Category: Data

Everything about data, big data and their opportunities

The IT Financial System of Tomorrow: From Pure Banking IT to a Connected Business Architecture

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The financial IT system of tomorrow is modular, open, and networked. It enables customer-centric service bundles and embedded finance within ecosystems, leverages data and AI broadly, and ensures compliance automatically. The core remains as a critical piece of infrastructure, but in a slimmer and more invisible form. Those who think “service-first” today, orchestrate real-time data, and embrace DevOps operations are laying the groundwork for scalable business models in a connected financial world of tomorrow.

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AI, All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, technologies

Transformation of the Financial Market Infrastructure in Switzerland: The Role of Stablecoins and Deposit Tokens

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Stablecoins and Deposit Tokens are transforming financial market infrastructure and are rapidly gaining momentum in Switzerland. In our latest article, we unpack what these forms of tokenized money mean for payments, settlement, and the broader banking ecosystem.
What truly distinguishes stablecoins from deposit tokens in practice? Which Swiss milestones matter most for moving from pilots to production, and what can we learn from recent bank and industry initiatives? Most importantly, what steps should banks take now on strategy, processes, and technology to stay compliant and competitive?

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All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Regulations, technologies

A current look at Open Finance in Switzerland

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Open finance is becoming increasingly important in Switzerland, but is still at an early stage compared to other countries. A recent survey by OpenBankingProject.ch shows that the maturity level of open finance in Switzerland is currently rated as low to medium. At the same time, pressure is growing due to new European regulations (including PSR, PSD3, FIDA) and innovative business models, which will also influence the Swiss market in the long term. In this article, Stefan Knaus provides an overview of the current status, key challenges and the opportunities that open finance presents for the Swiss financial industry.

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All, Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, Open Finance, OpenBankingProject

Creating Value from Data & AI: Strategy, Options, Prioritization Insights into research findings on strategic value creation from data

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From the next major LLM release such as ChatGPT 5 to autonomous agents, everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI). However, the expected benefits often cannot be fully materialized in practice. In many companies, data and AI initiatives do not make it past the pilot phase, while others fail completely (Estrada 2025; Haefner et al. 2023) .An important reason is that the current enthusiasm often focuses too much on technologies and ignores fundamental business problems.
Ultimately, the goal of any data and AI initiative should be to create strategic business value that pro-vides companies a competitive advantage (Grover et al. 2018). This requires a shift in perspective to-wards the fundamental data assets and the exploitation of their inherent potential, regardless of the analysis technologies used, such as business analytics, traditional or generative AI, following the max-im: AI as a means and data value creation as an end.
In this blog post, Nick Kakuschke introduces the research area “Value Creation from Data and AI” at the Competence Center Future Financial Services, where we develop applicable tools that support compa-nies to realize strategic value from data and AI.

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Quantum computing in the financial sector: fundamentals, potential and challenges

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Quantum computing is seen as a potential revolution in the financial services sector: it promises to handle complex analyses with a level of performance that is not available to traditional computers (Dietz et al., 2020; Bova et al., 2023). Potential fields of application for quantum computing are di-verse and include, for example, portfolio management, risk analysis, corporate finance or customer-oriented analyses (Dietz et al., 2020). Anyone who ignores quantum computing today risks being left behind in the long term. In this blog post, Benjamin Schaefer explains the basics of quantum compu-ting, sheds light on its diverse potential and areas of application in the financial services sector and discusses the associated technological, security-related and personnel challenges.

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Impact of Innovative Technologies on Business Ecosystems

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Technological innovations have always been catalysts for social change – but never before have business ecosystems been so visibly at the center of attention. Whether we are making contactless payments, consulting chatbots or entering virtual worlds – often, business ecosystems are based on platforms, which are an important part of orchestrating value creation. Platforms are purpose-built organizational and transactional infrastructures of business ecosystems.
A change in key technological foundations often has an impact on how the business models of business ecosystems change via the platform. The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, distributed ledger technology and the emerging metaverse act as turbochargers – they not only connect objects, but also markets, communities and entire business models. In the following blog post, Stefanie Auge-Dickhut outlines some thoughts on the impact of innovative technologies and data on the technological basis of business ecosystems.

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Identifying the right data and AI use cases – the Assessment Framework

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Everyone is talking about artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) in particular. Beyond the hype, executives have agreed for some time that data and its analysis (such as through AI) play a key role in the transformation of entire business models (Gartner, 2018) and are seen as an in-vestment focus for companies worldwide (IBM, 2023) . However, to date, many companies have struggled to successfully implement their data and AI activities due to a variety of associated chal-lenges. Due to the complexity of the perspectives to be considered, companies are constantly faced with the challenge of identifying the specific use cases that are best suited to them and promise the most value potential, whether classic AI, GenAI or data sales.
Accordingly, one research focus of the Competence Center Future Financial Services (CC FFS) is to provide companies with guidance on how to create value from data and AI. This blog post is dedi-cated to the decision factors that support the choice of the right data and AI use cases and presents excerpts from a scientific paper that was written as part of the CC FFS research (see Kakuschke et al., 2025) .

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Potentials and challenges of the Swiss E-ID (2/2)

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Switzerland will provide electronic proof of identity (E-ID) for Swiss citizens in spring 2026. The underlying trust infrastructure is based on the Self-Sovereign Identity architectural approach. These developments offer significant opportunities but also challenges for the various economic sectors in Switzerland.
In this second part of a series of blog posts, Stefan Knaus describes the proof of value of the OpenBankingProject.ch on the topic of “Use of Swiss E-ID”. The focus of this article is on the business implications of using the Swiss E-ID for the business architecture of the project participants and the options for Swiss banks regarding participation in the Confederation’s trust infrastructure.

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Potentials and challenges of the Swiss E-ID (1/2)

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The Swiss Confederation will provide electronic proof of identity (e-ID) for Swiss citizens in spring 2026. The underlying trust infrastructure is based on the Self-Sovereign Identity architectural approach. These developments offer significant opportunities for the various economic sectors in Switzerland but also challenges in the effective implementation and use of verifiable credentials. In addition to the use of the Swiss e-ID as proof of identification for opening a bank account, participation in the Confederation’s trust infrastructure offers further potential for Swiss banks. The e-ID can be used in other customer processes and significantly improve the customer experience. In addition, banks can also issue their own proof of identity on the Confederation’s trust infrastructure (Source).
This is the first part of a two-part blog post series on the Proof of Value of the OpenBankingProject.ch on the topic of “Use of Swiss E-ID”, which took place from October 2024 to February 2025.

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Wealth Management in the Digital Age: Innovation as a Success Factor

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Wealth management is at a turning point. Never before have challenges and opportuni-ties been as closely linked as they are today. While the number of high-net-worth individ-uals (HNWI) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) in Germany and Switzerland continues to grow [1-3], their expectations are also rising: individual advice, the urge for more self-determination, customized investment strategies and digital services are more in demand than ever [3-5].
In cooperation with Commerzbank AG, the Business Engineering Institute St. Gallen has published the white paper “Leading with Innovation in Wealth Management”. It high-lights key developments and trends in wealth management with a particular focus on application programming interfaces (APIs) and distributed ledger technology (DLT). This article summarizes the key findings and shows why innovation can contribute to sus-tainable competitiveness in wealth management.

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Decentralized identities as enablers in open banking

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The digital transformation has profoundly changed the way banking services are used. Banking advice is no longer limited to visiting a branch – customers now expect a seamless, cross-channel experience when accessing banking products. Decentralized identities, also known as Self-Sovereign Identities (SSI), could play a crucial role in this and further change the relationship between banks and their customers. In this article, we will take a closer look at the most important aspects, challenges and opportunities of this development.

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All, Data, Digitization, Nicht kategorisiert, OpenBankingProject, technologies

AI cases in banking – AI radar of the Business Engineering Institute St.Gallen

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The financial industry is beginning to undergo a profound transformation through the use of AI. In particular, the use of generative AI opens up the possibility of creating new content such as texts, images, videos or music. In autumn 2024, we started building an AI radar that systematically analyzes use cases of banks in German-speaking countries. This blog post offers an overview of use cases and maturity levels in the banking sector and provides exciting insights into the status quo.

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Web3 and the future of the Internet: opportunities and challenges for the financial world (Part II)

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Where we looked at blockchain technology as the foundation of Web3 in the first part of this series of articles, in this blog post Roger Heines looks at other important elements of the Web3 concept such as the token economy, DApps, DeFi and SSI as well as the opportunities and challenges of Web3 for the financial services industry.

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Web3 and the future of the Internet: opportunities and challenges for the financial world (Part I)

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The internet has developed rapidly since its creation in the 1960s. From the purely static Web 1.0 to the dynamic Web 2.0 to the emerging decentralized Web3. But what exactly does Web3 mean and what role does this next stage in the evolution of the Internet play? For the financial sector, this could have far-reaching implications and at the same time offer immense opportunities. This blog post describes the evolution of the internet and the technology behind Web3.

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Retrospective of the 11th member event of the OpenBankingProject.ch

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On November 13, the members of the OpenBankingProject.ch met for the eleventh time to discuss current developments in the field of open banking in Switzerland and to take a look into the future together. The event offered exciting insights into the latest advances and chal-lenges in the sector. In this blog post, the most important highlights and insights of the day are described.

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Data, Digitization, News, Nicht kategorisiert, OpenBankingProject, Regulations, technologies

Five Cloud Myths about Core Banking Systems (Article 3)

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In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.
In today’s article, we will address the last three myths. If you missed the last article about myths 1 and 2, check here.
Myth 1: The cloud always saves money
Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals
Myth 3: Once you’ve chosen a cloud provider, there’s no going back
Myth 4: Software in the cloud makes you more innovative
Myth 5: Cloud migration is too complex

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Five Cloud Myths about Core Banking Systems (Article 2)

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In collaboration with Swisscom, a series of articles has been created to answer the typical cloud myths in a banking context. We will try to explain these together with three articles and give you simple and common cloud wordings to help you understand the cloud.

In today’s article, we will clarify Myth 1 and Myth 2:

Myth 1: The cloud always saves money

Myth 2: The cloud makes it easy for cybercriminals

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Properties of LLMs, weak points and improvement measures for the domain adaptation of applications

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The transfer of the AI paradigm “Foundation Models” in the language domain leads to Large Language Models (LLMs), which can be used to communicate in natural language and can be used in a variety of ways for different tasks due to their “broad training”. However, this requires adaptations of the models for the specific application domains. In this second part of his blog series, Wilhelm Niehoff presents the three method areas of In Context Learning (ICL), prompt engineering and fine-tuning that are used for this purpose. By addressing and using the LLMs, however, design-related weaknesses such as hallucinations, lack of topicality and expertise in detailed topics occur. In addition to the three method areas, there are “up-to-date” approaches such as DSPy and TextGrad, which aim to relieve the user of the task of constructing prompts. Accordingly, the weaknesses are eliminated by adding further components that are coordinated by LLMs.

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Future Business Models for Wealth Management in Germany and Switzerland

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In recent months, the BEI has analyzed the future business models of asset management companies in Germany and Switzerland and has published a study. In the process, interviews were conducted with asset managers and, as a result, recommendations for action and business models of the future were defined. The aim of this study was to understand and explain the current state of the art and potential developments.

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Understanding Bitcoin as a productive asset: Part 2 

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A Bitcoin-based financial system will necessarily be built in layers. This is because today’s financial system is also multi-layered and recognizes an inherent hierarchy of money-like assets. To properly assess the potential of Bitcoin as a productive asset, it is essential to understand the trade-offs that come with it. In the first part of this two-part blog post, Bitcoin was introduced as a novel monetary asset and the necessity for productive yield generation was discussed so that Bitcoin can take the next step in its evolutionary phase. In the second part, three perspectives on Bitcoin yield products will be evaluated concerning their trustworthiness and the associated risks and trade-offs. Based on these insights, the gold standard of a Bitcoin yield product will be defined and what can be concluded from this for banks and their customers will be explained.

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Workshop series “digital customer proximity”

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OpenBankingProject.ch is currently organising a series of workshops on the topic of “digital customer proximity”. Around 40 participants from 30 companies from the financial sector and beyond are examining various target images and use cases on how banks can use concepts such as open banking or embedded finance to position themselves closer to their customers. The aim is to support end customers with digital service access outside of banking and to assist them with banking data, products or services. In this blog post, Stefan Knaus presents the workshop series, the results of the first events to date and the content planned for the future.

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