HSBC builds API digital platform with MuleSoft to forward open banking

HSBC announced at Dreamforce 2019 in San Francisco that it’s building an API-driven platform with MuleSoft to forward open banking opportunities.

MuleSoft, which Dreamforce organiser, and software as a service CRM supplier Salesforce acquired in May 2018, is an integration and application programme interface (API) platform by which data, applications, and data can be connected across on-premises and cloud computing environments.

In a press statement, HSBC said it will use MuleSoft to turn its core banking products into re-usable APIs. By packaging its core services as APIs, the bank said it can make them available to others to develop new services on its data. For example, the bank’s mortgage API could be opened up to property websites.

The bank is using MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform to build the digital banking platform.

Dinesh Keswani, group CTO and CIO of retail digital banking at HSBC, said in a statement: “HSBC is ... moving to serving customers across multiple online and offline channels. With MuleSoft, HSBC has built thousands of APIs in an application network and deployed them across multiple environments to deliver new and consistent experiences. We’ve been able to reduce our app development time by 75% and release new functionality to consumers every two weeks versus once a quarter.

“With MuleSoft supporting our API program, HSBC is leading innovation in a highly competitive developer-driven third-party ecosystem,” he said.

The rise of open banking PSD2 requirements require financial institutions to share customer data with third-party developers via APIs. PSD2 is an EU directive to regulate payment services and providers throughout the EU and European Economic Area.

As Computer Weekly has reported, the directive is proving to be complex and difficult even for an economy as digitally advanced as that of the Netherlands. The country’s implementation of the Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2), which enables what is known as open banking, has been delayed by regulatory issues and a lack of consumer confidence.

Jeroen van der Kroft, associate partner of EY Financial Services Advisory, was cited in the Computer Weekly story as saying: “Our survey, the Open Banking Index, shows that only 18% of Dutch people are willing to share their own transaction data with other parties.”

In what MuleSoft is dubbing the new API economy, developers have become the customers of banks like HSBC, which is using “API Community Manager” built on Salesforce Community Cloud and Salesforce Service Cloud to deliver an internal and external developer portal that will span more than 30 markets and three global businesses.

API Community Manager, says the MuleSoft and HSBC statement, “combines a full-featured API portal and industry-leading digital experience capabilities, transforming how teams collaborate across the entire lifecycle of an API program. With API Community Manager, HSBC can easily build and engage API ecosystems, so it can foster new partnerships to deliver joint business value and innovate faster”.

Prakash Sethuraman, chief architect of digital technologies at HSBC, said during the Integration keynote at Dreamforce: “When our partners access our APIs they get access to our global capabilities, no matter where they are based, and our customers get more choice and convenience.

“API Community Manager is the critical part of the HSBC of the future. It enables us to engage with the newest type of customer that we have. We have worked with MuleSoft for over three years now,” he said. We have thousands of APIs, but Community Manager allows us to take the next big step across thirty countries where 30,000 or so developers will have access to it. And we are getting to have hundreds of partners now.

“The open banking regulation that is coming across multiple countries has as its main aim to promote innovation,” said Sethuraman. “Our customers can use our partners services completely confident that they will be safe because our APIs implement the regulations that keep them safe.”