Hypothekarbank Lenzburg
Hypothekarbank Lenzburg was awarded the Banking Innovation Award for its pioneering achievements in open banking and for actively shaping the Swiss banking landscape. The Banking Innovation Day 2024 was organized by Swisscom Banking and Swisscom Ventures.
Manu Spillmann, Director of Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, said on the panel of Banking Innovation Day 2024 that "in order to successfully implement open banking projects, you need the mentality of start-up companies."
Marianne Wildi, CEO of Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, could also have said the same. Wildi has been the driving force behind the introduction and implementation of the open banking strategy at Hypothekarbank Lenzburg in recent years.
Hypothekarbank Lenzburg created the prerequisites for its open banking strategy with the opening of its core banking system Finstar in 2017. The bank integrated so-called Open Application Programming Interfaces, or Open API for short, into the Finstar system, thus creating a publicly available interface architecture. This enables fintech companies to dock with the bank and obtain banking services that the fintech companies can offer to their customers in a repackaged digital form.
The integration of Open API at Finstar marked the beginning of a transformation in Hypothekarbank Lenzburg's business model. Moving forward, the bank's overall strategy would be influenced not only by its traditional interest margin operations under the Hypothekarbank Lenzburg brand, its investment activities with the HBL Asset Management brand, and its software ventures with the Finstar brand, but also by its open banking initiatives, which have been managed under the HBL Solutions brand since last year, led by Manu Spillmann.
The launch of Finstar also marked the beginning of a development that extended beyond Hypothekarbank Lenzburg, initiating changes in the Swiss banking landscape itself.
Tim Meyer, assistant professor at the Center for Financial Services Innovation at the University of St.Gallen, in his laudatory speech at the award ceremony in Zurich, said that "Hypothekarbank Lenzburg and Finstar have created an infrastructure that guarantees reliable processes and regulatory compliance, which ultimately enables other companies to offer financial services to their end customers."
"Various collaborations with companies such as Neon, Kaspar& and Zinsli show that Hypothekarbank Lenzburg has played an active role in shaping the Swiss banking landscape," says Meyer. In addition, the cooperation with the retailer Coop for Coop Finance+ shows that Hypothekarbank Lenzburg has managed to push the boundaries of the traditional banking business and actively shape the embedded finance system of the future.