Why we partnered with Google

 David M. Brear photo
David M. Brear Group CEO
3min read

So. We’ve partnered with Google. Hasn’t everyone? Well, for us this is more than a press release. Sure, 11:FS Foundry is already hosted on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). But let's look at why we wanted to partner more deeply.

The landscape of financial services is changing

In case you missed it, fintech is kind of booming right now. From fintechs reaching larger valuations than incumbents to non-banks embedding finance (and doing it brilliantly), the earthquakes have been gradual but the ground has shifted.

the earthquakes have been gradual but the ground has shifted.

In September 2021, JP Morgan Chase announced it was replacing all its core banking operations in the US with the ‘Cloud Native Core Banking’ platform Thought Machine. And that was just the beginning.

With one in four venture capital dollars now spent in fintech, the need for incumbents to be cloud native is table stakes. They need to be able to fight on even terms to compete.

We’ve worked with some of the best in the business

Cloud infrastructure providers have gotten pretty good at specialising in what incumbent banks used to do themselves. Look at how AI and machine learning has transformed customer insight and helped to solve Jobs to be Done in the last few years. Whether it’s helping consumers save, businesses auto match expenses or changing how credit underwriting works for the unbanked, this stuff works and it solves problems for customers.

We’re builders and practitioners and proud of it. As a company and in our past lives, we’ve built countless digital banks and worked with some of the best cloud providers in the process.

It’s not enough to do table stakes. To address customer problems you need the tools to stand out. Google are the originators of the key open source software we use as builders. Not to mention the masters of AI. Working hands-on with these capabilities is crucial to building the differentiators of tomorrow.

Working hands-on with these capabilities is crucial to building the differentiators of tomorrow.

Doing more is the way to get ahead

We’re going to be seeing a lot more over the coming months and years. Super-apps like Square, Paypal and Revolut are having a lot of success whilst offering an alternative to historic banks. By giving customers a variety of experiences manufactured by other organisations, they’ve proved that adding more to your service pays dividends.

Neobanks need to offer more. Nonbanks need to embed finance. Stitching all these APIs and providers together is where Foundry comes in. It’s a Financial Services Operating System, after all.

Google are good friends to have

Google’s unrivalled scale and experience in AI holds our FS OS up to the world. They’re growing financial services through AI and cloud expertise and we’re very excited to be part of it. We’re building a platform that helps you build the differentiators to stand out in a crowded fintech market. It’s the ideal mix.

And let’s not forget what we’ve got to offer. Foundry means differentiation and bringing providers together to make a product that is unique and powerful. It means the difference between blending in and standing out.

 David M. Brear
About the author

David M. Brear

David is the CEO of 11:FS and since his dream of being a sportsperson was crushed (along with the ligaments in his knee!) and he had to get a proper job. He has worked in pretty much every angle of the financial services industry but never lost that competitive desire to win.