Opening Keynote: Embed financial services within ERPs and Beyond
Christie Holm Kristensen — Danske Bank
Embedded finance, evolving beyond PSD2’s regulatory scope, leverages premium APIs co-created with partners to integrate enriched, trusted transaction and FX data directly into business workflows, enabling real-time liquidity, cash flow, and trading insights. Accelerated digitalization and AI mainstreaming demand instant data access for strategic decisions, addressing CFOs' challenge of fragmented systems and manual processes. This human-centered, integrated API approach supports corporations navigating complex digital transformation, optimizing efficiency, reducing risk, and fostering innovation in embedded finance beyond traditional banking models.
"Technology is no longer the hero; it is people. To navigate extreme market changes, businesses must focus on serving their customers better through real-time data, trusted APIs, and collaboration—unlocking the power of AI to drive immediate, informed decisions."
Summary
- Embedded finance is evolving beyond compliance, driven by open banking, digitalization, and AI, transforming business models and customer expectations. - COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption, shifting banking relationships online and emphasizing real-time data access for businesses. - AI has heightened demand for instant information, pushing organizations to access and analyze transaction data immediately for decision-making. - Many businesses struggle with multiple systems and lack integration, wasting time switching between platforms, highlighting the need for streamlined API solutions. - Premium APIs co-developed with customers enable real-time transaction data integration, automation, and better workflows, unlocking AI's potential in finance.
Article
Beyond banking: How embedded finance is transforming business operations
Christie Holm Kristensen's opening keynote at Nordic Fintech Summit reveals how premium APIs are changing financial ecosystems
When Christie Holm Kristensen took the stage for the opening keynote at the Nordic Fintech Summit, she immediately dismissed what many might have expected – a technical talk laden with jargon. "For those who maybe know me, know that I'm going to disappoint: I am not going to talk about tech," she declared to the audience gathered in May 2025. "Because technology is not the hero of the story any longer. It is people."
This human-centered approach set the tone for a compelling exploration of how embedded finance is evolving beyond regulatory compliance into a transformative business force, particularly through the integration of financial services within enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and beyond.
From regulatory burden to business opportunity
The journey to embedded finance, as Kristensen explained, began with PSD2 regulations in 2018, which mandated that banks open their infrastructure. "The word 'open' was quite scary back then for banks. They did not like it. They saw it as a compliance play," she noted. "But now there's so much more to it because it's actually new business models."
What started as reluctant compliance has evolved into strategic innovation. Financial institutions, including Danske Bank where Kristensen works, are now developing premium APIs that go well beyond regulatory requirements to deliver enriched transaction data, foreign exchange capabilities, and seamless integration with business workflows.
The pandemic's lasting impact on digital expectations
A critical accelerator in this transformation was the COVID-19 pandemic. "Digitalization has been boosted by nearly seven years thanks to COVID-19," Kristensen explained, citing McKinsey research. This acceleration fundamentally altered how businesses and individuals interact with financial services.
"The relationship with the bank changed as well. We were no longer going into the branches, but we were online," she said, highlighting how this shift created new imperatives for delivering financial services digitally and in real-time.
AI and the demand for instant information
The mainstreaming of artificial intelligence has further heightened expectations around immediacy. "With AI—thanks to OpenAI, back in 2022, chatGPT—the technology became mainstream," Kristensen observed. "What it actually provided us with was the urgency. Now we as professionals, as humans, expect things instantly."
This demand for real-time information has profound implications for business operations. "The same goes for corporates today—CFOs, COOs, CEOs, C-suites, boards. Businesses need to understand how their organization is going, doing, working, performing right now," she emphasized.
Fragmentation: The CFO's nemesis
Kristensen highlighted a sobering reality for many financial leaders: "Today, it takes some 125 hours to actually switch between systems. Total waste of energy, total waste of time. That's three weeks... And let's not forget that on average, all businesses have seven different systems."
This fragmentation creates significant obstacles to achieving the real-time insights that modern business demands. As Kristensen put it: "Transactions are the fingerprint of a business; mastering transaction data in real-time allows CFOs and CEOs to truly understand liquidity, cash flow, and organizational performance instantly."
Co-creating solutions that matter
Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of Kristensen's approach at Danske Bank is the commitment to co-creation. "We are co-building our premium APIs with our partners, vendors, and customers," she explained. "Remember, 95% of all new products—and this also means API products and services—fail because you do not speak to your customer."
This collaborative approach ensures that solutions like transaction and balancing APIs, FX APIs, and collection APIs genuinely solve real business problems by integrating "that truth of data from the bank directly into the system which they work in."
The future of embedded finance
Kristensen's vision of embedded finance extends far beyond simply making banking services available through third-party channels. It reimagines financial services as integral components of business workflows, operating where and when they're needed without friction or delay.
"How do we do that? By integrating into the systems of choice where the customers work. That is going to be true embedded finance and is already happening right now," she concluded before transitioning to a panel discussion on SME finance.
As financial services continue to evolve, Kristensen's people-first, integration-focused approach offers a compelling roadmap for institutions looking to move beyond traditional banking models. The future of finance, it seems, won't be about banks as destinations but as invisible engines powering business operations wherever decisions are made.
Part of Nordic Fintech Summit