Citizens Bank is investing in its API infrastructure, migrating operations to the cloud and teaming up with vendors to ready its operations for impending open banking regulations expected to be finalized in the United States in the fall. 

“We have been investing in this for over three years,” Michael Ruttledge, chief information officer and head of technology services at Citizens Bank, said during today’s Bank Automation News webinar, “The Future of Open Banking: Payments meet Data.” 

Watch the webinar here. 

Ruttledge noted that a “very robust internal API journey” has been implemented to share data within the $219 billion bank, helping to ready it to share data externally. 

The bank is developing its technology in a sandbox to prep for the upcoming regulations and is adding vendors and aggregators to test its infrastructure, he said. The bank is also integrating its banking platform onto enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms and automated payments processing platforms. 

For example, the bank has embedded its APIs onto the following platforms: 

• Digital payments fintech Vertuity, allowing clients to pay directly through the platform; and 
• Health care payments service provider Zealous, allowing customers to file and claim medical insurance through the platform. 

The $219 billion bank is moving its operations to cloud, which supports its overall data sharing efforts, Ruttledge said, adding that the bank has nearly 60% of its operations on the cloud and aims to move all operations to the cloud by the end of 2025.