As digitalisation reshapes finance, the industry is transitioning beyond traditional open banking into a comprehensive open finance model, enhancing both access and transparency for consumers.
CBI, led by managing director Liliana Fratini Passi, plays a pivotal role in this transformation. The fintech, which serves as an industry utility with over 30 years of experience, spearheads the creation of innovative digital platforms that support the integration of open banking and finance, crucial for modernising the financial ecosystem.
Fratini Passi, with 30 years of expertise in financial technology, strategically steers CBI’s developments. For The Fintech Times, she discusses how CBI’s recent initiatives are integral in refining financial services to meet the challenges of today’s digital economy, focusing on operational flexibility and enhanced security.
Liliana Fratini Passi, managing director of CBI
In recent years, the financial services sector has experienced a significant shift from the open banking model to a broader open finance ecosystem. This transition has driven disruptive innovations in the payments space, redefining how financial services are delivered.
In this context, CBI advocates for a flexible, modern, and transparent approach to effectively address evolving market demands.
CBI’s greatest accomplishment lies not only in its development of innovative platforms and services but also in its capacity to aggregate various actors in the financial ecosystem, benefiting from the advantages of the so-called ‘network economy’.
Driving collaboration
The network economy fosters collaboration across sectors by promoting interoperability, driving innovation and enabling customised solutions. It also reduces costs through resource sharing, enhances system resilience, and supports economic inclusion by expanding access to financial services for underserved groups.
Over these years, CBI has developed several open banking and open finance services and achieved a variety of goals at national and international level. To date, more than 80 per cent of the Italian banking industry has chosen the CBI Globe platform, which streamlines telematic dialogues among payment service providers, fintechs, enterprises and public administrations.
This centralisation has allowed various players to achieve compliance with the current EU regulatory framework, helping clients being active players in the open-banking and open-finance ecosystem.
From an open finance and data monetisation perspective, CBI has developed several value-added services (VAS) that render its clients even more competitive.
Tackling fraud
CBI’s response to increasing fraud and misdirection of payments is evident in a range of services, such as: Check IBAN, Name Check, CBI GO and CBI Safe Trade.
Check IBAN allows online verification of the association between IBAN code and Fiscal Code/VAT, provided by a natural or legal entity, both in the Italian and European market. This service facilitates Public Administration and corporates in fulfilling their fraud prevention activities vis-à-vis their customers (e.g. for making or renewing a subscription to a service) through the support of financial intermediaries. This service covering 98 per cent of the Italian market share, allows providers to operate more efficiently in fraud prevention.
Another service developed by CBI is ‘Name Check’, a Verification of Payee service that has been designed to ensure that IBAN codes are correctly matched with the names of beneficiaries before payments are processed. This verification process, compliant with the Instant Payment Regulation, is crucial in mitigating fraud, preventing payment errors, and ensuring that funds are accurately directed to the intended recipients.
Other services, such as CBI GO and CBI Safe Trade, have been intentionally developed to minimise fraud while enhancing transparency, customer experience and fostering financial inclusion.
Considering the new market scenario, where digitalisation plays a fundamental role, incumbents must create new ways of collaborating in an increasingly open market. This will allow them to create innovative products that improve user experience beyond the mandatory services.
In this regard, as a key facilitator of industry change, CBI is committed to collaborating with various players that prioritise progress and interoperability, enhancing the efficiency and security of financial services worldwide.
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