The bLink ecosystem is growing. After UBS, Credit Suisse and ZKB, St.Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) has now also joined the platform. “Our banking services are to be available not only via our own front ends, such as e-banking, but also via front ends from third parties. For a bank of our size, bLink is the ideal platform to efficiently open up in this way,” says Sven Bruss, Head of Open Banking at St.Galler Kantonalbank.
OpenWealth: Pioneering Work in Open Finance
With the connection to bLink, St.Galler Kantonalbank is implementing its first open finance use case. It is the first bank to offer external asset managers the OpenWealth interfaces for its securities account services. The asset managers use the automated data exchange via the bLink platform from SIX to their portfolio management systems (PMS). The latter can simply and securely dock on to St.Galler Kantonalbank’s OpenWealth APIs and integrate the data directly into their service. The new flow of data makes the cooperation between all parties much more efficient. Moreover, asset managers no longer have to access their e-banking in order to use the bank’s securities account services – a clear advantage in terms of user experience.
Successful Cooperation between Swisscom and SIX
St.Galler Kantonalbank’s connection to bLink is the result, among other things, of the successful technical cooperation between Swisscom and SIX. “In this pilot project, we have increased the interoperability of our two complementary platform offerings, Open Business Hub (OBH, Swisscom) and bLink (SIX),” explains Sven Siat, Head of Connectivity at SIX and responsible for bLink. In the implementation of the OpenWealth interfaces, St.Galler Kantonalbank therefore benefited from a holistic and coordinated process. “From integration into the core banking system by Swisscom to bLink contracting through to digital consent management as a foundation for the data exchange, cooperation with Swisscom allows a great many Swiss banks to benefit from efficient implementation of ecosystem-based projects.” Since September, there has also been an additional technical partnership between Inventx and SIX.