Low-Code Platforms: What’s the Big Deal?

by Greynier Fuentes  

These days you don’t have to be a financial institution to be a bank, making competition even steeper as both traditional banks and companies vie for new business. Those winning out are the companies that are keeping their customer base happy and interested by offering the latest digital products and services. And in addition to building a digital experience that customers want, companies must also be able to add or correct features within their clients’ existing portfolios while also deploying new ones.

Because competitive edge is razor thin, companies and banks alike are looking for new ways to get a leg up on their peers, while offering products and services that customers are clamoring for – and will go somewhere else to get if their current provider isn’t meeting their expectations. This is how embracing new efficient ways of working can give a bank or company the head start they need to keep up, or even get ahead. One of the most effective ways to do that is by leveraging low-code platforms. 

What is Low-Code?

Low-code platforms provide a quick and efficient solution for building powerful digital applications that can scale for any organization, without having to know any code. Sometimes referred to as a “drag-and-drop” method, it allows businesses to leverage a number of pre-existing templates they can customize (no-code) or slightly tweak (low-code) in order to cut unwieldy development times and rapidly deploy a new service. These methods solve simultaneously for a lack of time, money and expertise.

While simple to use, the resulting applications do not lack sophistication. On the contrary, low-code platforms allow organizations to adapt and keep up with the latest technology and trends. While there are still complex bits of code involved, they are just packaged in a user-friendly way that can be manipulated by a broad range of teams – not just those with prior coding experience. Currently, 60% of a developer team’s resources are devoted to simply keeping current systems running – imagine what they could do with some of that time back. 

Combatting the Slow Pace of Change

That brings us to integrating emerging technology into legacy systems, another pain point for the financial services sector in particular. Safely and securely bringing systems that banks have utilized for decades into a modern way of working is challenging. But low-code platforms can do just that, improving deployment times and delivery costs. As a result, projects that would have historically taken years to create, test, iterate and release can now be executed in months alone.  

While larger banks are typically leaning on low-code platforms to modernize antiquated technology, smaller institutions like regional banks and credit unions – and organizations that aren’t traditional banks at all but are looking to offer their customers a financial product (think the Apple/Goldman card) – are leveraging low-code to break into and further change the face of digital banking.  

What’s Next?

Low code development is not a brand new concept. And while it’s not new, it’s also not going anywhere. Instead, it keeps getting better and better – that’s the core idea: to provide ease in keeping up with the latest evolutions in products and services. Companies that provide low-code platform options aim to distill the components of today’s all-but-mandatory business applications into an easy-to-use package for institutions to take and adapt with their unique needs in mind.

With advances in what can be achieved for financial services through artificial intelligence, blockchain and modern security technology, the possibilities for low-code platforms are endless. Ultimately, it will continue to be a prominent force for those companies leveraging digital applications to serve their customer base. 

Greynier Fuentes is Solutions Manager at VeriTran, leading the development of digital banking and payments solutions to support the digital transformation of traditional banks and those looking to offer their customers agile digital business applications. Greynier has more than fifteen years of experience leading areas of solutions development for financial services.