MyVest Head of Marketing, Charlie Haims, was interviewed by INSART, a Fintech Business Accelerator, for their thought leadership report series about best practices in approaching fintech integrations for both startups and incumbent financial institutions. Here’s a recap of that interview.

Do you agree that integrations with 3rd party providers and integrations with client’s products are the main points of growth for Fintech companies?

Yes, I’ve long had the view that for fintechs to survive and thrive, they must partner with the incumbents who have the brand, scale and customers to make the biggest impact.  These integrations also help fintechs explore core product extensions to serve end-customers in new ways, potentially discovering new revenue opportunities through these partnerships.

Does a delay with technical integration or new feature releases have a direct effect on your company’s revenue stream?

It depends. Revenue impact from delays depends on the purpose of the integration. Some integrations are meant to drive new revenue opportunities for both ourselves and our customers, so delays have a direct revenue impact. Others are meant to drive cost, compliance, or user experience. Still others are meant to test the market with a new concept to help define product-market fit before defining the revenue opportunity.

How do you decide which new fintech integration opportunities to pursue? 

There is a broad opportunity for fintech integrations given so many new, interesting startups in our industry, and the choices can be daunting.  So, I approach these decisions for a technology platform and its product set like a diversified investment portfolio.  You want a mix of long, medium and short-term projects; a mix of revenue, cost, UX projects; and a mix of core platform vs. innovation projects to weather different economic environments and shifting customer demands, which in turn might impact your customers in different timeframes.

How does your company realize value-add integrations from your roadmap in the time that’s predicated by market needs and clients’ requests? Would you prefer to do it faster?

To realize the integrations that will make both our company and our clients & partners successful, it requires an alignment of all parties capabilities and priorities.  So it’s a multivariate equation to realize everything to meet client needs.

And yes, everyone would prefer to do it faster – fintechs, clients, partners – for the sake of time to market for quicker learnings and potential market penetration.  Although we’ve seen many cases where a careful, methodical rollout of new capabilities leads to a greater probability of success, especially with larger financial services firms where customer trust is paramount.

Another way to speed up integrations is we’re continually investing in new technologies that support our platform’s foundation and external connectivity, like new approaches to databases, micro-services, and APIs.

We all know that a diversified investment portfolio is paramount to limiting risk and optimizing returns. Diversification also holds true for a fintech firm’s technology strategy.

This interview was covered in INSART’s articles Why Integrations Are a Diversified Investment Portfolio of Fintechs and How to Streamline FinTech Integrations.