[Brankas] Is Southeast Asia ready to embrace open banking? 

Open banking has been touted as the future of financial services with the potential to revolutionize the customer experience by:

• Enabling more convenient ways to utilize a wide range of services digitally
• Empowering customers to take control and benefit from their own data
• Acting as a major growth engine and disruptor of the finance industry
• Encouraging collaboration between traditional banks and third party providers
• Enabling social and economic growth relating to government and regulator objectives

The continuing rollout of a mature online and mobile communication infrastructure is a key enabler for open banking and digital banking more broadly. There is still a long way to go, but there are promising signs across all three countries studied, based on:

• Internet access being increasingly standard with near universal 4G coverage, especially in urban area
• Smartphone penetration being increasingly mature with widespread ownership and use
• Digital banking being increasingly common with an increasing number of digital and virtual banks servicing a population engaged in e-commerce

The emergence of new business models was mentioned as a driving force as different banks look at markets differently to drive their own strategies and meet the demands of their customer bases. Many banks have begun to engage markets in new ways, particularly through bilateral partnerships with innovative players to expand their service offerings. However, there is a continued emphasis for banks to control customer data to maintain competitive advantage.