Open Banking Competitive Intelligence Case Study For An International Fintech Bank
Open Banking Competitive Intelligence Case Study For An International Fintech Bank
With their Open Banking API, an International bank came to Octopus Intelligence for help with market access and competitor analysis. This article is an open banking competitive intelligence case study for an international fintech bank.
What They Wanted
We were approached by an international bank looking to expand from its traditional customer base. They are well established within their continent and have recently developed a banking API and supporting platform.
They realised they would have to compete with some very impressive and highly funded fintech competitors. But despite having successful funding rounds, they were honest enough to admit that they didn’t know much about them. They also wanted to know how to compete, create a real competitive advantage and use their considerable funding wisely.
What We Offered
Like many clients, they come to us with a request to “find everything about my competitors”. During discussions, it was agreed to split the project down. We worked with them to define a set of intelligence questions to focus on fewer competitors and provide the project with a structure. Like these:
Market
- What are global product trends within Core Banking?
- What would be required for us to offer there that could make us a market leader?
- Who might also be trying to move into that market?
Per Competitor
- What is their current situation?
- What’s their current and future market growth strategy? What are they going to do next?
- What markets are they not interested in?
- What do they offer within Core Banking, and how do they define core banking? What else do they offer?
- What is their tech stack — e.g. microservices, all cloud-native, or a mix
- What are their pricing models?
- What are their competitor’s product strengths and weaknesses?
- How do they convince a potential customer to switch to them?
- Which strategic partners give them scale?
- How do our competitors onboard and deploy large global customers?
- What’s their product roadmap?
- How are their products structured?
How We Did It
In an ideal world, it’s better to work with fewer questions, but we got to work and conducted preliminary primary discussions with their competitors and industry experts in our network. After these initial approaches, we suggested to our client to swap a competitor for an alternative one, and they readily agreed.
What is competitive intelligence?
Competitive intelligence is the finding & critical analysis of information to make sense of what’s happening & why. Predict what’s going to happen & give the options to control the outcome. The insight to create more certainty & competitive advantage.
We then conducted secondary research to answer all the questions. We also added their competitors to our monitoring system. This provided some insight into what was happening within their markets and competitors, some of which our client had no idea about. More importantly, it gave us more reading to do and sources to speak to — more threads to pull away.
We then approached their competitors for a more in-depth discussion to fill in the gaps the data and secondary research failed to find.
What They Got In The End
The client received a set of battlecards for their sales teams, a presentation for their senior team, and each competitor. The report details key findings, answers to each question, and suggested options for moving forward.
The key findings and answers were uncomfortable for their founder and the senior team. They realised after receiving significant funding that moving into a new area would be a more substantial challenge than they thought. The competitors they will face are strong. The market is fragmented and ripe for consolidation, and most competitors were providing a similar solution with a long sales pipeline. Business development was based on existing relationships and partnerships. Partnerships and building a business development team with the right contacts were critical to their future development.
The Result
Reading may have been uncomfortable, but it’s better to know than not. And they are now armed with knowing how things are, the market’s direction, what they will face and precise actions of what to do.
Extra Points:
Dear reader, we will offer ten points to anyone who can identify the flaw in their story. hello@octopusintelligence.com
Open Banking Competitive Intelligence Case Study For An International Fintech Bank
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