Our Group CPO, Aamir Janjua, sat with Arabian Business and talked about Spire’s expansion plans to Saudi and how Spire is uniquely positioned to enable a connected, simplified, and convenient financial lifestyle and experience for 35 million Saudi consumers. Janjua further elaborated on Spire’s unique Open Banking solutions, its market fit for KSA, and its alignment with the Saudi Vision 2030.
What are the company’s services and business that you will provide in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
Spire Technologies is an Open Banking company focused on building an API financial ecosystem in the MENA region. The company offers Open Banking solutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia including Open Banking readiness and monetisation consulting, and regulatory compliance, and is in process of bringing in additional services like account information, and payment initiation. Spire also deploys several powerful Open Baking enabled use cases to help with digital customer acquisition, stronger customer engagement, and growth in financing and deposit portfolio. Using Spire’s plug-and-play APIs, banks and Fintechs can speed up their time to market, strengthen their customer relationships, and improve the quality of revenue.What are the goals of the company and their alignment with the national goals?
Open Banking has been a focal point in the Kingdom’s plan to diversify and transform its financial services sector as part of the Saudi Vision 2030. KSA issued its Open Banking policy in January 2021, once implemented it will lead to direct innovation, competition, and financial inclusion by allowing customers to provide consent and securely share data and initiate payments between their financial institutions and other regulated third-party providers. Spire’s extensive regional experience, expansive global partner and advisory network and Open Banking focused products and services will deliver a unique value proposition to consumers and the rest of the Open Banking eco-system participants to support the national level goals in the Kingdom.
What is the importance of the products you offer to the Saudi consumer?
Our promise is to enable a connected, simplified, and convenient financial lifestyle and experience for 35 million Saudi consumers. All of our products are purpose-built to achieve this objective however, Spire Ingage leads the way. Spire Ingage is an Ai driven financial well-being and engagement platform for retail banking customers which provides smart budgeting, smart savings, smart lending, proactive bill management, real-time financial nudges, and much more to help simplify consumer finances and financial decision-making. Banks and Fintechs can deploy Spire Ingage to provide real-time personalized customer experience with dynamic content that promotes proactive financial management to consumers, ultimately leading to enhanced customer acquisition, retention, and recommendations.
What is the reason for the expansion to the Saudi market and how do you see it?
Saudi Arabia is one of the largest economies in the region and currently going through an unprecedented amount of transformation. The banking industry is leading it from the front and consumers are at the heart of this change and the main driving force behind it, especially due to the current demographics of the Kingdom, this transformation provides an enormous opportunity for a Fintech like Spire to become part of the transformational journey to support Kingdom’s Vision 2030. The Saudi expansion is a natural next step for Spire and Spire is well-positioned to offer an extensive range of Open banking products and services in the Kingdom to play a major role in the financial services sector transformation.
Any other information you would like to add?
Open Banking is radically changing the way banking is done, it is enabling new and secure ecosystems, and creating more open, transparent and fair financial choices for consumers. Spire being an Open Banking company is empowering individuals and businesses and will directly help banks and fintech to offer more innovative, personalised and affordable financial solutions in the Kingdom. We are excited to join the Saudi fintech ecosystem and look forward to contributing towards the success of this sector.