Finance API Ratings, Nov 3–10: Fractal Labs & CMA9 Banks

But first, something of interest

In collaboration with our partners at Fractal Labs, we have completed our quest to get up and running with monitoring all nine CMA9 banks for the Open Banking – UK – Production category.

Overall, for the week beginning 3 November 2020, we rate 82% of the CMA9 Open Banking – UK – Production APIs as good or excellent (CASC scores of 8.00 or over for good, 9.00 or over for excellent) and 18% as needing attention (CASC score between 6.00 and 7.99 inclusive).

No CMA9 APIs are rated bad (CASC score of less than 6.00). This can generally be considered an encouraging finding for the current health of the Open Banking sector in the UK.

One thing we should stress is these are identical calls, made in the same way, to the same endpoints. We cannot really comment on specific instances where you see something different without working with you (which we would be delighted to do – contact APImetrics today!).

We don’t just monitor the CMA9 banks, of course. Several of the CMA9 banks have more than one brand plus there are other competitors, established and new entrant, in the space. We will carry on adding banks in this category as we can. It’s not always easy.

Open Banking should be all about openness and strict compliance to standards. And with some banks, we have been able to get up and running in a few minutes; with others, it took rather longer!

In Open Banking, the comparison 9and competition) between the APIs is direct as the banks are offering the same services through implementations of the same endpoints. We see quite a bit of variation in the quality of the APIs from Danske Bank with a very good CASC score of 9.49 through Creation Cards (Auth) languishing at the bottom of the Amber Zone.

But Open Banking is a level playing field. There’s no excuse for not delivering a world class API. 28 (82%) out of the 34 APIs are in the Green Zone that indicates a good API and 7 (21%) have CASC scores above 9.00, but there is still room for improvement for those 21 (62%). 6 (18%) are in the Amber Zone and would definitely benefit from some sustained attention.

This is why you should be actively monitoring your APIs. You need to know how good you are. But you can also monitor your competitors’ APIs too. How do you compare? Who is the weakest link? You don’t want it to be you. And if you are monitoring, you have the solid evidence to prove to the regulator and your competitors that it wasn’t you.

(Of course, it might be you, in which case, it is best to know the truth as soon as possible so that you can start putting things right).

API Performance Headlines: CASC

We look at hundreds of API endpoints and pull all the metrics together to give you a general feeling for the service quality for an organization’s APIs in a particular category.

Top CMA9 & Finance API Ratings

Week Ending 10 November 2020

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	HitBTC	9.47
Fintech	Stripe	9.35
Open Banking: PSD2	ABN AMRO Bank (Sandbox)	9.57
Open Banking UK: Sandbox	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	9.64
Open Banking UK: Production	Danske Bank	9.49
Open Banking UK: Open Data	Bank of Ireland	9.67

Bank of Ireland in Open Banking – UK – Open Data takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.67, down from 9.71 last week. A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Three of the six categories are headed by organization with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week (with one category headed by an API with a CASC score of 9.49). Sustaining a CASC score of >9.25 over a period of several weeks is a good showing and congratulations to those organizations that achieved it. All categories are headed by an API with CASC score of 9.35 or more, which is an acceptable level of performance.

Top CMA9 & Finance API Ratings: Latency

Week Ending 10 November 2020

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	FTX	220 ms
Fintech	Stripe	303 ms
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	111 ms
Open Banking UK: Sandbox	Starling Bank (Sandbox)	140 ms
Open Banking UK: Production	Tide (Auth)	149 ms
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	83 ms

HSBC in Open Banking – UK – Open Data again takes the overall CMA9 & finance API title again with a median latency of 83 ms, down from 87 ms last week. An important caveat: medians can be misleading! An API might have a fast median latency but produce many slow outliers. These won’t affect the median, but they mean that users can experience many calls that were unacceptably slow. So just being fast isn’t everything. You have to be reliable too if you want to have good CMA9 APIs and get a high CASC score! FTX, our old favorite, tops the Cryptocurrency Exchanges category once more, but is only 15th in that category in terms of CASC score with a CASC score of 7.84.

Worst quality across all categories

Week Ending 10 November 2020

Category	Organization	CASC score
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinlore	6.92
Fintech	Yodlee	7.49
Open Banking: PSD2	Railsbank	7.78
Open Banking UK: Sandbox	Barclays (Sandbox Auth)	5.89
Open Banking UK: Production	Creation Cards (Auth)	6.04
Open Banking UK: Open Data	HSBC	7.72

Creation Cards (Auth) in the Open Banking – UK - Production category takes the overall CMA9 & finance wooden spoon with a CASC score of 6.04. We have now split out the financial APIs and the non-financial ones into separate weekly and monthly reports. This allows us to give you a more focused view on the different classes of APIs you care about. In particular, we have been seeing increased adoption of and interest in APIs in the financial sector as uptake of Open Banking accelerates and APImetrics has over the last few weeks been able to add many UK Open Banking APIs (we now monitor all nine of the CMA9 banks) to the ones we monitor and the performance of which can be seen at our API.expert site. See you again in a week as plunge further in November. And don’t forget to look out for our October financial API report and the weekly and monthly non-financial ones.

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