Case study: Azimut and Salt Edge boosting investments world with Open Banking

Andrei Scutari, Country Manager Italy at Salt Edge, talks about their partnership with Azimut, focusing on their personal investment mobile app, Beewise.

 

Azimut, one of the largest independent asset managers in Italy and one of the biggest in Europe, has been increasing the wealth of individuals for the past 30 years. Having helped millions with investments and believing that everyone has the right to invest themselves, Azimut has built the personal investment mobile app – Beewise to make the world of investments accessible even to those who don’t know where to begin, including millennials and tech-savvy people. 

Beewise’s founders decided to provide an easy-to-use app with simplified user onboarding that, besides being a personal finances manager, would allow setting goals and reaching them by leveraging Azimut’s long-standing experience in investing. Users don’t need to be financial experts, Azimut helps and guides them with its experience via Beewise.

The challenge of making the investing seamless for everyone

According to Capgemini research, only wealth or asset management firms that leverage AI/ML and digital technologies will be well-positioned to personalise client experiences. Effective engagement across the customer lifecycle begins with data ecosystem and adopting a digital-first strategy. Here is where Open Banking is king. 

Inserting transaction data by users manually was never an option for Beewise. Their goal of combining expense tracking and investing into one app was way too ambitious to rely on the human factor only. The key to success for this mission is to automatically import financial data from various sources, normalise and unify this information, and instantly categorise transactions. Besides, an important factor for offering users a seamless investing experience would be to enable instant investments. Via usual simple top-up from a bank or ewallet account to Beewise account, the funds would be available on the account only after two days. So, a quicker alternative was needed. 

The silver lining brought by Open Banking 

Since it is maximum security and convenience that the Beewise app was after, Azimut chose Salt Edge for ensuring data aggregation and payment initiation within Italian banks for the app’s users. Salt Edge has wide bank connectivity of over 5,000 banks worldwide, which enables Beewise users to connect their bank accounts and directly invest and move the funds into Azimut. Without these features, the proper user experience would simply be impossible.

‘Salt Edge has played an important part in our mission to create a user-friendly mobile app that would simplify what is believed to be a complicated subject – investments. We are offering Azimut’s experience and knowledge in investing to Beewise users and it takes a partner that shares the same reliable approach to providing the best and safest customer journey possible. Salt Edge has technical expertise and great reputation on the Open Banking market’, commented Giorgio Medda, Co-CEO and Global Head at Asset Management of Azimut.

 

Thanks to the payment initiation feature, Beewise users can easily and securely transfer the requested amount to the Beewise app, for each investment they want to make, without sharing any card credentials. The account information element, a sophisticated financial data aggregation and enrichment API that quickly and continuously pulls raw data from multiple sources and transforms it into insights, helps Beewise to empower its clients to track expenses, set saving goals, and receive investment recommendations in just one app. The aggregated bank data also greatly simplifies the entire client onboarding process, reducing it to minutes. 

 

According to Matthias Van Den Eede, Beewise Founder and Digital Business Development Manager at Azimut, by leveraging Salt Edge’s Account Information and Payment Initiation APIs blended with AI and ML algorithms, the app’s users get in-depth financial insights and are to invest in various thematic investment projects, developed by Azimut global team. ‘We’re bringing young people closer to smart money management and investment and are happy to have Salt Edge by our side in this exciting trip’, added Van Den Eede.

Combining Azimut’s investing expertise with Open Banking elements into a smart app has debunked the myth that investing is accessible only to financial gurus. To learn more about Open Banking and how you can innovate with it, visit www.saltedge.com.

About Andrei Scutari

Andrei is the Country Manager Italy at Salt Edge. For the past 3 years he has been actively involved in establishing a strong position of the company in Italy. Also, as a Head of Sales and an expert in Open Banking, Andrei has empowered tens of companies to set winning Open Banking strategies and build exciting use cases.

 

About Salt Edge

Salt Edge – a financial API platform with PSD2 and Open Banking solutions for every business. The company has two main vectors of activity: enabling third parties to get access to bank channels via a unified gateway, and developing the technology necessary for banks to become compliant with the directive’s requirements. ISO 27001 certified and AISP licensed under PSD2, the company employs the highest international security measures to ensure stable and reliable connections between financial institutions and their customers. The company is integrated with 5,000+ financial institutions in 50+ countries.