Fintech Insider Podcast by 11:FS
01:03:12 · Sarah Kocianski, David M. Brear
[01:03:12] S0: Close. Thanks guys. Well, thank you so much for agreeing to join us this evening ladies. But now, let's get on with the show. [01:03:20] S10: Sounds good. Okay. For this first segment, we want to talk about something that a lot of people in this conference seem to think is really, really important, which is kind of an interesting one, isn't it? And this is bank feeds. I think that's been one of the things that have been sort of on the tip of many people's tongue. And whether... Well, really who better to join us to come and get involved in this conversation than two resident experts in banking, open banking, and everything or APIs. So please welcome to the stage now a friend of the show, Megan Caywood, is the Chief Platform Officer at Starling Bank. Hello. Hello. Welcome. And we also have Oliver Prill who is the new CEO at Tides. Come on, [01:04:04] S0: so today at Zerocon, Zerra made a number of announcements around bank feeds. So they've released their own bank feed API. Apparently, and I've got a stat here. Kerry can correct me if it's wrong. That seven out of 10 customers say bank feeds are Zerra's most important feature. So I'm gonna let Carrie start answering this whilst they're doing drinks. But from a Xero perspective, what is a bank feed and and why is it so important? Why are customers so keen to have it?
01:04:04 · Sarah Kocianski, Keri Gohman
[01:04:04] S0: so today at Zerocon, Zerra made a number of announcements around bank feeds. So they've released their own bank feed API. Apparently, and I've got a stat here. Kerry can correct me if it's wrong. That seven out of 10 customers say bank feeds are Zerra's most important feature. So I'm gonna let Carrie start answering this whilst they're doing drinks. But from a Xero perspective, what is a bank feed and and why is it so important? Why are customers so keen to have it? [01:04:30] S13: Yeah. So your stat is dead on. And the reason it's so important is because bank feeds are really the foundation of cloud based accounting. It provides a way to get data inside of the system and we like to call it, I know this is sort of high integrity accounting. This idea that you know exactly where the data came from. It's real time and the most important part of bank feeds is account rec... Bank reconciliation. Making sure that in the system it's connecting into the right spot in the chart of accounts and that the data is accurate and flowing in the way that it should And we love the fact that we can provide business owners with an easy way to get their financial picture and easy way to do account reconciliation. And we're able to do things now with artificial intelligence like predict 90% of the time how how a a bank feed coming in will reconcile into the chart of accounts. That saves accountants incredible amounts of time but it's the very basic, the most important part of accounting working well.
01:04:30 · Keri Gohman, Sarah Kocianski
[01:04:30] S13: Yeah. So your stat is dead on. And the reason it's so important is because bank feeds are really the foundation of cloud based accounting. It provides a way to get data inside of the system and we like to call it, I know this is sort of high integrity accounting. This idea that you know exactly where the data came from. It's real time and the most important part of bank feeds is account rec... Bank reconciliation. Making sure that in the system it's connecting into the right spot in the chart of accounts and that the data is accurate and flowing in the way that it should And we love the fact that we can provide business owners with an easy way to get their financial picture and easy way to do account reconciliation. And we're able to do things now with artificial intelligence like predict 90% of the time how how a a bank feed coming in will reconcile into the chart of accounts. That saves accountants incredible amounts of time but it's the very basic, the most important part of accounting working well. [01:05:29] S0: So, Becca, do you want to add to that? I mean, you you work with these small businesses on a regular basis and you know you're sitting on the other side that taking in the feed I suppose. You know, what are your thoughts on it?
01:05:29 · Sarah Kocianski, Becca McClure
[01:05:29] S0: So, Becca, do you want to add to that? I mean, you you work with these small businesses on a regular basis and you know you're sitting on the other side that taking in the feed I suppose. You know, what are your thoughts on it? [01:05:40] S14: I think it's key really for the well, from a two points of view. From the small business that it allows us as accountants to be able to provide them far more real time advice because the data is going straight in. We can reconcile things. We're not waiting till the bank statement comes out to then upload it and reconcile it. It's all live there and that means they've got real time information that they can make decisions on. The other part of it that's really important is it allows the accountants, it saves loads of admin. So, it allows us to actually concentrate on what small businesses want us to do which is provide business advice. So, I mean, [01:06:19] S0: but bank feeds have existed for a while but, you're now sort of taking advantage of open banking and the open API route. Is that correct? And you know, what is that does that make more sense for you to do it that way?
01:06:19 · Sarah Kocianski, Keri Gohman
[01:06:19] S0: but bank feeds have existed for a while but, you're now sort of taking advantage of open banking and the open API route. Is that correct? And you know, what is that does that make more sense for you to do it that way? [01:06:32] S13: Yeah. Listen. We're excited about open banking and bank feeds for a number of different reasons. I know a lot today as we've talked about open banking. We've talked about the idea that consumers now have ownership of their data which is awesome and it'll empower innovation across the ecosystem. We are definitely going to take advantage of open banking because it allows us to standardize the way we work. So it simplifies our life at zero but the reality is the mandate so far has been for the top tier banks. So we'll definitely take advantage there But in many cases where we have direct relationships, we're able to pull more data than just open banking which is really powerful. And of course because it'll take time to reach the whole ecosystem, it's important that we keep those bank feeds going, continue to make sure we have nice coverage and over time it'll really open up the market. I'd also add that coming from America, it's worth noting that The UK is taking the lead on this thinking globally and we're learn learn a ton about the innovation that unlocks and how it really changes the game for small business owners in the future and we can already see other countries beginning to adopt like Australia but we're quite excited about it.
01:07:38 · David M. Brear, Megan Caywood
[01:07:38] S10: It is amazing that actually we've seen globally the impact of the things that are happening both in Europe and The UK but Yeah. I feel like there's a challenger bank loving session over here kind of going on So to a certain what are your guys' thoughts? Obviously, you know, Megan, you've been, you know, real sort of active in the the sort of open banking space but how far do you think we've actually come since January? [01:07:59] S5: Yeah. So I think that this demonstrates one of the key elements which is the kind of seamless connection and secure way that customers can now share data between their banks and other key providers such as accounting software which is critical for businesses. For myself, I used to actually work at Xero pre Starling and I remember Rod telling the story about starting up Xero, one of the main pain points that people had was bank reconciliation. People would say, you know, they would rather have a root canal than do bank rec and they do it like once a year and then after zero made it so simple they would be doing it daily. So for us we had that same feedback from Starling customers saying I don't want to do some sort of manual file upload like I just want this to be like real time I want to connect it with the touch of a button. It just makes sense. So with the bank feeds API, when we plugged into that, it's something we've had huge amounts of positive kind of reflection from our customers with because it's enabling that seamless connectivity that people just expect now.