Industry focus: Trends in fintech that drive growth

The change in outlook from an investor perspective is possibly the most important trend we have seen in fintech over the last year. The market is applying much more scrutiny to fintech organizations than it has done in the past.

Though times are tough, there’s no need to sound the alarm just yet. Fintech is here to stay – but its relationship with traditional banking is changing. The fintech organizations that are performing best are the ones that are working alongside traditional banks, rather than in opposition to them. The solution providers in regtech and operational tech are generally doing well, and I expect to see continued investment in these providers – as long as they have established financial institutions as clients.

While established banks look to have been riding out the economic storm well, there’s no doubt that the way people manage their money has been irreversibly changed by fintech and the digital finance revolution.

Now, banks are looking to outsource many of those components in their own consumer journeys, and customers themselves are also willing to break apart these activities among a whole set of different providers.

For instance, you might have your credit card with Apple, your deposit account with Goldman Sachs and your investments with Robin Hood. The digital financial revolution has not only seen us spread our activities among discrete providers, but also allows interoperability between them so we can move our money easily.

Through the use of APIs and cloud architecture, financial services are now componentized from a consumer's point of view. There’s greater choice and convenience for customers, while there’s also enough competition in the market to ensure the best providers rise to the top – with underperforming institutions weeded out.

When it comes to financial services, providers that rely on just a single cloud provider to handle important processes such as payments could find themselves in real trouble if that provider suffers an outage. And while resiliency is an issue that financial services organizations need to take very seriously – especially if they plan on being involved in the FedNow network – there’s another issue that being tied to just a single cloud provider raises.

Interoperability within the broader economic infrastructure is vital for fintechs and banks that want to future-proof their operations and be able to work with any and all potential partners. Being tied to just one cloud provider could be a severe impediment. Regulators are also bound to insist on multi-cloud interoperability in the future – in order to ensure stability and maximum resiliency for services essential to the smooth operation of the economy – so it’s time for all financial institutions to get ahead of the game and move to multiple cloud providers.

It’s still unclear how generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT will impact traditional banking, but financial services organizations and banks are already adopting AI for a number of reasons. Financial analysis reports, customer support chatbots, investment advice and so on are all utilizing AI, and it's playing a key role in fraud detection. AI can deal with massive datasets very quickly, spotting trends and patterns, making it ideal for spotting fraudulent activity in payments data.

However, digital-first organizations will be able to adopt AI more quickly than traditional banks with legacy infrastructure. It's likely that the banks will look to partner with smaller AI-focused startups and technology providers rather than make heavy investments in proprietary AI tech.

The smart banks will eventually become more like holding companies for fintech investments that they've cobbled together into a solution for their customers. JP Morgan has announced that it is going to invest heavily in tech and acquisitions.

As fintech and financial services progress into the future, banking is likely to become a much more varied experience for consumers. Banks will offer a number of different services – all held together by a single user interface – with numerous choices in each category, like a marketplace of financial services.

Things change fast in fintech and it’s hard to predict where we will be six months from now. However, we look to be on a path towards better services and greater choice for customers, which can only be a good thing.