EXCLUSIVE: “The Power of Partnerships” – Justus Roux, Mambu in ‘The Fintech Magazine’

Justus Roux, Head of Solutions Engineering, EMEA, at Mambu, says that trust and compatible culture can deliver best-in-class customer journeys

THE FINTECH MAGAZINE: ‘Partnerships’ is one of the buzzwords currently in finance. What does it mean to you?

JUSTUS ROUX: To define that, we need to just step back, and ask, ‘OK, who are those partners?’. Within the solution engineering side, we normally see three types of partnerships. One is technology partners. Mambu is but one part of building a banking ecosystem, so we have different technology partners that we integrate with, either on the card side or the front-end.

We also have the service integrators. Think of these as the big consulting companies, among which are some niche consulting firms that know specific markets well. We have been blessed by having great relationships with different top-line consultancies, specifically in EMEA, and also worldwide.

And then, obviously, because we build in the Cloud, we also have the Cloud service providers.

How you focus and deal with each of these partners is different, because they each have their own needs.

TFM: So, what are the key ingredients to make a partnership work?

JR: Ultimately, it comes down to one thing – culture. You need to be aligned, in terms of what you want to build. With Mambu, we’ve been fortunate in terms of where some of our biggest success stories are; speedboats or spin-offs of banks, which have a culture that is different from the legacy approach.

Instead of having multiple committees signing things off, and taking four or five years for implementation, there is a recognition of the need to push something to the market in three months, six months, and see if it works. Now, that’s a partnership.

We have the client, but, as I said earlier, we don’t do everything – we are one part of a bigger ecosystem, so we need to have partners that also have the same culture and value set to be able to do it. And we all sell trust, right? A partnership is a trust agreement, so if we know where we’re going, and what we want to move towards, then it’s a lot easier to get to that success point.

“It always comes back to building that constant relationship and being honest with ourselves, as an organisation, and also with our customers, and our partners”

Justus Roux, Mambu

TFM: How does Mambu operate within its partnerships?

JR: We are transparent, first and foremost. When we talk to potential partners, in terms of the ecosystem, we tell them exactly where we are and what we want.

What’s best for the client is also what’s best for us.

It always comes back to building that constant relationship and being honest with ourselves, as an organisation, and also with our customers, and our partners, in where we stand with each other, and what we want.

If we have the same culture, the same vision, and the same approach, everything falls into place,

TFM: How do legacy banks fit into this new environment? Are they nimble enough to deliver the ultimate customer experience?

JR:  I think this is fascinating because a lot of banks will build a new app for customers, or build a particular user journey, because that’s what the market wants. But you can only build so much, depending on how good your foundations are. The legacy guys will have a big old core – and fine, it worked for them – but they can’t have that snappy new specific channels, or the new app, because they are limited to what the core makes available to them.

It’s all about asking, ‘how can I make the user-experience better for my clients? Well, if I have cool and innovative journeys, or interact with other value-added services – like insurance, maybe buying electricity or playing the lotto – these things all need to come together in a space that customers trust and want to engage with.

Other fintechs that we partner with, like Mobiquity, build the secret sauce around that.

TFM: Do you think we’ll get to a point where you’re not just buying a banking product, but you’re buying a product that you want through your banking app?

JR: I think we’re already there. Some sub-Saharan African, Middle Eastern, and European banks already have the ability to integrate various other services.

“This all comes back to the idea of a one-stop shop, and it just happens to be a bank that underlies it. But it might be someone else doing it, in the future.”

Justus Roux, Mambu

At the end of the day, as the market changes, you have to ask where are we getting value? We now get value back in deposits, and we have it in lending, but there are insurance plays that we can talk about, there is crypto investment. How many apps already have crypto integration?

This all comes back to the idea of a one-stop shop, and it just happens to be a bank that underlies it. But it might be someone else doing it, in the future.

TFM: You mention ‘trust’ being a key component, but how can newer banks compete on that level with the more traditional financial institutions from a customer’s perspective?

JR: It’s interesting because this notion goes against digitalisation. Everyone is trying to take the human connection away, building bots, etc, but sometimes, as a customer, you just want to speak with someone, to open a bank account personally. Digital banks sometimes have so many abstract processes that it takes away from the trust. That’s where the high street guys are good, because they have that component.

So how do we bring in trust, with digitalisation, so the customer feels that they are being listened to? Because I only talk to my bank when something goes wrong, right, even when digitisation reduces the likelihood of things going awry. That’s where the clever UX, AI, data learning, and communication come in.

So, trust is about relationships, and talking to each other. We need to have that always in the back of our mind on this digital journey.

TFM: Do you really think the retail bank of the future will have all that built into an app?

JR: Completely. Trust comes with the user experience. In the future, if the client can get that feedback they want – even if that ‘person’ at the other end is AI-generated or not, they need to feel heard. If we are able to build the digitalisation in such a way as to give trust to the client, so that they are able to interact in a way that makes sense for them, and makes them feel heard, the rest is easy.

Hand in hand: three partnerships in practice

Since 2011, Mambu has partnered with nearly 200 clients across the globe, including both legacy banking providers and digital-first challengers. Among them are Western Union, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, N26, BancoEstado, OakNorth, Raiffeisen Bank, ABN AMRO, Orange Bank, Bank Islam, TNEX, Cake, Timo, Bank INA and Bank Jago.

Mambu and Orange Bank

Last month (April), Orange Bank, the mobile bank launched by French telecom Orange in 2017, announced that it would migrate its services in France to Mambu’s Cloud banking platform, hosted on AWS. It follows the 2019 launch of Orange Bank in Spain on Mambu’s operating system and signals the bank’s intention to operate a single banking platform in order to scale Europe-wide.

Mambu CEO, Eugene Danilkis said: “Orange Bank is a great example of how Mambu empowers companies to scale with flexibility and agility, while leveraging the Cloud. Our platform was born to empower our customers to create delightful financial experiences quickly, simply and with the best of the ever-changing financial technology ecosystem.”

Mambu and Allica Bank

Allica Bank, a UK neobank focussed on serving the needs of established SMEs, announced the purchase of Allied Irish Bank’s GB SME customers in November 2021.

This complex loan portfolio required a technology solution to help Allica migrate customers in a matter of months. Mambu and its composable architecture gave the flexibility to seamlessly integrate with Allica’s Cloud-led tech stack. The platform now supports Allica in delivering ‘bespoke lending products’ that are specifically designed with small and medium-sized businesses in mind.

Mambu and BancoEstado

Chile’s only state-owned bank and largest financial institutions, serving 13 million customers, BancoEstado called on Mambu to digitise its transactional services in 2021.

Its aim, it said, was to implement ‘innovative technology that includes an open architecture that offers modern integration models to create an easy-to-use bank’.

This article was published in The Fintech Magazine Issue 28, Page 72-73