Paul Blowers, Commercial Director at Future Processing
As another year passes, now is the time for company leaders to look back at the last 12 months and consider what’s in store for their FinTech businesses in 2023. One of the biggest impacts of last year was undoubtedly the cost of living crisis and increasing interest rates, leading to UK FinTech investment dropping to $9.6 billion in the first half of 2022 – down from $27.8 billion in the same period in 2021. Whilst these challenges remain at the forefront of the industry, there are plenty of innovative developments and technologies evolving in the FinTech space right now that will continue the pace of change. It’s vital for organisations to keep abreast of these trends, to ensure they can remain competitive and continue providing customers with the highest quality products and services.
Innovations in FinTech
In recent years, we have seen larger banks begin to invest more heavily in BaaS (banking as a service). BaaS is a start-to-finish process that digital banks and third parties use to connect their own business infrastructure to a bank’s system via APIs. This allows digital banks or third parties to offer full-banking services directly through their non-bank business offerings. Typically, BaaS is associated with smaller banks due to the favourable interchange rates under $10 billion (in assets) that these banks have. With a bigger focus on commercial BaaS efforts, we can predict seeing more vertical partnerships with SaaS providers who already have existing relationships with businesses.
An alternative to providing BaaS is to pursue an embedded FinTech strategy. Embedded FinTech refers to the integration of FinTech products and services into financial institutions’ websites, mobile apps, and business processes. This has been growing at pace since the COVID pandemic and is expected to continue on its upward trajectory, accelerating eCommerce, financial digitalisation and consumer expectations. As a result, we can expect that more platforms will be diversifying their service offerings as they deepen their relationships with small business customers.
Another topic that has been circulating in the FinTech sector is the intervention of AI and chatbots. 2023 is set to be the year that this technology fully takes off and integrates with mainstream banks and FinTech. Chatbots can be defined as rule-based systems which can perform routine tasks with general FAQs. The primary goal of these AI-drive chatbots is to provide human-like support for customers, communicating with them, introducing services, answering their questions and receiving any complaints.
Software Development for FinTechs
As banks continue to invest in new technologies and leverage the benefits of adopting BaaS, embedded finance and AI, the focus on software development services also increases. Software is at the heart of every FinTech business, as each product or service demands a high-quality implementation, from both existing and potential customers. One of the biggest expectations is around user experience, as FinTech leaders aim to provide a straightforward, transparent and concise solution to their customer’s business problems. Additionally, security can not be underestimated with the FinTech industry under constant risk of cyberattacks and breaches. With exceptional software development, FinTech solutions can both comply with strict security and data encryption standards, whilst offering a polished and streamlined user experience for customers.
The finance industry also comes up against a constant stream of industry regulations, meaning a compliance strategy must be a priority for FinTech’s when considering their software development approach. This links to checking and implementing updates for frameworks and software architectures regularly to ensure app responsiveness, security and performance remain at the forefront. Ultimately, great software increases a FinTech’s opportunity to leverage emerging technologies and keep control over the quality of its service. Timely identification of key trends makes it possible to maximise the digitalisation of finance to drive long-term value for FinTech businesses and their customers.
The Future of FinTech
Whilst technological developments have been major drivers of FinTech innovation, now is the time to further digitise financial services and the banking sector to build a more inclusive and efficient industry that promotes economic growth. FinTech’s are stepping up to lead, navigate and disrupt the industry during this time of uncertainty, and software development will play a vital role in shaping the future landscape. With the help of software development, FinTech’s will build capabilities and applications that can be easily integrated into the environments where customers are already engaged, meeting their changing needs, new business goals and regulatory demands.
