According to the latest report by the advisory firm Deloitte, one in five banking leaders is a Polish institution. Our country has been recording dynamic development in the field of banking for many years. Polish banks are betting on various modern technologies, such as artificial intelligence or fintech solutions, which allows them to offer their customers increasingly advanced products and services.

Thanks to this, Poland has for many years been perceived as a trend-setter in the financial industry, which is confirmed by the increasing number of awards and distinctions granted to Polish institutions internationally.

Fintechs have always been the drivers of change in the financial ecosystem. I have no doubt that it is the smaller organisations that have mobilised banks to accelerate their digital transformation processes.

Fintech in banking plays a significant role and, in my opinion, this is happening in two ways. Firstly, banks are taking advantage of innovative products and services provided by other companies. On the other hand, the emergence of financial product providers has increased competition and forced banks to change the way they operate and the need to constantly expand their portfolio of services and products. As a result, banks need to work with proven partners in order to remain competitive.

An experienced company, a professional team – a simple recipe for success

The Finanteq brand has existed since 2014 and is a spin-off of eLeader, which was already involved in mobile banking solutions. What makes it stand out? Narrow specialisation and a constant drive to be the best at what it specialises in.

We have been active in the banking industry for more than a decade, and as a result we have acquired and developed specialised know-how that allows us to operate much better than classic software houses or outsourcing companies.

Finanteq's project teams are comprehensive, constantly strive for technical excellence and have above-average operational maturity. And this translates into an efficient mobile app development process and the company's incredible potential to create innovative banking products, as I will discuss later.

Mobile app development by Finanteq

Key to the success is our approach to programming based on the high level of technical excellence of the project teams.

How it works?

We only select people to join our teams whose technical and communication skills we are confident in. The result - we employ only top-class specialists and, importantly, people with whom we communicate and cooperate very well. It is noteworthy that all teams undertaking a new project are characterised by full operational capability, as they have already gone through the time-consuming process of formation and maturation. All of our specialists are fully versed in the specifics of the banking industry, and know very well how banks operate. As a result, they are able to fully focus their attention on delivering business value rather than learning how a financial institution works and what is important to it.

Why are Finanteq teams the best choice? First and foremost, because:

• Know the interdependencies between banking processes and are proficient in the use of industry terminology.
• They have the necessary knowledge to proactively suggest changes and best solutions.
• They get into the project practically straight away, thanks to the experience of their members.
• They are complete - the best scrum masters, business analysts or project managers work on our side, alongside the developers.
• They deliver functionality much faster than teams built for a project, e.g. from an outsourcing company or a software-house, consistently maintaining above-average solution quality.
• From the bank's perspective, they form one large, close-knit team with the bank's people.

Our teams are also able to perform a detailed audit of each banking application and identify areas for improvement and enhancement.

We are a company that creates trends and constantly innovates. Example: SuperWallet, which premiered nine years ago. It is a VAS-type solution that allows you to complement your banking application with merchant services and products for selling public transport tickets, handling vehicle parking payments and much more. It was a very brave proposition at the time, and today it is already a standard in Poland – most banks offer similar services to their customers in apps.

At Finanteq, we periodically prepare detailed development roadmaps for our clients, in which we make interesting proposals for solutions tailored to the needs of the organisation. For banks, we are not just another service provider – we are a partner. This is evidenced by the positive feedback on Clutch.co.

We automate and test everything possible – a unique approach to testing

The modern approach to development also manifests itself in our application testing philosophy. Why do we emphasise so much the value of the functional tests we use at Finanteq?

Every bug in an application means that people have to be involved in the remediation process. A large number of bugs means that instead of focusing on delivering business value, time and energy are wasted on fixing problems, which obviously does not add value to the application, but only prolongs the development process. A common solution in such situations is to increase the number of people on project teams to neutralise this effect.
In any of these scenarios, mistakes only increase costs unnecessarily.

At Finanteq, the starting point is the commonly used functional automated tests, which allow almost complete elimination of errors. Thanks to this approach:

• Our customers receive a production-ready product at the end of each development sprint.
• There is no need to increase the number of testers to carry out regression testing, which is constantly increasing in time with the rise in functionality.

The most important facts about testing at Finanteq can be considered in the two following categories:

#1. Quality:

• Our goal is 100% coverage of applications with functional automated tests.

#2. Optimal use of resources = saving time, human resources and, ultimately, money:

• We have reduced the duration of regression testing from several weeks to 20 minutes.
• We aim to have only one manual tester in each 7-10 person project team, mainly overseeing the ergonomics and aesthetics of the application.

We talk more about our approach to testing in one of the recordings on our YouTube channel @finanteqteam.

Automation that gives room for creativity

Continuing the theme of our approach to the development of banking mobile apps, it is worth mentioning extreme efficiency – one of our values that we live by every day.

We consistently automate repetitive and monotonous processes. We observe our work and continuously implement improvements in all operational areas.

This brings tangible benefits:

• Gives our developers the space to think creatively and focus on other complex problems and deliver value.
• Translates into lower costs and faster project delivery.

Discover a technological world full of possibilities with Finanteq

Mobile banking applications, through the implementation of innovative solutions, are becoming powerful platforms that allow them to respond quickly to the needs of end users. Organisations that harness the potential of off-the-shelf solutions build their competitive advantage by becoming banking leaders while meeting the expectations of their customers.

In addition to a set of in-house development tools, we also create our own products and smaller components designed for the banking industry, which allow our clients to be more competitive in the market. I will tell you about a few of them.

Video channel in the banking app – Pocket Branch

The first product I want to mention is Pocket Branch, a virtual branch that allows customers to contact bank staff via an audio, video or chat connection.
It is an essential solution for any bank, with tangible benefits. First and foremost, the cost of maintaining virtual branches is lower than traditional ones. At the same time, remote channels are more efficient - allowing more customers to be served by a single consultant and optimising sales opportunities for banking products. For bank customers, in turn, they are more accessible and very convenient.

Pocket Branch is equipped with a range of tools that allow not only professional, remote advice, but also the effective sale of banking products.

Please visit our website and arrange a demo.

Use of no-code/low-code in banking – Extentum

No-code is no longer just a novelty, but a widely used technology. Based on our many years of experience, we have developed a no-code solution tailored specifically for the banking industry.

Our platform, Extentum, allows any existing mobile and web applications to be quickly extended, and importantly, by business people.

Extentum is a solution that saves the bank time, costs and resources. The essence of our product is to enable people without programming knowledge to create scenarios that allow new functionalities to be quickly implemented into electronic channels.

If Extentum is implemented in an existing application, we can add new functionality to it by configuring in the backoffice the parameters of the scenario, i.e. the conditions for calling specific windows (including those relating to the specific customers for whom the scenario is to be available), as well as the transition logic between the individual steps. Importantly, the launch of such a scenario for customers is done without releasing a new version of the application. This significantly reduces the time it takes to make new functionality available and does not require the involvement of developers. The use of this tool can revolutionise the development process of a banking application.

Extentum, responding to the growing needs of customers for personalisation of offers and services, allows the creation of many types of 'scenarios' that can be 'tailor-made' for a specific customer/customer segment. These can include, for example:

• surveys,
• tutorials,
• sales offers (e.g. loans, etc.).

VAS in banking applications – SuperWallet

SuperWallet is another example of a solution that was ahead of its time. Nearly 10 years ago, we were looking for a solution for banks that would add value for their customers – so-called VAS (Value Added Services) and, more importantly, could provide an additional source of revenue. This is how we came up with the idea for SuperWallet, an m-commerce solution that is a VAS service for a banking application. Today, the range of offers that can be made available in the mobile app is very wide and includes, for example, the possibility of purchasing motorway toll passes, parking tickets, gifts, cinema/theatre tickets.

For many years now, industry reports have been talking about the continued growth of transactions in 'e' and m-commerce. This trend can be clearly seen from the number of active users of our SuperWallet, as well as the number of transactions carried out there. To better illustrate the growth in mobile transactions, I will quote our statistics, which go back to 2013. That was the beginning and at that time we recorded just 76 purchases. Since then, the service has been growing at a rate of well over 100% per year and this without any marketing or promotional expenditure. Today, an average of 13 500 transactions are made every day thanks to SuperWallet!

In order to illustrate the potential of our SuperWallet component, I will use some more example data from the Deloitte report:

• 37% of bank leaders have implemented ticketing and parking fee functionality. For other banks, this is only 15%.
• 27% of digital leaders enable the purchase of cinema or theatre tickets, while this is only 7% for other banks.

The situation is analogous with other VAS-type services. The data shows that many organisations have yet to add value-added services to their product portfolio, and this is one of the more effective ways to diversify revenue, generate additional profits, and increase customer loyalty.

Statistics clearly show that bank customers are increasingly using banking apps to carry out their daily activities. Today, this is already a noticeable trend – banking apps are becoming super apps.

If you would like to discuss the details, please contact us.

UX

The aforementioned Deloitte report also talks about another challenge facing modern banks. Today, banking mobile apps are becoming increasingly complex. In order to meet customer expectations and keep up with the competition, banks are offering more and more desirable functionalities.

How to deal with the increasing complexity of applications?

Continuous work needs to be done to improve the customer. This is because the end user expects the use of a banking app to be at least as simple and intuitive (or even easier), despite the increasing number of functions available. Poor UX/UI disqualifies an app – customers expect life to be made easier, not more complicated.

The best possible user experience is ensured by Finanteq Design Studio, which we created with the aim of designing personalised, user-friendly interfaces that take into account customers' needs and minimise the effect of being overwhelmed by the number of functionalities.

To date, we have carried out many facelifts and UX/UI audits of mobile banking applications. The refreshed apps have always been positively received by end users. This is confirmed by the increase in the rating of our apps in the app stores.

Revolutionise your banking with Finanteq solutions

We have been moving in the digital-first direction for more than 20 years (initially as the already mentioned eLeader company). Over the years we have developed our specialized know-how. Our complete focus on the banking industry and mobile app development over these years has allowed us to achieve technical excellence and extreme operational efficiency.

In summary: what do our customers gain by working with us?

• Optimal budget management, i.e. short time-to-market – both thanks to our off-the-shelf products, such as the Extentum no-code platform, as well as our continuously improved framework for the rapid development of mobile applications, and the efficient use of people and their potential during development.
• High quality – thanks to the implementation of functional tests as a standard, inseparable element of our development. This is confirmed by the testimonials of our clients, as well as the feedback on our applications received from users.

Polish fintech companies and Polish banks are setting standards on the global financial industry stage. Finanteq has made a significant contribution to this success – and we are proud of it. Constant observation of trends, mobile banking developments and continuous improvement make our teams the ideal partner for brave, innovative projects.

Finanteq is the best choice for mobile banking app development – I guarantee it! Contact us for more details: www.finanteq.com/contact

Author: Andrzej Sierpiński, Managing Director, FINANTEQ SA