Bank Leumi creates Open Banking marketplace in Israel
With over 2,000 developers
involved, Bank Leumi has created a digital ecosystem for fintech collaboration.
Wide range of products
The platform offers an expanding range of tailored products spanning data, data security, cyber and much more.
Cloud architecture
Fast, proven way to build, manage and share APIs safely and securely.
Challenge
As the largest retail bank in Israel, Bank Leumi is proud of its heritage and committed to remain at the forefront of innovation. The bank perceived the arrival of Open Banking as revolutionary and a unique business opportunity to build a vibrant ecosystem of new technical partners and customers.
On June 15, 2022 Bank Leumi launched FinTeka, a dedicated Open Banking subsidiary. The aim was to establish a new, agile fintech culture and to simplify communications with its external developer community. In practice, FinTeka sought to create an API marketplace that would bring Bank Leumi’s Open Banking strategy to life.
With the right technology, FinTeka, powered by Leumi, would be able to offer external developers easy access to a rich portfolio of open APIs so they could create new, exciting customer experiences. But to achieve this quickly it needed an experienced technical partner with the right tools to accelerate progress.
Following a comprehensive market survey, FinTeka chose GFT as its delivery partner. With a proven portfolio of solutions, thriving partnership with AWS, and a flexible service culture, GFT had the ideal profile to help FinTeka deliver success.
GFT and FinTeka joined forces to:
- Deliver a dynamic marketplace to support Open Banking APIs and future services
- Enable Leumi Bank to build an active external developer community
- Provide a ‘sandbox’ environment for developers to test their innovations
- Facilitate premium subscription models to generate new revenue streams
“With GFT’s API framework, we were confident that Leumi could align its technology strategy with its business objective of launching new APIs in hours rather than weeks to enable an agile fintech ecosystem.”
Engagement
FinTeka realized that cloud was the baseline for success and that most fintechs already used AWS. With its robust API framework, GFT could offer a practical solution quicker than building from scratch.
The GFT Open API Framework (OAF)
As a serverless architecture running on AWS, OAF offered a fast, proven way to build, manage and share APIs safely and securely. Key components include:
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API Gateway to manage Leumi Bank APIs systematically and automatically with integration and control through a single interface
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AWS Web Application Firewall to ensure safe accesses, avoid a wide variety of cyberattacks and to protect endpoints with mechanisms recognised by international security regulations
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AWS Kinesis Firehose to view, monitor and control API consumption in real time, facilitating ticketing, indicators and visualisation of usage trends
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KMS and Secrets Manager ensures all credentials used by the solution are stored securely while AWS Key Management Service guarantees the creation and management of cryptographic keys
The OAF solution had been continually proven in several harsh commercial environments, so GFT was confident that Bank Leumi would be able to meet its objective of releasing new APIs frequently but in a controlled manner.
Although the initial regulatory requirement in Israel was for seven APIs to facilitate data sharing and account aggregation, Bank Leumi’s business strategy was to expose hundreds of APIs across a range of banking and cyber activities.
From the outset, both companies worked shoulder to shoulder with weekly progress meetings. GFT had a dedicated team of up to 14, working in two-week sprints.
Benefit
FinTeka, powered by Leumi, heralds a new dawn for Open Banking in Israel. The new platform was built in eight months and so far 16 compliance certificates have been launched to individual fintechs.
Fintechs have ready access to a sandbox developer environment which is certified by Bank Leumi. They can consume APIs, develop new customer proposals and achieve regulatory compliance in parallel. This shortens time-to-market and simplifies evaluation and prioritization of business proposals.
Open Banking regulations in Israel are following a similar pattern to the UK’s Open Banking initiative, which began in 2017. While initial requirements in both jurisdictions were to empower customers with aggregated account data across multiple banks, the business opportunity is to transform innovation and service delivery. Bank Leumi has already taken Open Banking to the next level, with loan and savings information and digital identification services for customers, for example, with insurance disbursements.
With over 2,000 developers involved, Bank Leumi has created a digital ecosystem for fintech collaboration. New APIs are added constantly, building a rich service portfolio and an expanding pool of Open Banking talent that benefits everyone.
Technical details
“From the start of the project we believed that GFT could help Bank Leumi turn Open Banking from a compliance obligation into a business opportunity.”
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Success story
Bank Leumi creates Open Banking marketplace in Israel
