Beyond banking

Over the past several years, our customers’ needs have evolved, and a new trend has emerged – to access services that go beyond traditional banking, via their banking point of contact. In response, the BNP Paribas group has extended its offering while remaining within the scope of the impact on the financial life of its customers, with the objective of facilitating the daily lives of individuals and professionals.

The time is right for beyond banking. The platformisation of the economy has disrupted our digital consumer habits. In financial service, this has opened up the range of opportunities for better serving our customers. Open banking allows the banking industry to come up with new value propositions in ecosystems that go beyond its traditional banking and financial offerings.

Meanwhile, stiffer competition from neobanks is pushing the banking sector to invent and offer other services to its customers, while remaining impeccable in its core business. And being there for our customers also means adapting to, and keeping up with, new consumer uses and behaviours.

We are taking advantage of the emergence of open banking to play a partnership role in rolling out beyond banking. In so doing, the Bank can develop offerings – a “value proposition” – that goes well beyond conventional banking needs, in areas such as healthcare, housing and mobility. Coming up with these new offers requires an ecosystem of actors and partners where we have a legitimate role to play and who offer potential for geographical and economic development. We have chosen to expand our footprint in four specific ecosystems: home, mobility, shopping and healthcare, in particular for our small business customers (e.g., self-employed medical professionals).

Joining the beyond banking movement by offering non-banking products is a differentiating strategic axis that meet our customers’ new expectations. It also illustrates the capacity of all our business lines to co-build offerings with innovative startups.

The goal is to develop simple, useful and accessible offers through digital platforms such as mobile apps. To design these offerings, the Group can use technological bricks supplied by young and agile companies – start-ups and fintechs, for example, in the case of payments.

We are rolling out beyond banking offerings that cover our business and individual customers’ varied needs.

• One example of this was launched in May 2020 – “Mon Business Assistant” (My business assistant), a free-of-charge innovative financial management service developed in partnership with the start-up OneUp. BNP Paribas’ French Retail Banking targets it to its business customers such as craftsmen, merchants, and self-employed professionals to help them handle activities such as cash management, real-time revenues, billing and payment reminders, etc.;
  

• In Belgium, Hello Bank! offers Hello4entrepreneurs, a range of services useful in starting up and managing a company, including tools and services for entrepreneurs. In Poland, BNP Paribas Bank Polska, offers Agronomist, a platform of services to optimise farm management;

• Launched in July 2020, the “My Carbon Footprint” features is based on the technology of a French start-up, Greenly. French customers use the “My Accounts” app to estimate the carbon impact of daily expenditures;

• In Belgium, PaxFamilia, is a fully digital turnkey family office app;