Perspectives: Digital

While the trajectory of ‘digitization’ in financial services is encouraging, there is still significant demand from customers to expand and evolve their digital experience.

Not unlike a piece of software, retail banking can be portrayed as a stack comprised of 3 layers, where the complexity of each services can be abstracted into discrete segments and end products.

Following the financial crisis in 2008, Fintech startups gained a lot of prominence globally as consumers started to look for alternatives to traditional banking methods. These startups have penetrated every service area of consumer retail banking with the goal of dis-intermediating banks and becoming the new leaders of the financial services industry.

Amidst a boom in insurance business, Asian consumers remain largely underinsured.

One of the largest and fastest growing wealth segments, the Asian mass affluent, is projected to hold $43.3 trillion in assets by 2020, yet only 20% of all wealth in Asia is tapped by the wealth management industry.

The Indian life insurance market is the fifth largest in the world.  Although the per capita premium remains lower than in other emerging markets, the size and growth of India’s working class remains one of the largest globally, presenting enormous opportunity for life insurance companies to expand into and within the Indian market.

Smart contacts offer the potential to facilitate or fully automate processes that are heavily paper-based today, particularly long-winded, expensive legal processes.

As cryptocurrencies and their underlying ledger system gain momentum, many financial institutions are trying to determine how to best be part of this revolution. In particular, they want to know how best to update their existing IT architectures and operations to capitalize on this new technology.

As global firms respond to the post-Great Recession regulatory and economic realities, efficiency of the back-office has become critical to ongoing success.

Driven by data security concerns, a majority of financial institutions are now looking at so-called private or hybrid blockchains, rather than fully decentralized public blockchains (like the blockchain used for Bitcoin)

Over time, many firms realize that they have become so reliant on vendors/contractor for critical knowledge on key applications, that they have, in fact, ceded control of those applications to the vendors.

One question seldom asked is “how do I put my (IT infrastructure) customers on a diet?” The demand side is often assumed as a given, and there is with little assessment of (over-) consumption by applications.

Procurement often involves multiple disparate stakeholders, systems and protocol. This complexity results in increased reliance on inefficient sourcing processes and only partially takes advantage of all the benefits available from supplier competition.

With the digitization of almost every element of the procurement process, large organizations are accumulating vast stores of data regarding their spending habits. Owing to its complex nature however, senior leadership is often at a loss when it comes time to mine this data and enact structural change based on the insight it provides.

While firms have found tremendous success in using these loyalty metrics to successfully grow customer relationships, they are lagging indicators and provide little help in providing immediate insight into whether or not improvements and initiatives are moving the needle. 

Credit has seen its fair share of ups and downs, from being the crux of financial services, to commoditization and mass distribution, to now being re-engineered. In the realm of Wholesale Credit, a revolution is underway.

For some, Insurance might seem a monolithic industry, but for the ones keeping a close eye on it- Insurance is revamping itself faster than ever!
From days when underwriting a simple policy would take weeks and months, to now when it can be done in seconds with a simple ‘selfie’ - there seem to be no bounds in the future of this industry.

We are on the cusp of a revolution within financial services that will have far-reaching ramifications for the +1 billion unbanked, current models of financial intermediation across entities and borders, and ultimately the very nature of how end-consumers understand financial health. As this understanding held by customers evolves, so too must the operations, services, and visions of providers.

As large lenders fumble & face criticism for their handling of the $350 BN in forgivable SBA-backed loans, here's our perspective on what regional banks & fintechs can do right now to compete & capture value.

Now that Business As Usual is unusual, leaders are forced to re-imagine business models and build ‘winning strategies’ - to not only survive the pandemic but also emerge as successful change-makers, shaping an altered business reality.

Cities are at a standstill, but they are bound to get moving again. Urban mobility will never be the same, and contactless payments will shape the new normal. Trends are shifting, preferences are being broken, and opportunities abound!

Before the Covid-19 inducted recession, the wealth tech sector was already experiencing a slowdown - both in the number of new startups and total capital raised. Now more than ever, investors and operators must be bold in re-inventing their Firm's long-term value proposition.