Joy Macknight asks the group head of digital banking and innovation at Hellenic Bank, Natasha Kyprianides, to outline her digital vision for the Cypriot bank and explain how the bank is responding to the move to open application programming interfaces.

Natasha Kyprianides

Natasha Kyprianides has devoted much of her 17-year career in banking to digital disruption. She rejoined Hellenic Bank two-and-a-half years ago to lead its digital banking and innovation operations, with a mandate to transform the customer-facing digital channels of the Cypriot bank.

“I put together the bank’s digital vision and, consequently, the digital strategy that we keep iterating. The main objective is to take the bank in an omni-channel direction, initially with a mobile-first approach and now we are looking at an application programming interface [API]-first approach,” she explains.

A flying start

Ms Kyprianides has produced some impressive results in the short period since her return. For example, the digital banking team built a mobile banking app in just six months. Importantly, the team focused on user experience and rich functionality to ensure high customer engagement. “We make design a business priority across all channels, resulting in raised standards and expectations when it comes to user experience,” she says. The bank has managed to migrate half of its online banking customers to the mobile app in under a year, an adoption rate “proving the success of the app’s design strategy”, she adds.

She also spun up an innovation lab in eight months. The innovation lab’s objective is not limited to experimentation, which differentiates Hellenic Bank from many other banks. Ms Kyprianides says: “In our case, the digital team lives in the innovation lab, building the actual digital channels and propositions for the market. The space is being used for collaboration, co-creation and ideation. It is very much aligned with our open banking project, to foster growth and innovation by engaging with fintech ecosystems and host start-ups wishing to co-create using the bank’s open APIs.”

Ms Kyprianides considers the open banking project to be her third major achievement at Hellenic Bank. The project kicked off in July 2016, far ahead of many other banks. In April 2017, the bank rolled out the first increment, that consists of an API developer portal comprised of a sandbox, comprehensive documentation and a suite of open APIs that are Payment Services Directive compliant.

The team spent considerable time on the design and strategic execution of the API developer portal because she firmly believes that an enjoyable user experience is key to encouraging a sustainable collaboration with third-party developers.

New developments

The first use case that the bank is rolling out is focused on enabling corporate customers to do their banking directly through their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, according to Ms Kyprianides. ERP vendors can ‘plug in’ their products to the API platform and drive more customers to Hellenic Bank and potentially agree on a revenue sharing model. This methodology eliminates the traditional business-to-business need to exchange files or build customised private APIs per customer.

At the same time, the bank is building an ecosystem of the most popular ERP solutions and investing in motivating these partners to integrate with APIs. Hellenic Bank’s vision entails the provision of a marketplace to the business customers, whereby it will be integrated into the business web banking service and accessible via existing online banking credentials.

Customers will then be able to activate already integrated apps and platforms of their choice “with just a click”, according to Ms Kyprianides. These initial platforms will be the most popular ERP systems and will eliminate the need for the customer to directly engage with integrators. The bank is now working towards finalising the live environment’s testing phase.

The target is to launch all the above early in the fourth quarter of 2017. “It is important to become an early adopter to start building digital experiences through partnerships ahead of the competition,” she says.

Lifestyle banking

Hellenic Bank has created an API strategy and consolidated it into the wider organisational strategy by pinpointing some initial relatable use cases as a first line of action. The determination to execute the digital strategy in a nimbler manner has led the bank down the open banking path, according to Ms Kyprianides. “As a firm believer that the future of banking is ecosystem based, we are working towards using the upcoming launch of the live environment and integrated marketplace to deliver true lifestyle banking to customers,” she says.

In the development pipeline is a public website that is being built on Hellenic Bank’s omni-channel digital banking platform. “With an emphasis on customer needs, this website will act as central sales platform of the bank. It will make the process of selecting a product much more straightforward, since the starting point will be the everyday lifestyle needs of the customer that will lead them to the relevant product,” adds Ms Kyprianides.

“Another impactful revamp is that of our business web banking channel to match the familiarity and experience of social networks and to deliver a consistent look and feel as that of our mobile app.” 

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