Unlocking Market Access Through APIs

The financial services sector has traditionally been difficult to enter, with established banks and strict regulations. However, the rise of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) has opened new doors for fintech companies and non-financial brands, enabling them to offer banking services in innovative ways. In some situations, traditional banks which are not embracing the power of APIs are struggling to keep up.  With many organisations now using a variety of services and applications in addition to their core system, the need for connectivity is greater than ever. An API-first core banking platform does just this, as it enables financial institutions to be more agile and adaptable. It empowers them to quickly connect to other services, develop new offerings, and improve customer experiences. APIs are no longer just technical tools; they are essential products that allow businesses to acquire data, improve customer satisfaction, and open up new revenue streams.

Why are APIs so important? 

APIs allow businesses to create financial services that work with one another, ticking off customer needs, and offering convenience and accessibility. This level of integration and ease of use is a major driver of customer adoption.

APIs in Action: Transforming Financial Services

🌍 Open Banking APIs enable third-party services to access customer data (with permission) to improve financial offerings. For example, budgeting apps can import transaction history and create personalised plans, fostering a more connected financial ecosystem. 🚀 Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) With APIs, businesses can embed banking services like payments or loans directly into their offerings. This eliminates the need for complex banking licenses, enabling faster market entry and new revenue opportunities. 📱 Channels Leverage APIs to build mobile apps and internet banking platforms, providing customers with modern, user-friendly ways to manage their finances. 🛒 Embedded Finance APIs make it possible to integrate financial services, such as loans or insurance, into non-financial platforms. This creates a seamless user experience where customers access financial products right where they need them, such as in e-commerce or digital marketplaces. By leveraging an API-first core banking platform, financial institutions can drive rapid innovation, ensure seamless integrations, and deliver enhanced customer experiences, helping them stay competitive and grow in the digital age.

Oradian’s Approach to APIs

Oradian’s platform  is designed not just to enable integrations straight out of the box, but also for developers to build and maintain their own in-house platforms, including reporting tools, business analytics, messaging services, and digital banking and lending apps, and integrating them with the Oradian core system. This process is simplified by our model-first approach, which ensures they are uniform, and allows us to extend it to enable countless use cases that make an enormous difference to our customer's ability to grow and scale.

Model-first: Seamless evolution

Oradian’s approach to APIs is “model-first”, based on a Domain Specific Language (DSL) and command pattern, following the principle of Domain-Driven Design. These models are ubiquitous throughout the whole application, from documentation to the REST API endpoint itself, right down to custom JARs plugins. Following our model-first approach, we use a command pattern which allows us to handle all our different activities using a single interface. Supported with the documentation, all our APIs are totally uniform.  What does this mean? In short, it enables seamless evolution within the system, without breaking anything for the users. It also means our developers have to think a little differently about how to approach change, and to maintain its flexibility and functionality without affecting the service.

GraphQL, for flexibility and control

Oradian APIs are also GraphQL friendly, which allows users to send queries and receive only the specific data they have requested. This gives them the power to select and define only the information they need, giving them a greater level of flexibility and control.

Push and pull

Our API approach seamlessly enables both push and pull usages. Among these is our own push API mechanism, Oradian Notifier. This is a configurable API integration enabling financial institutions to deliver push notifications that alert their clients and teams to changes, updates, news, or reminders across their core system. Push and pull mechanisms can also be used for real-time analytics and advanced business intelligence, allowing users to gather and collate data from a variety of sources in real-time. This gives them a new level of insight into their clients. These features are the building blocks for customers to construct real-time decision-making systems, enabling them to automatically prevent fraud, detect anomalies, and create credit reports for potential clients. 

How Oradian Customers Use APIs

All functionalities on the Oradian core system can be integrated through APIs. This gives users an almost unlimited number of use cases, so they can configure their system and their services to meet their exacting needs. Commonly, customers use APIs to integrate applications that improve speed and efficiency, replacing manual processes with automatic ones. Often these processes are performed by third-party platforms, but customers will sometimes develop their own proprietary apps; for example, mobile banking or loan apps, which require API integrations to link seamlessly to their client databases. Others integrate a wide variety of third-party platforms, such as:

• Wallet accounts
• Card management systems
• Payment gateways
• Internal data warehouses
• Accounting software
• Loan lifecycle processes
• WhatsApp chatbot
• Insurance services

One specific example, for instance, is a customer who has created an API endpoint for uploading documents for loan applications, replacing their previous system of uploading documents one-by-one with a direct API-driven link to scanning software that automatically attaches it to a customer account.

Reaping the Benefits of an API-first System

Having an API-first system essentially future-proofs your business by ensuring that you can continue to integrate the most advanced accounting software, messaging platforms, databases, and loan origination forms as they are developed. A system like Oradian’s, which provides for an almost unlimited number of API integrations, can pay huge dividends not just in terms of speed and efficiency, but also in terms of flexibility, configurability, and extensibility. And we don't stop there. We've developed Oradian Custom Code° to take you beyond our standard offering, if this is what you need. One of the key use cases of Custom Code° is the ability to develop their own custom APIs within the system. Find out more about Oradian Custom Code°.