Embedded Finance, AI, and Open Banking

Luc Hovhannessian, Chief Revenue Officer, Treasury & Capital Markets at Finastra

Finastra is driving growth in Treasury & Capital Markets by enabling financial institutions to modernize through cloud-first, open finance solutions. With innovations in AI, ESG-driven finance, and embedded banking, Finastra is shaping the future of financial services, enhancing efficiency, automation, and decision-making.

In which sectors is Finastra experiencing the most significant growth in its client base, and how are you expanding your outreach efforts?

Finastra is witnessing significant growth across our business, and I am seeing this first hand within our Treasury & Capital Markets business unit.  A big driving factor is financial institutions recognize that to thrive in today’s environment filled with macroeconomic volatility, regulatory shifts and demands for operational efficiency, they must prioritize modernization and automation, as well as real-time risk management, liquidity forecasting and decision-making. Cloud-first, open, and scalable technology is helping them stay ahead in an unpredictable financial landscape.

Bank treasurers, for example, understand the need for real-time treasury and advanced trading capabilities to navigate today’s challenges and capture the opportunities. With Finastra Kondor, our leading bank treasury management solution, we are enabling institutions to trade high volumes of treasury, complex derivatives and structured products, providing risk analytics and real-time position management. To further support our customers on this journey, we have evolved our solution through enhanced workspaces and workflows to drive greater efficiencies and streamline the decision-making process for banks. We are also leveraging microservices, AI and partner ecosystems to deliver intuitive and persona-based experiences, as well as Treasury as a Service (TaaS) and cloud capabilities.

Additionally, we have numerous customers that have implemented Opics, our simplified, integrated core treasury solution. The solution ensures institutions can adopt cost-effective treasury operations while increasing their revenue, improving customer service and staying compliant.

The capital markets space is another promising area, as firms seek scalable, efficient platforms. With Summit, backed by over 25 years of industry expertise, we’re helping institutions streamline trading, improve straight-through processing (STP), and reduce time to market, making operations more efficient and cost-effective.

Finally, we are seeing strong growth from the investment management industry, particularly as insurance companies and pension funds expand to the point of needing a robust technology system. Fusion Invest provides real-time portfolio insights, advanced analytics, and automated investment processes through an Investment Book of Records (IBOR). With comprehensive asset class coverage and cloud-enabled deployment, we’re giving institutions the flexibility to manage risk and align with strategic goals.

We are continuing to embrace the growth opportunities in the treasury and capital markets industries by providing ongoing engagement and support for our existing customers, some of whom who have used our solutions for many years. We are using our successes and learnings to engage new customers, and we have some exciting projects on the horizon.

How is Finastra leveraging the potential of open finance, and what does the future of open finance look like from your perspective?

The treasury and capital markets industries are evolving rapidly, with financial institutions seeking greater efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. Finastra has long championed an open financial landscape, supporting some of the world’s largest banks and investment firms with solutions designed for automation, real-time decision-making, and seamless collaboration.

For example, in treasury trading, banks must optimize operations and integrate with market services to create a stable financial ecosystem. This allows them to respond quickly to regulatory changes and promote growth in global and local markets. Our open solutions enable seamless, real-time integration by leveraging REST APIs, allowing interactive, two-way integration with external applications, meaning banks can innovate and adapt to market changes rapidly.

Institutions require solutions that optimize the trading of high-quality liquid assets and enable cost-effective treasury operations from front to back. Our open solutions address these challenges and facilitate collaboration across the financial ecosystem. By offering advanced systems for secure data processing and analysis, they allow banks to utilize their data more effectively for decision-making. Additionally, these platforms address bias through analytics, training, and automated decision-making tools, while ensuring compliance with evolving regulations.

Similarly, robust capital markets platforms that are open by design support investment banks with trade validations, portfolio management, and real-time pricing. Finastra’s front-to-back solutions aid debt raising and risk management for institutions to drive growth and foster societal change.

Capital markets face challenges like slow trade validations, complex risk management for development banks, adapting to new technologies, and supporting diverse financial products. We’re solving these challenges by offering agile solutions that speed up trade validations and provide robust risk management solutions. Open architecture allows for easy integration and promotes innovation, while real-time tools and specialized solutions can improve portfolio management and the handling of various financial products.

The future of Open Finance lies in greater data-sharing, stronger partnerships, and scalable innovation. As financial institutions embrace cloud-driven ecosystems, the ability to integrate, collaborate, and innovate will define long-term success.

Can you elaborate on your software solutions and how they contribute to supporting green finance? Is the shift toward sustainable finance becoming a tangible reality?

Sustainable, inclusive and responsible finance is moving from ambition to reality as institutions embed ESG principles into their operations. Demand for green bonds, sustainability-linked loans, and ESG-driven investments is rising, and technology is at the heart of this transition. Finastra offers a variety of solutions to support this, including Finastra ESG Service offered within our Lending business unit. The cloud-native, open and scalable solution facilitates the integration of ESG performance criteria into risk and pricing to deliver a better experience for sustainability-linked loans and bonds.

In the treasury and capital markets space, as institutions integrate ESG factors into decision-making, investors can achieve financial returns while contributing to positive societal and environmental outcomes. The demand for ESG-focused investments is growing, with institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies incorporating ESG criteria to meet stakeholder expectations. Investors use ESG criteria to identify risks affecting long-term performance, such as regulatory fines for poor environmental practices or the reduced likelihood of scandals due to strong governance.

With real-time treasury and trading solutions, banks can access more accurate forecasting and risk management capabilities, while enabling faster decision-making and greater agility to navigate any complexities. Additionally, our Fusion Invest solution is integrated with ESG data to help asset managers make more informed decisions about their portfolios in line with specific values.

Cloud-enabled ecosystems, such as Finastra’s, further support the adoption of sustainable finance. Powered by Open Finance, these ecosystems foster seamless collaboration and partnerships to drive innovation and positive societal change. By integrating third party applications that provide, for example, sustainable datasets or seamless compliance with disclosure requirements, banks can embrace the opportunities of ESG while mitigating potential risks.  

Finally, as Generative AI (Gen AI) brings new opportunities for green finance. By analysing vast amounts of historical and real-time data, Gen AI can help firms assess market sentiment, track policy changes, and identify ESG-aligned opportunities. At Finastra, we are investing heavily in Gen AI across our operations and within our products and are excited about what the future has in store.

Embedded finance is a buzzword across the financial landscape—can you explain its significance and the role generative AI plays in shaping its evolution?

Embedded finance gained popularity because of the way it seeks to transform the end user experience.  By integrating banking capabilities directly into non-financial platforms, payments, lending, investment and banking services can become more intuitive and accessible. It’s about putting the end user’s needs first, and building products and services around that, to be consumed how and when they want them. Our Treasury & Capital Markets solutions can be easily connected with an end user’s platform, enabling businesses to offer investment opportunities directly to end clients.

In a similar vein, Gen AI is making a significant impact due to its transformative potential in enriching user experiences. By enhancing employee productivity, it can free up time to focus on more value-added, customer-facing tasks. With large language models and AI assistants, information can be accessed at our fingertips to support faster and potentially more informed decisions. For example, a trader could request a summary of all FX spot trades issued that day and run APIs to automate tasks such as booking trades and calculating risk measures.

Market volatility is accelerating this demand. Institutions must react quickly to economic shifts, regulatory changes, and shifting demands. Gen AI can ingest large volumes of historical and real-time data—from central bank policies to social sentiment—to generate precise risk assessments and liquidity insights. These capabilities are particularly valuable for instant investment decisions, automated trading, and dynamic pricing models.

However, Gen AI’s adoption also comes with challenges. Data quality, governance, and regulatory compliance are critical to ensuring AI models remain transparent and reliable. Financial institutions must continuously refine robust measures and processes to maintain trust and accountability.

How is Finastra supporting financial organizations with cloud services, and what innovations can we expect in this space?

Cloud technology is at the heart of modernization strategies, enabling institutions to reduce costs, increase agility, and accelerate time to market. We are helping banks and investment firms adopt our scalable, cloud-based solutions to improve operations, strengthen risk management, and adapt to shifting market conditions. Additionally, as regulations continue to evolve and become more stringent, cloud-based solutions provided the necessary agility for institutions to quickly comply.

Modernization is about more than just migrating to the cloud. By offering managed services in collaboration with our partners, such as DXC Luxoft and RightClick Solutions, banks gain additional benefits in terms of operational efficiency and maintenance support. We are also helping our customers adopt microservices-based architecture, enabling them to select and integrate the specific functionalities they need, while minimizing the risks of large-scale legacy migrations.

As our solutions are API-enabled, this further enhances adaptability by enabling seamless connections of banking systems with fintech innovations and external data sources. With cloud-enabled, Open Finance ecosystems combined with technological innovations such as Gen AI, we can expect a lot more collaboration and innovation to come, which ultimately can provide better end-user outcomes.