FINANCE PREDICTIONS FOR 2021

By Dr Vic Arulchandran, CPO at Nivaura

 

The year 2020 saw many technology trends accelerated due to the global pandemic. Now that we’ve seen many organisations adopt digitised processes, this momentum shows no sign of slowing. Two predictions that I think gained momentum in 2020, but will come to fruition in 2021, are the adoption of low-code tools and the digitalisation of capital markets.

 

The low-code / no-code movement has been gradually gaining momentum behind the scenes for the past couple of years. 2020 was the year we saw it really step into the spotlight, when demand for digital products dramatically accelerated due to COVID-19. Organisations that already utilised low-code platforms found themselves in a far better position to efficiently digitalise and automate service offerings and operations than competitors who had not yet embraced low-code. Indeed, Forrester has predicted that by the end of 2021, 75% of application development will use low-code platforms, up from 44% in 2020.

 

What we’ll see in 2021 is a wave of new entrepreneurs. By this, I mean we’ll see founders who are not developers creating their own applications. Low-code platforms make services and applications available, so that any eager entrepreneur can put together services to create an entirely new offering.

 

Dr Vic Arulchandran

There are three main reasons why tech-savvy entrepreneurs will leverage this trend. Firstly, low-code tools are like building blocks, they are easy to put together to create applications. This also means that parts can be added or taken away with the click of a button if necessary. Compared to code, where parts would need to be modified or completely rewritten in the event of proposed changes to the end product, this is far more efficient. Secondly, because of their building block nature it means that entrepreneurs do not have to become specialist programmers to create their own products and apps. This also removes restrictions on developers who are skilled in some coding languages but less so in others. Finally, they also present the opportunity to automate certain tasks that are time consuming and repetitive. Some organisations have already begun to tackle this using machine learning and RPA.

 

Separately, while many sectors have embraced digitisation, financial services in particular, primary capital markets workflows have remained largely unchanged. They are the final frontier for digital evolution in the financial industry. In 2021, this will change. Many projects are already underway, developing artificial intelligence implementations and use cases for dramatically reducing the time and human capital required for activities such as bond issuance, as well as the risk level associated with human intervention in transactions.

 

Today, capital markets workflows generally remain overly complicated, with high manual touchpoints in the issuance process causing issues further downstream in unstructured data flows and post-trade errors. Developing dynamic workflow tools that employ low code / no code principles and utilise AI will have huge benefits for primary markets, not only enabling the generation of deeper insights and delivering increased efficiency to a multitude of tasks, but ultimately democratising access to liquidity.

 

This extends to many other sectors too, including healthcare – where AI will be used to assist with diagnostics and procedures, sales – through AI recommendations and chatbots, and entertainment – gaming uses AI to create human-like challenging opponents that dynamically adjust to the environment and the user skill level.

 

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