The reverse side of corporate online banking, or Internet banking for all business occasions

The largest corporate clients of banks still consume digital services with a design from the 2000s, they often do not have access to mobile applications and this is not related to politics or sanctions.

The reality is that banks segment companies into small, medium and large businesses. For example, the small business segment includes all companies with a turnover of up to 500 million rubles, and then in ascending order.

As a rule, these segments are served by different teams, down to separate departments for each area. And these categories are served differently. Small businesses receive services very similar to those for individuals – they have a mobile application and online banking, where they can do everything they need on their own.

Large businesses receive “boutique service” – client managers visit them, and everything happens, of course, offline. On the one hand, this is “premium” because there is an individual approach, and the client is provided with the highest quality offline service. IMHO, this segment is still poorly digitalized. And if an employee of a large corporation needs to use a digital service, he will interact with ancient software developed somewhere in the 2000s, and sometimes in the 90s.

Dear readers, this is an article to understand a little about our banking behind the scenes and my attempt to explain why we decided to make just such an Internet bank for all clients. Colleagues and comrades-in-arms, don’t be offended by me 🙂 I’ll sprinkle some ashes on my head and laugh at myself. Well, because “that’s how it happened historically.”

A little bit about yourself. Now I am developing an online bank for legal entities in Alfa-Bank, before that I launched a B2B ecosystem in Sberbank, before banks I worked at VK (ex Mail.ru Group) and Yandex, where I invented and launched Yandex Disk. Recently launched my own telegram channelwhere I write about fintech, management, reflect on the topic of my eternal struggle between a hedonist and a zodiac – in short, about everything that interests me today, subscribe!

What products are there on the online banking market?

First, let's look at what products are on the market to make it easier to navigate how the product lines in banks differ.

Basic banking products

We won’t describe basic banking products in detail; readers from the banking industry are familiar with them, but others will find it a little boring, so let’s go over the top.

• RKO (settlement and cash services) – accounts and payments to counterparties.

• Card products.

• Salary project.

Non-banking services

In the West they are called VAS (Value-added services), in our country they are called non-banking or non-financial services, although they are already quite banking and financial, but this name is assigned to them.

• Online accounting.

• Electronic document management.

• Services for checking counterparties.

Advanced Products

This category includes complex banking products.

Interfaceless solutions (API)

This category expands existing product lines. The API is provided for the product lines that the bank has.

Types of banks

We have looked at how the grocery landscape works, and now I will tell you what types of banks there are and what products they provide. As we have already said, there are several types of banks.

Neobanks

A few years ago, the concept of neobanks appeared. This is a term from the past; it is not used today, although it very well describes the latest era of banking development in the Russian Federation – this is the name given to banks of the new wave, based on digital services, providing services through an application or website. Neobank products:

• Basic products.

• Non-banking products.

• Interfaceless REST API solutions.

Once upon a time, neobanks were called Tinkov, Modul, Tochka. They were distinguished from the rest by a modern interface, excellent UX and customer service, but they did not have any complex products, for example, they did not provide loans at the start. Now neobanks are expanding their product line to cover all the needs of their clients, and many of them have probably outgrown this format. This may be why the term “neobanks” is not currently used.

An interesting feature of neobanks was the introduction of non-banking services. These new experimental products immediately entered the neobank product landscape. Because neobanks at the start focused mainly on small businesses. And a small business needs to keep books, issue invoices, and prepare closing documents. And thus, neobanks completely covered the needs of small companies. It is important to note that in neobanks, omnichannel is implemented out of the box, and equal attention is paid to both the web client and the mobile application.

The reason for the parity development of channels is the orientation of neobanks towards small businesses, which are often represented by individual entrepreneurs, because the individual entrepreneur pays the bills himself and prepares the documents himself. In addition, individual entrepreneurs, in their behavior patterns, are similar to ordinary individuals – you and me, and we are all used to doing everything through a mobile application. Therefore, in addition to the web interface, neobanks developed a mobile application.

Speaking about APIs, it should be noted that neobanks are banks without legacy. Legacy are old technical solutions on which business processes are built. And these old solutions often prevent banks from dynamically developing their digital services. Neobanks don't have this legacy. For example, they support modern API formats, despite the slight paradox that the main consumer of APIs is a large client, and neobanks, as we have already said, focus on small businesses. But nevertheless, neobanks provide a more modern API.

Neobanks do not have legacy code – they have hundreds of systems, including decision-making systems or CRM. The absence of legacy allows you to update technical solutions very quickly, and this is an absolute advantage over legacy banks.

Old school

They're actually called “universal banks,” but I like it “old school.” Old school banks have been around for a long time. These banks have the widest product line. Everything a business needs is there. Old school banking products:

• Basic products.

• Advanced products.

• Interfaceless SOAP API solutions.

Old-school banks do not have developed non-banking services – they are either not presented or are presented in a limited version.

For example, one of the TOP 20 banks by asset size and TOP 10 by innovation rating from the Skolkovo Foundation in its advertising campaign says that they concentrate on traditional banking services – in my opinion, this is an omission. Failure to provide non-banking services in 2024 is like a denial of modern realities. Old-school banks are very careful about non-financial experiments. Of course, you don’t have to sell soda in cans, but online accounting is worth it. This is already a hygienic food minimum.

These banks have a line of advanced tools, which is good. What also characterizes old-school banks is the presence of an API, but it is ancient, based on SOAP architecture. Once upon a time it was made under 1C or under SAP, and when it was made, SOAP was all that was available at that time. And now, for many reasons, these banks are hesitant to switch to the new API format.

Old school banks are very careful about investing in a modern and relevant technology stack. This applies to all channels: there is a web channel and a mobile application, but it is very old, as is the API – which, if they exist, is only on the legacy stack.

New wave

There are only a few such banks.

I like to call this category new wave banks. These are old school universal cans with a wide range of products. As a rule, they implement all the necessary non-banking services. And these banks are actively experimenting with products. New wave bank products:

• Basic products.

• Non-banking services.

• Advanced products.

• Interfaceless REST API solutions.

These are financial corporations that are running faster than many technology companies. Today, these banks have ultra-modern mobile applications, essentially supperapps, advanced web applications that are made according to all the canons of modern design, where updates are rolled out almost every day. For example, at Alpha we have more than 7,000 releases a year in digital channels for corporate clients.

And of course the API. New wave banks have realized the importance of API – it is new, in a modern format. This is a storehouse of current technologies that are widely used in bigtech companies.

As they say, my respect, but I must admit that there are actually only a few such banks. There are very few fashionable, modern, universal banks or new wave banks on the market and Alfa is one of them.

A paradox that is not commonly talked about

We all talk about product management, ideal customer paths, and at the same time the client receives some ancient solutions.

Despite the fact that the “new wave” banks have the most modern and advanced equipment, there are some specifics in their work. It so happened that, due to internal ambitions, clients from large businesses use old software.

There is a bias in the market in favor of small businesses, where they get the most modern products, and large businesses get the most ancient ones.

This happens, as I already said, due to “political” issues, because, as a rule, no one likes to give away their piece of the pie. Many books have been written about this, there is no point in condemning anyone. Shareholders want efficiency, and TOPs want scale.

As my experience shows, updating Internet banking for the business segment begins with small businesses. There are many of these clients, interaction with them needs to be automated in order to reduce service costs. This segment is highly competitive, because they are being hunted by those same “neobanks” who did not have legacy, and who made their banking services from scratch immediately on a good technical architecture, with a good customer experience. Therefore, small business clients are the first to migrate from legacy to new systems.

What about the large segment? And here a problem arises – you need to invest a lot of money to update the Internet bank for the largest clients (CIB). And everyone begins to wonder, is this really necessary? There are not many such clients, hard automation may not be needed – maybe use old software? But this is not the biggest problem.

I think there is also an internal political problem here. Owners of the small business segment have already created a new Internet bank for themselves, and someone should do it for CIB. Who? If another department does this, product conflicts will arise; this needs to be centralized somehow. That is, give it away. And no one wants to do this. Therefore, innovations are introduced slowly into the large business segment, and clients use solutions developed a long time ago.

Of course, all basic financial instruments are available here, but there is no innovation, ideal customer experience, super convenient and smooth interface, or biometrics. And the saddest thing is that due to the fact that the systems are different, it is not possible to implement an omnichannel experience. Data between the mobile client is not fully synchronized with the legacy bank.

Old software is built, as a rule, on a monolithic architecture. This means that it is almost impossible to intervene in any way to improve something.

If someone suddenly wants to improve the user experience for a large company or introduce an additional level of security, they will inevitably face the fact that the cost of improvements in terms of improving customer experience or integration with different channels, for example, a mobile application, is catastrophically high. Krupnyak uses a legacy bank, and the mobile application is attached to something fashionable and modern. It will not be possible to achieve omnichannel between them, and therefore everything needs to be rewritten.

There are cases when the status model of documents is not synchronized, because the business logic in a legacy monolith and in a new fashionable microservice is implemented differently. This leads to the fact that the sent payment at intermediate stages of processing may be invisible in some of the systems. The final statuses are the same, nothing is lost anywhere and payments are received, but everything related to monitoring cash flows over time works differently in the old and new software. It's just inconvenient.

And it’s also important that from the point of view of information security, software and hardware are all old. There are no innovations in information security. It is clear that there is always a way to strictly limit access by whitelistsbut this greatly limits mobility.

That is, the banking services market offers clients some sur.

We all talk about product management, ideal customer paths, and at the same time the client receives some ancient solutions. The gap between modern and legacy solutions in some cases reaches 25 years.

The largest companies use old software written in ancient programming languages. Who remembers how we drew interfaces in Delphi Studio? And the design of this software is appropriate.

Difficult decision

Absolutely all Internet banking clients will have access to the most modern technologies.

Alfa-Bank made a rather difficult decision in terms of resources – to create a single Internet bank for everyone. This is not easy because there are so many factors to consider. Internet bank Alfa Business is one platform for all business cases.

The conditional “Rospromholding” will have access to a super-fashionable interface used by small businesses, and individual entrepreneurs will be able to consume the services that we created for the largest corporations. And my task, as head of the digital channel development department, is to synchronize the work of all three segments so that everyone has access to the best services.

We have been engaged in this migration for the fifth year, and for the last three years we have been actively transferring all services to the new platform. We understand why other banks did not go in this direction – it is incredibly difficult.

And not everything went smoothly for us, it was difficult to adapt and learn to create a product taking into account the threefold complication of requirements, but we managed. The general production process, which I wrote about in the article, helps us with this “Ride the Chaos” — you can read it if you’re interested, and we’ll talk in more detail about what we did.

Omnichannel

We've created a truly omnichannel experience. You know, the word “ominichannel” was used so much at various conferences that in the end it was devalued in the eyes of the banking community. But here we are not shy about saying this word, because we have a truly omnichannel platform.

This became possible because the solution is truly uniform: every bank document, payment, loan application has the same status model. And this means that you can start working on a document in one channel and continue in another.

Alfa Business Internet Bank is an omnichannel platform consisting of a web interface, mobile application and API. We are also developing a mobile web interface so that you can use the digital bank from absolutely any device at any time.

Personal bank for each user

And another devalued word on the market is “personalization.” When you create a single solution for all business segments, you have to adapt the interface on the fly to the needs of each client. We made a complex role model that is used to personalize each element.

What does this give? For example, the navigation menu for each client is almost never repeated and looks different depending on the services that the client uses. Well, except that it may look the same for new clients.

Each client has his own set of quick actions, which are formed based on many factors: what products he has connected, what rights he has to work with these products (if the company has a role model for working with the bank), the size of the business, etc. In addition, shortcuts can be customized by creating your own personal set.

And the presentation of widgets on screens changes depending on what kind of business the client has. If it's a small business, widgets show the balance of a specific company's accounts and a business card. If this is a group of companies, then they will already show aggregated information for the group of companies with details of intraday turnover, which is important for the treasurer or accountant.

Therefore, with us personalization is not “buzzword“, but the real one.

Pleasant trifles

Another interesting aspect of personalization is adapting the interface to the tasks of different types of users. The job of an organizational leader is different from that of an accountant or financial director. And the latter, as a rule, works with a large amount of data, which does not always fit on a laptop screen, let alone a mobile phone screen.

We are accustomed to the fact that online banks operate in vertical mode. But when we receive Excel or a presentation by email, we turn the phone to landscape mode. Because it’s more convenient to consume content made in 16:9 format.

Therefore, we made a horizontal mode of operation of the mobile application for employees of companies that work with large amounts of data. It's very simple and convenient.

Top Manager Mode

For many years, many market participants have tried to create something useful for decision makers. By the way, I was also such an experimenter in the past. And basically everything revolved around business analytics. But no one actually used these financial analytics. Because financial flows in companies are much more complex than the bar charts that we implemented in our online banks.

And that’s why we created a special operating mode for our application for managers, where there is nothing superfluous. The focus is on the balances, on the instruments of signing documents that were made by the company's operational employees.

But the most interesting thing is the process of bargaining with the bank. Medium and large businesses consume non-standardized products and services. In essence, he bargains with the bank, extracting certain conditions for himself. This functionality is currently being piloted in the regions and we will soon make a fairly large release.

Holding

And another big innovation is the “holding” mode. This is a complex product scenario that allows you to accumulate information on a group of companies. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about dashboard screens with summary information on a group of products, or whether we’re looking at a specific product.

To build this feature, we solved a non-trivial problem: we had to “teach” each product section to present information on a group of companies at once, what if there are 100 of them, what if there are 1000? If you do this head-on, the load on the bank’s back systems increases 1000 times, and in order to implement this, we had to revise the architecture of the Internet bank. Thanks to the revision, the number of operations per second remained almost at the same level as without the holding operating mode.

From a UI/UX point of view, this was also not an easy task – we are changing the mono-mode interface of 70 products to a format in which you can see aggregated information for a group of companies. We have only managed to make basic screens so far and are transferring the entire product line into holding mode.

We are currently testing the operation of the mode for a number of loyal large clients. They will be able to view accumulated data across the entire group of companies in a single interface. And this is a unique customer experience on the market, which combines the wide functionality of complex financial products in a modern UX/UI package.

The most interesting thing is that the holding regime can also be useful for small businesses. For example, a conditional owner of a chain of coffee shops will be able to receive aggregated data from the entire network or summary information by type of business within. No online bank can do this, but we can.

The presence of such products sets Alfa-Bank apart from its competitors.

Why do we need this?

All companies employ people, and they want to receive fabulous service, regardless of whether they work as an individual entrepreneur or are the CFO of a large corporation. People like to use modern services. No matter how strict the rules in large corporations are, and no matter how tightly their employees tighten their ties around their necks, they are still people who live in the same time as us – they know what modern digital services look like and will be happy to use them on work.

And by the way, modern digital services are also created by people, and there are many nuances in this process, which I talk about in my Telegram channel — there I share my thoughts on what to do, what not to do, and how to generally build a healthy balance between life and work in our fast-paced world. Subscribe!