With centuries of history and trillions in assets managed, SEB is known as the leading Nordic corporate bank. Take a moment to talk to Daniel Franzén, Head of Open Banking at the organization, however, and you’ll quickly realize the SEB group is also one of the most forward-thinking financial institutions when it comes to how it handles APIs.

Kong spoke to Franzén at API Summit 2024, and the API-first approach outlined during the discussion is one every financial organization should pay attention to.

As Head of Open Banking, Franzén said his team is responsible for governance, API structure, and API platforms within all of SEB. Communication doesn’t just flow smoothly across the API calls — Franzén’s team supports other technology units across SEB with knowledge about how to create and call APIs internally. 

SEB’s Open Banking model is tightly connected to APIs. A regulation passed in 2018 required finance institutions like SEB to provide the market with external APIs. SEB used this as an opportunity to modernize and go API-first with its approach. But the API platform they originally tried to use for this was too cumbersome. That’s when SEB turned to Kong.

"We weren’t satisfied with the previous API platform we had. It was quite cumbersome. It was more of a toolbox. What we needed was a product for API management in general," Franzén said. "We evaluated about eight different companies. Kong was really what we needed."

Kong was the clear choice when it came to SEB’s API management needs, and not just from a management perspective. Franzén said the employees assigned to API management helped make the decision as well. When they evaluated the finalists for a new API platform, they said Kong was what they wanted to be working with.

To reduce complexity in SEB’s architecture, Franzén’s team sunset their old gateway and migrated everything with a structured new approach that set them up for future success. 

SEB’s migration and adoption of Kong has created a shift in how APIs are viewed at the company. Before, APIs were just seen as part of the technology. Today, they’re also seen as part of the business.

"We need all products represented by APIs on a centralized platform and portal. And that’s where we’re heading," Franzén said. "Customers want to consume a service or product directly, so time to market is critical."

Today, it’s easy for SEB to make the business case for its centralized, API-first product approach. The cumbersome nature of their old API platform made APIs very costly and increased time to development for SEB’s teams.

But SEB is also seeing another benefit of having a simplified, centralized API platform: product teams began landing new customers because they could offer APIs in a portal. These new business opportunities are getting the attention of product teams across SEB and helping push their API-first product vision forward.

"When people in our different product areas see us getting customers due to our API offerings, everyone wants to be there," Franzén said. "It’s created the forward movement in the product thinking we have at SEB."

Working with Kong has also helped Franzén and his team bring a “clean house” to its internal- and external-facing products and API structures, something very important for a bank managing the volume of assets SEB is in a highly regulated industry.

What other benefits has SEB seen since working with Kong? Franzén said his teams are seeing multiple API protocols (gRPC, GraphQL, etc.) and setting the same governance standards across multiple products and cloud solutions. The results?

• Approximately 200 APIs across external and internal products

• Reduced time to market with new products

• Overall reduced cost of development