scale it becomes far less appealing to be partnered with a FinTech that is reliant on an additional bank partner. And that could be a partner that could choose to de-risk the market or geography in which the FinTech operates at any point.

As a response, a new category of financial infrastructure providers that are equipped with the necessary banking licences, agnostic technology platform and liquidity is emerging. This new era of technology platforms supporting global commerce are not limited to the provision of one single solution, but a whole suite of them built in a collaborative ecosystem. Being able to work with a single provider that can deliver a multitude of services from payments to lending, presents significant benefits, from improved speed to market to cost savings. .

Sign up for his Finextra, hosted in association with Banking Circle to join our panel of industry experts as they discuss the following topics:

• How do banks and FinTechs currently view BaaS? What is the current market sentiment toward BaaS platforms?
• What are the weaknesses of current BaaS offerings?
• What transpires when a business attempts to scale when its BaaS provider does not have the necessary banking licences?
• How does being tied to a bank with legacy infrastructure impede on a business’ ability to implement embedded finance solutions? • • How does it impact the risk profile of a business?
• What are the benefits of working with a single well-structured BaaS provider above working with several FinTechs?

2021 Speakers

Scott Hamilton
Global Payments & Liquidity Expert, Contributing Editor [Moderator]

Anders la Cour
CEO, Banking Circle

Anders Olofsson
Head of Payments, Finastra

Tony McLaughlin
Managing Director, Transaction Banking, Citi

Beat Bannwart
Digital Transformation & Ecosystems, WMPC Tech, UBS