The banking industry has transformed from traditional branch banking to internet banking. Globally, distinctive types of banking and financial institutions are adopting advanced technologies to keep pace with the era of digital transformation. An increasing number of smartphone users preferring accessing banking services through their mobile devices has led the bank providers to shift from traditional banking to digital banking. However, it is crucial for banking organizations to realize that the capabilities of digital banking are not just limited to online or mobile banking. These capabilities have a broader scope from a customer standpoint.

A digital banking platform enables banks to drive their digital transformation initiatives and provide customers with a seamless and cohesive banking experience across all digital touchpoints. The platform serves as a framework for financial institutions to gain full control over their digital strategy and allow them to modify and optimize aspects of their operations across every device and channel. On the other hand, it enables customers to easily manage their accounts, make transfers, and monitor financial status in real-time.

A digital banking platform capacitates to upgrade the traditional banking systems, automate business operations, incorporate channels, and consolidate data for a single view of the customer. The platform also works as a conciliator that integrates with prevailing architecture and links with the banking ecosystem through open APIs. Digital banking platforms are helping banks in strengthening and rebuilding their core banking system. The platform has emerged as a system that is helping banks to thrive in this digital age with a holistic perspective.

The key differentiators for digital banking platforms include ease of deployment and ownership experience, configurability versus customization, comprehensive out-of-the-box capabilities, integration & interoperability, ability to drive real-time personalized engagements, and product strategy and vision to align with future transformational banking models. Open banking is also acting as one of the key differentiators in the digital banking space. A digital banking platform promotes an open banking approach that supports third-party integrations for accessing accounts with customers’ consent, achieving greater financial transparency for consumers, and leveraging open-source technologies through various frameworks.

It is preparing financial institutions for the API economy with features that comprise an API gateway and API management, consent management, developer portal and sandbox, PSD2 compliance, strong customer authentication, and more. Moreover, open banking is empowering banks by driving increased partnership opportunities, accelerating time-to-market, discovering monetization opportunities, and enabling product enhancements by leveraging AI capabilities.

As the banking industry embraces digitization, delivering a secure, reliable seamless digital customer experience has become crucial. The emergence of AI/ML across the banking ecosystem is enabling organizations to introduce new capabilities and transform their processes. Technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA), enabling banking organizations to drive automation for labor arbitrage processes, have gained prominence.

These technologies are helping banks simplify repetitive human tasks, improve customer experience, and optimize end-to-end processes. As a result, several banks and financial institutions are partnering with financial technology providers to leverage the AI/ML, RPA capabilities and gain a competitive advantage by eliminating the operational overheads. Digital banking platform providers are focusing on building in-house AI/ML capabilities, which can be injected into the packaged digital banking platforms. This, in turn, will enable financial institutes and banks to deliver personalized services, achieve optimum STP rates and drive augmented marketing.

The digital banking ecosystem is undergoing a rapid transformation, compelling vendors to expand their R&D budgets and make continuous enhancements to their software value proposition to serve the futuristic customer banking needs. Users should evaluate digital banking platform vendors that offer a robust technology strategy and roadmap for enhancing their software features & functionalities, as well as a SaaS strategy that is aligned with the emerging transformational trends. The vendor's ability to accommodate emerging technology trends, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive operations, and a truly open & unified platform, is crucial for delivering a sophisticated digital banking solution.

Quadrant Knowledge Solutions’ SPARK Matrix: Digital Banking Platform, 2022 research includes a detailed analysis of the global market regarding short-term and long-term growth opportunities, emerging technology trends, market trends, and future market outlook. The study provides a comprehensive market forecast analysis of the global market in various geographical regions and the overall market adoption rate as well. This research provides strategic information - for technology vendors to better understand the existing market, support their growth strategies; and for users to evaluate different vendors’ capabilities, competitive differentiation, and market position.

The research includes detailed competition analysis and vendor evaluation with the proprietary SPARK Matrix analysis. SPARK Matrix includes ranking and positioning of leading digital banking platform vendors with a global impact. The SPARK Matrix includes analysis of vendors, including Backbase, Coconet, CR2, Data Center Inc, EdgeVerve, Finastra, Fisa Group, Fiserv, FIS, Infrasoft Tech, Intellect Design Arena, Oracle, Sandstone Technology, SAP, Sopra Banking Software, Tagit, Tata Consultancy Services, VeriTran, and Zentity.

Market Dynamics and Trends

The following are the key research findings of Quadrant Knowledge Solutions, Digital

Banking Platform research:

While most vendors may provide all the core functionalities, the breadth and depth of the capabilities may differ by different vendors’ offerings. Users should evaluate digital banking platforms that offer comprehensive capabilities to provide seamless connectivity to legacy core banking systems, a broad range of out-of-the-box functionalities, scalability & extensibility, omnichannel banking capabilities, 360-degree unified customer visibility, advanced analytics, business process automation, personalized engagement, support for multiple public cloud platforms, and such others.

The vendors' capability to offer a truly open platform is vital for enhancing the customer ownership experience. Additionally, the vendor's customer value proposition may differ in terms of ease of deployment, ease of use, price/performance ratio, support for a broad range of digital banking use cases, global support service, and such others.

SPARK Matrix Analysis of the Digital Banking Platform Market

Quadrant Knowledge Solutions conducted an in-depth analysis of the major Digital Banking Platform vendors by evaluating their product portfolio, market presence, and customer value proposition. Digital banking platform market outlook provides competitive analysis and a ranking of the leading vendors in the form of a proprietary SPARK MatrixTM.