Top Five Questions Asked by Fintech CXO in 2018 review

As per Venture scanner data, Deloitte Centre for Financial Services analysis, during 2008-[Sept]2017 1498 companies were founded under Banking and Capital markets category. While other classes like investment management [313], Insurance [ 905],and Real Estate [1022] made a mark,but Banking and Capital markets lead the way. Ever wondered what the CXO’s of these 1498 firms would be eager to know?

What kind of technology do they invest?

What are their plans to sustain in the digital space?

Do you think fintech as an innovation, future of money or mode of bringing social change?

What are their thoughts on fintech and banks collaboration?

Are they disturbed by negative market sentiments?

To answer many such questions, we brainstormed, and we interviewed Vishal Gupta, CEO Teknospire presenting here the amalgamation of our research and snippets from the interview…

Fintech – The Future of Innovation and Banking?

Is Fintech all about MONEY? Not really! Fintech is about smoothening, automating and transferring money and money processes, and INNOVATION is the key there. We might have started with the barter system, and gradually moved to formal currency, but innovation has always been the heart of how money is handled.

Fintech get an extra edge with the technology on his side, to streamline the money matters. Whilequick moving sprouts, lower entry barriers in helping new players to seed the innovative idea. The positivity of investors and trusting the digital wave of innovation is another reason for fintech to expand its reach.

However, the most significant of all is – SERVING THE CUSTOMER that fuels innovation in fintech. The urge of making lives simpler for its customer, understanding their pain points, quick query resolution and need of automation are some of the enablers.

While Digital Wallet, Mobile Agent Banking, Voice Assisted Payments, Cryptocurrencies and many other use cases of Fintech are in place. The internet savvy population is demanding MORE.

How about customized credit cards/travel cards that are you can buy during SALE season or holidays to get best deals? Or how about a card that in integrated with IoT devices? Possibilities are limitless…

Fintech Technologies – Open Banking/ PSD2, Blockchain or Data Analytics?

Blockchain or Data Analytics — Quote on Fintech

Speaking to Vishal Gupta CEO Teknospire on what would be trends in 2018 for fintech sector – he mentioned Open API would be at the fore frontier of all innovation with data available vastly, security could be the concern,but that’s where Blockchain pitches in to guard our data.

Imagine an immutable, distributed database [permissioned/ non-permissioned] that stores all your client information, could be accessed from anywhere. You design a web portal and a mobile app as an interface for your clients to interact. And then you introduce Open API!

While customers may be concerned about sharing their sensitive information with the third party, the blockchain technology integrated with Open API/PSD2 provides a feasible solution. With blockchain in place, one could track each data piece on the network because it’s a network created based on mutual trust and consensus.

If any of the third party via Open API/PSD2 are accessing the client information, they would need to build trust within the network, proving to be a win-win situation for all.

The Blockchain – Open API/PSD2 combo looks challenging for fintech industry, data analytics or data science is another technology that would lift the sector. Data Analytics could assist fintech firms in –

Mining data from different hubs and structuring it, to study patterns and insights
Predictive analytics,e., by understanding the customer behavior and offering them more customized/personalized solutions.
Analysing what went wrong or what could be improved to realign your business strategy supported by

Fintech Regulation – Supportive or Neutral?

As stated by pymnts –

In its Global Banking Outlook 2018 survey, EY assessed 221 financial institutions across 29 markets. According to the results, banks argue that innovation, not just regulation, is behind the wheel of progress.

As Regulation helps in locating the business, evaluating how fast it can grow and how transparent a government is in terms of handling new business, it is available in different forms. The type of approach to regulation differs with each country/state. Here are the three categories – Active, Passive and restrictive.

Globally to protect customers regulation has been adopted. While in India Reserve Bank of India [RBI] stresses the need to bring fintech under the radar, to strike a balance between innovation and risk.

In Taiwan with the Act on Financial Technology Innovations and Experiments turning into law, they can offer up a sandbox that takes up the origin. With the sandbox in place, fintech start-ups would be offered 18-36 months to roll-out their products. As stated by Taipei Times Taiwanese firms that gain a nod from the Financial Supervisory Commission can skirt some regulations – though decidedly not the Money Laundering Control Act or legislation tied to hacking.

Fintech and Banks – Merger or Competition?

The never-ending debate between two entities struggling to save their customer base. While banks have the trust, fintech has technology/innovation. While being on fintech side you may know, it’s not entities who would survive but “Banking” that would stay forever. And whoever could lure its customer with seamless, user-friendly and innovative banking solutions would win.

With customer being the King of the arena, he gets to decide the winner. Maybe the internet-savvy millennials chose the fintech portals to fit into their lifestyle. The traditional individuals still rely on old methods of availing banking by visiting a bank branch. However, there is another audience that is yet untouched by this war – the unbanked, and they could only be brought into the mainstream with the handshake of technology and banking,i.e. handshake of fintech and banks.

So, is it a war? Or a need to collaborate? Who would acustomer choose?

Only time can tell…However, if you are interested to know more about Digital banking, Fintech, banks Merger or Conquer read our detailed post – DIGITAL BANKING – WOULD IT LEAD THE BANKS AND FINTECH TO MERGE OR CONQUER And BANK – FINTECH MERGER IMPORTANCE AND REPERCUSSIONS

Fintech – Social Cause or Profit Games?

Is fintech all about profit? Do fintech startups only care about business need? Or is there a way to strike a balance between both profitability and social impact?

While running a business is an opportunity it also comes with a responsibility of infusing change [for good]. You might be in lengthy discussion during an event, or a talk show is stating how convenience, lean methodology, risk-management, automation, user experience, operational efficiency, new architectures, consumer behavior, and a range of disruptive technologies like IoTs, the blockchain, VR, artificial intelligence, emerging platforms, are essential.

But in the midst of all this, could it help in sustainable development or bring a social change? As per a report by UNEP on Fintech and Sustainable Development questions some of the basic “how” that could help in bringing sustainable development like –

How can we unlock much higher financial inclusion at a reasonable cost?
How can we mobilize domestic savings at scale to enable long-term investment?
How to better provide effective and efficient financial markets?
How can we best collect, analyze and distribute financial system and real economy information?
How to best remove barriers to scaling an innovation portfolio?

In short, fintech Start-ups have avital role to play in representing the real potentials of disruption, as they have no legacy or business model to defend or no revenues.And that’s what Vishal, CEO Teknospire thinks as a trend for the year2018, in an interview he mentioned that Financial Inclusion would be the inclination for the year ahead. It’s all about the bottom two million people that need Banking.

Fintech firms are transforming customer’s lives with the emerging technologies. While technologies each year may be replaced, what remains is the long-term vision of fintech – Banking and customer centric services.

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