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Platforms

Digital Banking & Customer Engagement

Why choose CRIF?

With the mission of improving the bank-client relationship, Strands, a CRIF company, is a global leading FinTech that develops solutions for financial institutions through a variety of delivery models. The company delivers disruptive solutions and provides strategic consulting and support to increase customer engagement and generate new revenue through digital channels.

Key Benefits

  • Enhanced Customer Engagement

    Strengthen daily interactions through personalized and relevant digital experiences.

  • Insight‑Driven Personalization

    Deliver tailored, real‑time insights that guide smarter financial decisions.

  • Improved Financial Wellness

    Empower users with better understanding and control of their finances.

  • Open Finance Connectivity

    Integrate multiple data sources and systems seamlessly for a unified financial view.

  • Faster Implementation & Business Impact

    Achieve rapid adoption, faster time‑to‑market, and measurable business growth.

Success Stories

How we helped our clients unlock their potential

  • Platforms

    HSBC’s Transformation as a Bank for Small Businesses

    HSBC partnered with Strands to build Kinetic, a machine learning-driven BFM platform that empowers SME owners in the UK to manage their finances effectively. Through this initiative, the bank recognized a significant opportunity to leverage its deep expertise and data assets to evolve into a trusted financial advisor for small businesses. To make this shift possible, HSBC needed to bring all the pieces together by aggregating customers’ financial data into a single, unified view.

    • BFM
    • Engager

    25K

    Active Customers in 2 years

    Winner

    Best Small Business Banking App

    Bronze

    EFMA SME Banking Awards

  • Platforms

    STEP 4 Business: Creating a Personalized Experience Tailored To Real Needs

    STEP 4 Business is an Amazon‑style digital marketplace designed to support SMEs’ day‑to‑day needs through an open embedded‑finance ecosystem. Leveraging open banking data and advanced analytics, it delivers a personalized, insight‑driven experience where Strands’ BFM and Engager—enhanced by CRIF account aggregation—enable a clear competitive advantage

    • BFM
    • Engager

    97%

    of customers with accounts aggregated

    +39%

    cross selling ratio

    +56%

    open rate in DEM

  • Platforms

    NOVOBANCO

    Novo Banco partnered with Strands to embed a highly personalized and easy‑to‑use BFM platform into its systems, aiming to deliver the best digital banking experience for SMEs in Portugal. By addressing a clear gap in how small businesses were being served, the bank positioned itself to lead the SME segment while enabling customers to seamlessly track their financial situation with automatically updated accounts.

    • BFM
    • Engager

    4.7/5

    app rating on App store

    21%

    of mobile active users

    50%

    of active customers visited BFM

Solution Details

Get an understandable and complete overview of your finances and a better customer understanding.

Become the everyday companion of your customers increasing engagement across all digital channels, while supporting enhance financial wellness helps users strengthen their saving capabilities and work toward new life goals. Through a personalized journey, each customer segment can benefit from tailored experiences that elevate their digital banking interactions. At the same time, features designed to improve financial understanding deliver relevant, actionable, real‑time insights into your financial situations.
You also contribute to enhance turnover by helping customers save more effectively and by maximizing cross‑selling opportunities. Finally, solutions that jumpstart mobile banking ensure smoother mobile adoption thanks to intuitive UI and clear dashboards.

Delivering optimal accounting and bookkeeping services to your SME customers also means equipping them with a more advanced and reliable Business Financial Management framework.

This is made possible by the ability to enhance real-time data, enabling dynamic dashboards, forecasts, and scoring models built on continuously updated information. Through a unique view that consolidates transactional data and AR/AP into a single interface, users benefit from seamless navigation and a clearer understanding of their financial position. Leveraging the principles of exploit Open Finance further expands available insights by integrating new data sources such as AR/AP. 
These capabilities support faster receivables, helping businesses maintain stronger oversight of clients and suppliers through more efficient payable management. At the same time, financial institutions can avoid disintermediation by reinforcing online banking as the primary channel, reducing churn and strengthening customer engagement.
All of this contributes to effective management, ensuring that cash flow and accounting activities are handled with greater ease, accuracy, and operational efficiency.

Empower customers with personalized banking insights tailored to their individual behavior, helping them better understand their finances and gain a broader sense of control.

This is made possible through no‑code insights creation, which provides a catalogue of ready‑made insights or allows teams to create new ones without technical effort, adapting them to specific strategies or seasonal trends. Customers also benefit from relevant information delivered through real‑time, contextual communications that make every interaction more meaningful.
These capabilities contribute to improving your conversions by increasing click‑through rates with tailored insights and recommendations. They also support financial education, offering users a clearer understanding of their finances through an intuitive and accessible experience. In addition, you can boost digital sales by providing personalized, real‑time solutions that enhance cross‑selling opportunities. Finally, proactive monitoring ensures continuous financial oversight powered by intelligent insights, strengthening customer trust and long‑term engagement.

Open Finance solution that enables users to securely connect to multiple external services in one place, providing a clear overview of their finances and seamless access to third-party services..

This helps you avoid disintermediation by becoming the main point of contact for your customers, consolidating all their accounts in a single environment. With one single platform, all account information and cash flows are securely accessible in a centralized space, ensuring a smooth and consistent experience.
You can also pull real‑time third‑party data to gain a deeper understanding of customers’ spending behavior, while promoting financial education through a consolidated multibanking view that supports better financial awareness and decision‑making. By exploiting new data sources such as aggregated AR/AP information, you can further enhance your service offering and unlock additional value.
Customers benefit from real‑time insights tailored to their spending and saving patterns, helping them achieve greater financial wellness. Finally, the platform enables beyond‑banking use cases, supporting advanced capabilities such as AR/AP management, cash‑flow forecasting, and invoice reconciliation.

Integrate an innovative white-label SaaS banking platform to deliver a personalized experience to your customers.

Thanks to cost efficiency, the platform operates with low running costs and eliminates the need for large internal IT investments, enabling a more agile and variable cost structure. Its architecture also ensures faster time to market, allowing banks to launch new products quickly through plug‑and‑play solutions without being slowed down by complex implementation processes. With high scalability, you benefit from continuous platform improvements delivered through a single, scalable service that grows alongside your business. The solution includes dedicated support, offering a fully managed SaaS environment with ongoing assistance and maintenance provided directly by CRIF. Finally, easy integration ensures a smooth adoption process, helping you connect the platform seamlessly while prioritizing the strategic objectives that drive business growth.