Commercial banking clients face a stark reality. The volatility across sectors is creating a need for greater connectivity and access to liquidity. The rise of real-time payments and treasury as a service underpins these pressures. Yet fraudsters are becoming equally savvy with emerging technology such as generative AI.
They can execute complex scams in minutes using AI. And with real-time payments, they can wire money across different accounts using synthetic identities. Meanwhile, legitimate cross-border transfers can still take weeks at certain institutions. This gap represents both a challenge and an opportunity for banks ready to transform their approach to commercial services.
In a recent webinar, Enrico Camerinelli, strategic advisor at Datos Insights, and Sathya Sethuraman, field CTO for banking and financial services at Camunda, explored how process orchestration and automation enables banks to bridge this divide and generate more value for commercial banking clients.
What commercial clients really want
As Camerinelli explains in the webinar, Datos Insights research reveals that nearly 90% of corporate treasurers consider it essential to run banking operations directly from their enterprise systems. This seamless integration creates significant orchestration challenges spanning technology, processes, and people. Not just for the bank itself, but also for commercial clients.
“Corporate users want to control inbound and outbound transactions directly from their enterprise system,” explains Camerinelli. “But this integration creates potential break points that require thoughtful orchestration of applications on both the enterprise and banking sides.” Half of corporate treasurers cited issues with integration, multiple screens, and a high dependence on Excel or external systems.
Without effective orchestration, this integration challenge creates risk. When Datos Insights asked why corporate treasurers partner with fintech firms instead of traditional banks, they cited better functionality (48%), more payment options (46%), better integration with internal systems (43%), and access to real-time payments (41%).
These proof points show the growing risk posed to incumbent banks that are slow to respond to their clients’ needs. If commercial clients don’t get what they need, they’ll pursue other options without thinking about loyalty or long-standing relationships.
Why API catalogs alone fail to deliver value
Many banks have responded to integration demands by building extensive API catalogs, but this approach creates new problems rather than solutions.
“The more API catalogs banks create, the more they risk widening the divide from corporate users,” notes Camerinelli. “These APIs exist, but corporate clients struggle to use them efficiently or build ROI from them.”
According to Datos Insights data, the challenges are multithreaded. The biggest hurdle is the underlying process and operational changes are difficult to manage, with over 50% citing this obstacle. Cost (45%) and IT dependence (41%) issues were cited next, which is expected given the complexity of a modern enterprise.
Without a strategic framework in place, banks can often find their APIs and technology stacks grow out of control. As teams can often work in silos, they risk building the same integration multiple times. The lack of reuse and increased duplication isn’t just bad for productivity. It increases maintenance costs and adds to the risk of complexity, which ultimately increases the total cost of ownership.
Instead, banks need to think differently. They need to think beyond APIs and offer customers what they want.
Focusing on API calls is missing the point
When discussing open banking, conversations should fixate on the end users. However, research shows that corporate clients have a matrix of important capabilities. They prioritize liquidity, convenience, security, and of course, yield. But each of these elements carry different weights.
“Corporate treasurers want yield, but not at the cost of missing other priorities like sufficient liquidity, safety, and ease of use,” explains Camerinelli. “No treasurer will lose their job for missing a few extra basis points, but they certainly will if they compromise liquidity or security.”
Sethuraman adds that properly orchestrated open banking actually enhances security while delivering on these other priorities: “By opening your APIs strategically, you can embed your services into corporate ERPs. This delivers the functionality and capabilities they demand.”
Orchestrating and scaling AI capabilities in banking
Process orchestration creates the critical framework for effectively applying artificial intelligence across banking operations. This represents a shift from isolated AI applications to a cohesive approach for embedding capabilities spanning deterministic and non-deterministic processes.
Yet in banking, there needs to be a balance of both. Mission-critical processes need to function as designed. Every time. Otherwise, there’s a risk of disruption, regulatory action, or brand impact.
Agentic AI opportunities are still plentiful in the industry that’s practically led the revolution. Having the ability to blend both gives banks the freedom to apply the right technology at the right time instead of being limited.
Orchestration allows banks to speed up deploying new models or capabilities. It prevents AI hallucination risks while creating a governance framework that helps banks accelerate innovation without compromising safety.
For example, one bank monitoring for synthetic identity fraud implemented an agentic approach that allowed their fraud team to identify repetitive patterns in certain document types without disrupting their existing processes. They could test these patterns with real data, refine their models, and gradually deploy improvements.
By essentially A/B testing fraud models, the bank was able to reduce false positives while simultaneously improving the detection of bad actors. Something impossible with traditional, static approaches.
Building incrementally while maintaining vision
One of the most powerful advantages of process orchestration is enabling incremental modernization within a coherent strategic framework. Rather than waiting years for comprehensive implementations, banks can deliver value continuously from the start.
Sethuraman described how one multinational bank evolved from a narrow payment system implementation in one country to a 70-plus country platform vision through orchestration. Without process orchestration, they would have faced an impossible choice: wait years for a complete solution or implement disconnected point solutions.
“Process orchestration provides the flexibility to start small but think big,” he explained. “The bank didn’t wait five years to deliver value. They incrementally built their platform while maintaining a consistent vision.”
This approach requires business and IT collaboration to map the true vision, identify customer requirements, and build, buy, and blend what’s needed to achieve strategic goals. Process landscapes allow business stakeholders to create standardized process hierarchies and catalogs that IT can implement incrementally, preventing both analysis paralysis and technology sprawl.
When another audience member asked if orchestration just adds more complexity to overlapping systems, Camerinelli clarified: “Orchestration isn’t just connecting fragmented pieces. It ensures processes are properly reviewed and revised first. You’re not just automating existing problems. You’re resolving them within a coherent framework.”
The path forward
As open banking transforms commercial relationships, process orchestration provides the critical link between everything and enables rapid innovation.
When implemented thoughtfully, you can:
- Create secure connections to client systems with appropriate permissions
- Deliver enhanced functionality that meets rising expectations
- Apply AI intelligently to improve experiences while reducing costs
- Build incrementally toward a comprehensive, bank-wide transformation that reduces the total cost of ownership and enables faster scaling
Process orchestration transforms open banking from a checkbox exercise into a growth opportunity. It balances innovation with practical security measures that protect you and your clients while delivering the capabilities commercial clients actually value.
Ready to learn how process orchestration helps banks grow revenue with open banking? Watch the complete conversation between industry experts Enrico Camarinelli and Sathya Sethuraman to discover practical strategies for balancing innovation with security in open banking.
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