We are increasingly seeing how fintechs have been transformational for the financial services industry, but deploying fintech innovation in such a highly regulated industry can take time, potentially slowing adoption and time to market. As large financial institutions look to bring on new partners, they may ask themselves: where do we start? How do we find high-fidelity suppliers? How do we onboard them? How do we begin to work with them and ensure our security and compliance measures remain intact?  

These questions are only the beginning and there is no single right answer—it takes time and continuous discussion. But they don’t need to answer these questions alone. With the right technology partners and tools, financial institutions can feel at ease when selecting a fintech to work with. TechPassport and IBM are working together to help banks do just that as they come together with fintechs in collaboration.  

Founded in 2019, TechPassport’s SaaS platform aims to bridge the gap between financial institutions and fintechs through standardization and streamlining the onboarding process. To drive this mission, they are working to standardize supplier selection criteria into a single profiling tool, which includes a set of industry best practices questions that fintechs can then answer to demonstrate their enterprise readiness. Curated by global financial institutions, the questions represent the most important challenges that large financial services organizations face when evaluating suppliers. Once fintechs have responded to these questions, banks can then rapidly scout and onboard the fintech products that best match their business, technical, compliance and financial goals. By creating a central repository, TechPassport’s platform aims to enable standardization that can make the supplier onboarding process both fast and frictionless, allowing fintechs and larger institutions to spend more time innovating. 

Driving standardization with security and compliance  

The growing prominence of generative AI technology across industries has introduced a new level of pressure for financial enterprises to innovate quickly—or risk missing the opportunity to drive new value for their customers. As banks look to collaborate with different fintechs and take advantage of AI technology, they must cut down on the time it takes to onboard these ecosystem partners. However, for this to happen, banks need to be assured that the products and services from these providers are compliant and adhere to the same stringent regulations that banks must meet. Traditionally, this process could take a long time, even years, but an industry-tailored solution can make the process of onboarding technology providers easier. 

IBM has long been on a mission to reduce risk and remains committed to helping financial services organizations keep critical data secured with resiliency, performance, security, compliance capabilities and total cost of ownership at the forefront. With IBM Cloud for Financial Services® and the IBM Cloud Framework for Financial Services, IBM is positioned to help fintechs become compliance-prepared from the onset. With security and controls informed by the IBM Financial Services Cloud Council—a 150-plus member group bringing together CIOs, CTOs, CISOs and risk experts from over 90 financial institutions—built into the cloud platform, we aim to help clients derive greater value from the cloud as they address evolving regulations and mitigate third- and fourth-party risks.  

IBM and TechPassport collaborate to bring financial institutions and fintechs together 

Through its Enterprise Ready Questions, TechPassport’s platform is designed to help financial institutions reduce due diligence time while providing a curated marketplace of enterprise-ready products. With a robust network of fintechs and partnerships including working with some of the world’s largest financial institutions, TechPassport’s goal is to transform how business gets done. 

Combining IBM Cloud for Financial Services and TechPassport’s platform, we aim to help banks onboard fintechs quickly and more confidently than ever before. As financial institutions strive to innovate at the pace of change and stay competitive in today’s landscape, solutions like these that are built for the industry by the industry can help them achieve their goals.