Successful Ecosystem: Reflections on the Recent Breakfast Seminar

Blogs | 20. May 2024

Recently, we hosted our second Breakfast Seminar at the GLO Hotel in Espoo, organized by Samlink Advisory Services. This event followed the successful format of our January seminar, but with even more engaging content. We presented our latest thought leadership paper on Ecosystem Enabled Banking, exploring the shift from in-house IT development to an ecosystem-based approach. This evolution moves from ‘build’ to ‘buy’ and ultimately to ‘consume’, commonly known as as-a-Service.

This seminar featured a fantastic agenda filled with insightful presentations and a dynamic panel discussion:

Welcome, registration, and coffee
Pål Krogdahl (Director, Samlink Advisory Services) – Samlink Ecosystem Enabled Banking
Monika Liikamaa (Co-founder & Co-CEO, Enfuce)
Panel discussion moderated by Ville Sointu (Chief Strategist, Digital Currencies, Nordea) featuring:
- Monika Liikamaa (Co-founder & Co-CEO, Enfuce)
- Bent Winkel (Strategic Sales Director, Nordics, Thought Machine)
- Pål Krogdahl (Director, Samlink Advisory Services)

Although the panel discussion was a great discussion, the highlight for me was Monika Liikamaa’s inspirational keynote. She shared her journey in driving change within the banking industry and her experiences with Enfuce.

What is Ecosystem Enabled Banking?

The pandemic and shifting economic conditions have accelerated digital adaptation among customers and employees in the banking sector, exposing operational and technical shortcomings in many financial institutions. Initial digital initiatives focused on customer interface transformation, which, while essential, is only the first step in unlocking full enterprise and ecosystem potential.

Leading in the digital era requires financial institutions to adopt two key strategies: leveraging exponential technologies like automation, hybrid cloud, and AI, and applying these at scale. This promotes collaboration across internal and external ecosystems, ensuring secure platform interactions.

Achieving digital excellence necessitates more than modern infrastructure; it requires reimagining business architecture to support interoperability and extreme flexibility amid uncertainty. A business-centric, architecture-led approach is crucial for radical transformation of business models and operational workflows, especially in the face of intense competition.

As banks advance in digital and core modernization, they must effectively leverage an ecosystem of partners and leading ISV providers. This strategy ensures positive change, minimizes risk, and accelerates market entry.

Ecosystem Enabled Banking offers a proven business driven framework to redefine future bank capabilities, aligning critical elements to evaluate and select appropriate providers, building an ecosystem of contributors to the bank’s future success.

Kitchen Renovation vs Successful Core Banking Modernization

Returning to our seminar, I opened the event with a brief presentation on Ecosystem Enabled Banking, drawing parallels to a kitchen renovation initiated by a water disaster I had the pleasure to execute in our home. The similarities between a well-executed kitchen renovation and a successful core banking modernization program are striking, particularly regarding key decision-making, after all, how do you keep a kitchen functional through a full renovation project?

We concluded with an engaging panel discussion, moderated by my Fintech Daydreaming co-host Ville Sointu, featuring additional insights from Bent Winkel of Thought Machine on future banking business models and success architecture.

What’s next? Our upcoming thought leadership paper, focusing on AI in Banking with an emphasis on compliance and regulation, will be published soon. Stay tuned for this release and the announcement of our next Breakfast Seminar.

Pål Krogdahl
Director of Technology Strategy and Advisory Services