The power of partnerships: How startups can accelerate innovation

December 16, 2019 | Louise Basse

We recently participated in the world’s leading start-up event, Slush, in the heart of Helsinki. With more than 25,000 curious minds participating in the event, Slush was the perfect place to share our visions for the FinTech industry.

During the event, our CMO Christie H Kristensen participated in a panel debate about the power of partnerships hosted by Danske Bank and the Danish insurance company Tryg.

Let's hear what they discussed.

Keeping up with consumer demands

Moderated by Copenhagen FinTech Lab’s Simon Schou, the panel debate was all about creating insights into how large institutions can speed up innovation with tech startups. He opened the debate by stating how important partnerships are for both large and small businesses:

“Not only do financial services need tech startups to renew their products – but actually, the tech startups also need the financial services industry to get to the customers and validate what they’re doing”. 

To keep up with consumers’ rapidly changing expectations, Danske Bank adopted a visionary Open Banking strategy at an early stage, Danske Bank’s Head of Strategic Partnerships, Jon Schäffer, says:

“At Danske Bank, we believe innovation should happen in collaboration with external partners. We’re focusing on how we can partner up to innovate – and one of the ambitions for us is to create new services by integrating third-party solutions to offer the best service for our customers.”

Creating tech-driven solutions together

To explore how Danske Bank is speeding up innovation with its partners, our CMO, Christie H Kristensen, described how the partnership between Nordic API Gateway and Danske Bank came about:

“When we created our consumer-faced money app, Spiir, in 2011, our tech team did a lot of reverse engineering to get access to all the banks. A few years ago, we realised what value those connections had to other businesses, and that’s why we created Nordic API Gateway,” Christie H Kristensen says and continues:

“That’s when Danske Bank came into the picture. With Open Banking, they can really benefit from Nordic API Gateway as well. With our AIS and PIS solutions, banks such as Danske Bank can speed up innovation and create more user-driven services”. 

The partnership between Danske Bank and Nordic API Gateway has already borne fruit. Recently, Danske Bank won a prize for the best Open Banking solution which is powered by Nordic API Gateway.

Do you want to learn more about how you can reap the benefits of partnerships? Check out our products or drop us a line.