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Meet Mambu, the SaaS cloud banking platform powering financial innovators everywhere.

Mambu

SaaS cloud banking platform

Releases span multiple product areas, including Deposits, Lending, Cards, Payments, Ledger & Accounting, and Platform & Core Services.

 Product Roadmap in 2023 is guided by Scalability, Reliability and Performance objectives. We are investing in maturing established products such as unsecured 

. We are enhancing core capabilities with enhanced flexibility in interest calculations and payment schedules to cater to even more sophisticated banking use cases. We continue to monitor market developments and ensure that our roadmap accommodates any regulatory requirements that may impact our customers.

 to help borrowers manage loan repayments in equal instalments. This feature addresses the challenges experienced by some lenders when the first instalment period is different to the scheduled repayment frequency.

We have also added new functionality to our Purchase Finance offering: the ability to 

apply fees on revolving loan accounts during the loan lifecycle

. With this feature, lenders can apply any type of fees such as administration, contract, or commitment fees, on loan accounts, whether the account is active, or approved, regardless of the account balance. This functionality is particularly useful for lenders offering Buy Now Pay Later, credit cards, and lines of credit. Learn more about Revolving Loans 

new account lock rules for our revolving credit products

, allowing you to specify whether a borrower must settle the due amount or the total outstanding amount before the account can be unlocked. This enhancement gives you increased control over your credit products.

Furthermore, we have enhanced our lending products with the ability to 

, providing you with even more flexibility and control over interest charges on term loans.

And lastly, Brazilian Financial Institutions can now easily 

calculate the IOF tax (interest on financial operations)

 to meet regulatory requirements. Setting up the IOF Tax in Mambu is easy and flexible and meets all the legal requirements.

Similarly, Scalability, Reliability and Performance are the key pillars supporting our 

 product roadmap in 2023. We are investing in developing enhancements to our core saving products such as 

 to support our customers’ growth aspirations. We are also adding additional flexibility in interest conditions by significantly enhancing how we work with interest rates in both deposits and overdrafts in order to accommodate regulatory and market requirements.

Our recent enhancements in the deposits area aim to streamline 

end-of-day processing and minimise the impact on downstream operations

. With these improvements, you can expect faster transaction postings and account updates, enabling you to manage your finances more efficiently.

Moreover, we have implemented the ability to 

support changes to a customer’s tax status

, particularly important in the Latin American (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) regions. This functionality enables customers to modify the withholding tax rate source on active accounts, providing you with greater control and compliance in response to changing tax statuses.

Our Cards strategy is underpinned by a focus on processing debit card payments, i.e. authorisations and transactions. Our roadmap in 2023 is dedicated to delivering native integrations with card processor platforms. These native integrations enable us to offer a highly scalable Cards solution for our customers and partners. We intend to continue investing in enhancing card payments and adding new native integrations to the major global card payments processors.

In H1, we have laid the groundwork for native integrations with major card processing platforms and recently piloted a 

 with one of our key partners, which we will continue to enhance with additional services.

We have also completed the design of the native card connector microservice to be easily extensible, maintainable and scalable to extend the native card connector platform to support future integrations.

We have added additional account balances in the cards authorisation holds APIs for stand-in processing (STIP). This functionality will give customers using debit cards more information on their accounts. When the Card APIs are used for authorisation requests, both the available balance and the total account balance will be included in the response.

Our Ledger strategy in 2023 is focused on ensuring fast, reliable, and scalable processing of accounting entries. As the source of truth of financial position and regulatory reporting, data reliability and availability are essential in our Ledger and Accounting module. Our 2023 roadmap will dedicate significant efforts towards non-functional improvements to enhance scalability, reliability, and performance to support the growth needs of our customers.

We are also investing in localised requirements to increase the maturity of our Ledger capabilities with enhancements to reporting and multi-currency support.

 in our Accounting module to deliver a better and more efficient service to our customers. These metrics cover accounting reporting and summary generation, transaction processing, and custom views in general ledger journal entries.

In 2023, our focus in Core Services revolves around three key themes: strengthening our 

 capabilities, improving the developer experience, and expanding our partner ecosystem. We’re prioritising reliability, scalability, and optimised data management as well as maturing highly requested features such as Configuration as Code (CasC), fine-grained permissions, identity and access management, and more to meet our customers’ evolving business needs.

. Since we debuted CasC, we’ve largely expanded its use cases, which now cover batch configurations of organisation details, holidays, branches, user roles, loan and deposit products as well as custom fields. We’ve also enhanced user permissions to introduce more granular access control to facilitate maker-checker processes.

In the area of data management, we have brought 

improvements to data backups done through Mambu’s API

 to cater to our customers ever-evolving data management needs. These improvements resulted in significantly faster and more efficient backups and End of Day jobs for our customers. In the next few months, we will be releasing even more exciting features in this area.

We have also strengthened access control with the release of 

 across our Cloud Banking Platform and introduced more 

granular user permissions for deposit and lending products

 through Mambu’s UI, extending your governance over user roles and responsibilities.

, processing both incoming and outgoing Instant SEPA payments as per the European Payment Council (EPC) standards. This enables 24–7/365 real-time payment processing, ensuring faster settlement and transaction clearance.

 leading to a higher straight-through processing rate.

Building for scale, change and resilience with Mambu

In 2023, we are making substantial advancements in improving our End Of Day (EOD) batch processing operations to ensure enhanced reliability, predictability, and speed. Our primary focus lies in strengthening the foundational aspects of EOD by efficiently segregating the financial and non-financial components, with a particular emphasis on prioritising financial tasks. Furthermore, we have already made significant strides in improving our monitoring capabilities, and we remain committed to further refining our existing framework. This dedication will provide us with comprehensive visibility over the EOD process, enabling us to achieve even better outcomes.

At Mambu, we have been working diligently to bring you a host of updates and feature releases. Our goal remains to empower you with the tools and functionalities you need to thrive in a fast-paced financial landscape. Stay tuned for more innovations as we continue to shape the future of banking and finance together.

Closing out the first half of 2023 with 40+ exciting new product updates and features

The digital conference centred on the important topic of how technology can be used to increase access and build new services for customers. Learn more about the takeaways in part one of the Q&A series below or 

 What are the big changes you’re seeing in the banking industry right now?

 There is a clear decline in the issuing of new banking licences. There is also less risk capital available for the whole fintech space due to the macroeconomic environment. Additionally, large incumbent banks are increasing interest rates and are in much better shape than before, so they’re often spinning up their own fintechs or spinoffs and stepping in that direction.

 Yes, we’re seeing this interconnected ecosystem of incumbent banks and new fintechs starting to grow together. You mentioned interest rates, what are some of the other specific changes that have happened in the past year?

 Banks came to the realisation that they must do something, meaning they must move much faster away from legacy systems to better serve the demands of their end customers. Demands from customers have changed, due to our situation in the past years with the pandemic. Banks see a need to accelerate to be more agile.

 When we talk about the acceleration caused by the pandemic, what is the measurement of that change? The banking and FI industry has experienced a lot of change in the past year, but how many years have we shaved off in the shift to digital?

Werner Knoblich

 People are more sensitive to what’s happening to their money. The time spent at home from the pandemic created much more demand, for instance we see this with wealth management. With zero interest on checking or deposit accounts, people realised they want to get smarter about their finances. This generates new demand, and banks and FIs need to find a way to serve this. As a result, there comes the acceleration of the need to deliver digital services much faster to end customers. The pressure is on, and also loyalty to incumbent banks is only decreasing.

 There are a lot of technological changes affecting people’s lives that come from other industries: online shopping, children’s schooling. How is the banking sector keeping pace with these new technologies in our lives?

: Very clearly, not fast enough. The reality is that the legacy core migrations are so difficult, and the situations the banks got themselves into makes it so they can’t move in an agile way. They’ve built up these monsters over decades with data centres that make it very hard to deliver something new and are inflexible. They’ve come to the realisation that they cannot easily migrate gigantic monoliths to a new system.

: Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a Fortune 100 bank, and they put the demand on us to state in their contract that they’re not allowed to customise the software. With Mambu, this is actually not necessary as we're SaaS-based, but the point is that they tried to protect themselves from falling into the trap of what they did in the past. The question is: how do they get out of it? A mass migration will take decades, so they need to see how they can chip away. Today's financial institutions need to provide new offerings without relying so heavily on IT resources. Product managers should be able to build something without needing developers to create these products. 

Learn more about Mambu's composable approach to banking and lending 

 or stay tuned for part two of the Q&A series.

Q&A with The Banker: Big scale migrations and the accelerated need to digitise

Consumers have become attuned to the benefits and advantages of technology in their everyday lives. In fact, it’s become an expectation that service providers leverage the latest technical innovations to deliver the most seamless user experiences. And there is no exception in banking and finance. Empathetic, or “human”, banking has become the latest trend in financial services by offering customers highly personalised products and services to meet their unique needs.



The motive of empathetic banking is simple: treat customers like you know them

Customers want the ‘Netflix experience’ - one where they are recommended a product they might love before they even know they want it. This level of tailoring has become a norm across many aspects of life. For banks, creating these types of experiences starts with building a personal relationship with the customer.

Our finances often align to our emotional lives, whether that be needing a mortgage to buy a first home, or planning a retirement fund for the future. In these cases, the personal, human touches from banks are where it counts.

Technology can’t replicate the empathetic interactions we get from engaging with an individual or a support team. And sometimes the human touch is exactly what consumers need. On the other hand, consumers tend to crave convenience. They want to press a button and have their issues resolved.

The hyper-personalisation of banking products can and should be as granular as any other offering, whether it’s a TV show recommendation or Amazon ‘must-haves’.

Through the capabilities of data insights, end users can get the experiences they want with minimal or no effort. We all know, consumers and banks alike, that data is a valuable asset, and in return for their information, consumers now expect a more tailored level of service. Embracing the data economy allows banks and other service providers to adapt their products and offerings to meet the needs and feedback of the customer.

Technology like open APIs and cloud-native solutions enable banks to leverage data to ‘level up’ their services and allow them to take action quickly when it’s needed. For example; by blocking a single suspicious transaction, rather than freezing an entire bank account, would tell a customer that their bank not only knows their spending habits, but that they are using modern technology to protect their money.

Some might say it would be an achievement in banking to reach the point where consumers never needed to speak to a human. But for this to happen, end-to-end customer experiences must be perfected, allowing users to get everything they need without the need to go into the bank or call the customer service line.

However, the biggest change for the future that I anticipate is that banks will take on the role of a financial advisor for their customers, rather than merely a seller of financial products. A bank's role will be to assist and advise customers on the decisions they make in their financial lives. This is where personalisation is key. Banks will become “financial friends” who know their users’ habits and preferences, and are no longer just trying to sell a product.

Creating hyper-personalised experiences in banking 

Years ago, a ‘Kodak moment’ referred to the capture - on film - of a significant and special moment that would never be forgotten. Nowadays however, since the devastating-but-completely-preventable collapse of the iconic photography giant, a ‘Kodak moment’ is used to describe the point in time when an organisation or leadership team fails to grasp the significance of a market shift, and suffers the very dire consequences. 

Executives at Kodak – the market-leading photography company for decades – refused to believe that digital photography would ever challenge traditional film photography, despite the company inventing the first ever digital camera. While it could have diversified its business and become a market-leader in digital photography technology, instead Kodak downplayed the impact digitisation of the medium would have, and subsequently suffered a spectacular collapse. Kodak’s story has become a cautionary tale of what happens when executives underestimate the impact of new technology, and refuse to change with the times.

Innovate and digitise or risk being left behind

Banks and financial institutions around the world are currently facing a similar scenario.  Having faced minimal competition for decades, many large and established banks have become complacent and resistant to change. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, right? But now, threatened by new entrants to the market in the shape of innovative fintechs and new challengers, incumbent banks are faced with two choices – either embrace change and new technology, or risk becoming another cautionary tale.

Across the Asia Pacific region in particular, the financial services industry has been experiencing a period of intense, transformative change, as mobile and API technology matures and becomes more reliable, and banks, fintechs and challengers begin to realise the size, scale and potential of the Asian market. However, while fresh-faced fintechs have been quick to take advantage of this new digital era, many legacy banks have been slow or reluctant to change, insisting on maintaining the status quo and shutting down any talk of digitisation.

What many of these legacy banks fail to realise, however, is that they don’t need to drop everything they’ve always done and change their entire way of doing things to capitalise on the digital revolution: it can be as quick and painless as launching a small-scale, low-cost, digital spinoff - a ‘speed boat’ - that they can send out to navigate the rapidly evolving market.

At Mambu we like to use the analogy of established banks being like cruise ships - large, expensive to operate, and slow to manoeuver, but with all the fancy bells and whistles. The digital spinoffs of these large banks are more like speed boats - faster, more agile and able to turn at a moment’s notice, but with no three-course-meal and a little less padding in the seats.

The speed boat needs to be driven by new thinking, new processes and, ideally, new leadership in order to forge its own identity. It also needs to operate much more like an agile fintech than like a traditional bank. Leveraging technology like APIs and collaborating with high-performing cloud and technology partners will streamline operations, automate processes and significantly reduce the overall cost of doing business.

To lead in banking and lending, you need to be able to seize the moment and quickly adapt to changes in the market. Download the Kodak moment guide and find out how you can avoid becoming a picture of failure.

Are banks in the Asia Pacific region facing a Kodak moment

More on Banking

Kodak: Are banks in APAC facing a Kodak moment?

Wondering how Mambu can help you get products to market faster, improve your business agility and elevate your customer experience?

We have all that covered in our live demo session. Join us as we walk through the Mambu platform, tour the partner ecosystem and show you why Mambu is the only true SaaS platform trusted by hundreds of financial businesses around the world.

Join us as we walk through the Mambu platform, tour the partner ecosystem and we can show you why Mambu is the only true SaaS platform trusted by hundreds of financial businesses around the world.