We talk with Olivier Guillaumond about finding the right fintech partner for your goals
Since March this year Olivier joined the Innovation Office Management Team as Global Head of FinTechs overseeing the scouting, selection and partnering between all FinTechs and all ING units. Here, we catch up with him about his work at ING and how he decides which fintech to partner with.
Before becoming Global Head of Fintechs at ING you served as the company's Global Head of Regulatory Change. How has your experience with regulation helped you in your current role?
First it allowed me to build up a solid international network within ING Group and the regulators, which comes handy when implementing innovative solutions at scale.
It also demonstrated the complexity of implementing regulations in a large international organization and consequently the massive opportunity lying in front of us to find and collaborate with the right RegTech partners.
What qualities do you look for in fintechs when scouting potential partners for ING?
First, it needs to solve a real customer problem or capture an identified opportunity. We are careful of not falling in love with a Fintech looking for a problem. What we are after is to find partners to further implement our Accelerate Think Forward strategy and to improve the customer experience by making banking personal, instant, relevant and seamless. A very important aspect in our scouting is also to make sure there is cultural fit between ING and the fintech: customer first, transparency, respect and trust are values which are key for any long term partnership with ING. We currently have more than 160 active partnerships of which around 20 investments. We closely monitor and step up efforts to increase success and performance of the partnerships.
What is your biggest challenge when it comes to integrating with fintechs?
Scaling within the organization is probably the biggest challenge as well as the biggest opportunity. It does require you to go through a full on boarding process and have a strong long term internal business sponsor. On the flip side partnerships are great win-win opportunities. We learn about agility, creativity, entrepreneurship, while we offer the fintech a strong brand, a large client base and financial expertise.
We are pragmatic in partnering and being open to all types: from nurturing our own fintechs, like Yolt and Payconiq, to taking equity stakes, like FinCompare and Fintonic, for example. We are also looking at accelerating the roll out of successful fintechs to other countries. This is why we launched ING Ventures, a 300m fintech fund to invest in start-ups and fintech companies that already gained some market traction.
So, you not only help ING partner with startups but you also oversee the launch of startups within ING. What has been your favorite startup launch so far?
We have many and will give you 2 examples. One for the Retail business and one for Wholesale.
Yolt is the smart thinking money app built to give everyone the power to be smart with their money. At the forefront of PSD2 and Open Banking, Yolt was created to end multiple app juggling, enabling users to view their accounts and credit cards in one clear app. The startup has helped shape and drive the Open Banking landscape since its launch in 2017, and it has demonstrated rapid traction and expansion into the Open Banking space, being the first third party provider (TPP) to achieve Open Banking API connections with all CMA9 banks in the UK. What is exciting is that following its launch into Italy and France in 2018, Yolt has been busy preparing and expanding its pan-European connections; actively connecting to available APIs, in line with the European Union’s PSD2 legislation.
The other is Cobase, which offers a bank agnostic digital platform for payments, cash management and treasurers of large corporates. The platform is a single point of access at any bank and/or service provider. Some of the main features of the platform that impress me are the central Payment Hub, Cash Management and Treasury modules. The combination of this functionality with many bank connections in one place offers financial and operational efficiency, especially for medium and large size companies. Users and authorisation schemes can be centrally managed for all subsidiaries or departments and only one security token is needed for each user.
One of your tasks in your new role is to accelerate ING's Think Forward strategy. Tell us about this strategy and how it relates to the ING customer experience.
Accelerating Think Forward was announced on 3 October 2016 (Think Forward launched in 2014). We promised to make banking clear and easy, available anytime, anywhere, to keep getting better. Customers are increasingly digital and bank with us more and more through mobile devices.
People spend a great deal of time on platforms created by tech companies. To buy things, socialise, learn explore, travel. So if that is where people are, and platforms are taking over. Should we become a platform ourselves? We started a path of convergence towards one core digital banking platform – countries with similar value propositions intend to harmonize their business models and develop shared operating platforms.
From 2016 to 2021 we are investing EUR 800 million in continued digital transformation. This will allow us to continue our success in growing our client franchise and diversify our income. Through improved efficiency, the Accelerating Think Forward program is expected to deliver approximately. EUR 900m of annual cost savings by 2021. The role of innovation in the Bank’s strategy is very central. Two out of 4 key priorities are linked to innovation: to make the organisation innovation enabled and to look beyond banking.
Finally, you also hold a PhD in Astrophysics. What attracted you to the fintech space over galaxy formation and stellar dynamics?
Like an Astrophysics working in a FinTech environment is very mind stimulating, full of smart people and great science driven technology. The big difference is the speed at which things are moving. Where a Astrophysics experiment might require 20 years if all goes well, a FinTech can become a game changer in a couple of years.
