Future of Fintech post COVID-19

The fintech space has been always driven by continually evolving consumer expectations and complicated challenges that come with it. This particular trait of the fintech space is what accelerated the adoption of fintech in the pandemic. But what will be the future of fintech post-COVID-19? How will the fintech industry evolve to survive in the post-pandemic digital world?

How will the fintech industry evolve post-COVID-19?

COVID-19 is accelerating the consumer trend towards technology reliance. This scenario is likely to continue in the post-pandemic world as the digital transformation will be an even bigger imperative for organizations in the future. This is particularly true in the financial industry. Recent research (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fintech-industry-report-2020-2025—trends-developments-and-growth-deviations-arising-from-the-covid-19-pandemic-301080282.html) by Research and Markets shows that the global fintech market is expected to witness progressive growth and reach the market value of around $305 billion by 2025. These figures clearly show that the future of fintech post-COVID-19 is bright. 

Technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), and blockchain are all set to play a bigger role in shaping the fintech industry post-COVID-19. But as the current crisis has just fast-tracked digital innovation efforts in the financial sector there are a few underlying services that are extremely crucial in the operations of Fintech companies in the current Covid-19 and post Covid-19 situation. They are: 

Digital workspace

Right now, the home office is the ‘new normal’, and experts predict that work from home is here to stay. A Gartner CFO Survey (https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2)  revealed that 74% of CFOs intend to shift at least 5% of employees to remote work permanently. But remote workspace comes with its own set of challenges. Work from home means that the employees are multitasking at a much greater level, logging into several applications on multiple devices for work. Some of these applications might not be optimized for mobile use while others might not be intended for multitasking. There is also another complication of collaboration between employees that severely affect their work experience as well as the organization’s productivity. Then, there is this huge complication of delay in data transmission. Seamless availability of data to employees via intranet/ extranet is crucial for getting the job done quickly without wreaking havoc in the operations. This is where Digital workplace planning comes into play. Innovators like Intone Networks help businesses including the fintech industry enable sharing, management, communication, collaboration, governance, and controls to achieve higher overall business performance with their digital workplace planning services.

Cloud adoption

The future of Financial Institutions (FIs) will look very different from today. These financial institutions will have to face challenging customer expectations, emerging technologies, and alternative business models. This is why FIs need to ensure their continued viability in this new competitive and digitally advanced landscape through cloud adoption. Soon, all the fintech companies must have to migrate their current applications to the cloud and make sure they are secure and accessible to consumers via multiple platforms. Cloud adoption supports these goals and brings in more efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and numerous other advantages to the financial institutions. Cloud adoption also gives FIs the ability to respond quickly to the changing market as they can scale up and down according to their needs. Cloud technology is transforming the banking and finance industry with more flexible and agile business models for growing needs in this digital world. So, the fintech companies must either enable their current environment to cloud or develop native cloud applications to give their consumers a great experience and to improve their business processes.

Continuous control monitoring 

Most companies including fintech companies have an internal process and access control systems managed and audited manually, which brings a list of complications like frauds, security threats, and complexities while filing the SEC reports, etc. Thus the need for automating the manual controls so that a real-time or near real-time continuous monitoring can be done to detect and prevent irregularities from occurring. The automation and digitalization of the audit control process become a pressing need of the hour due to the current pandemic situation as digital/virtual workspace becomes “new normal”. The internal and external audit teams will now prefer a virtual audit. A platform like IntoneCCM (iCCM) enables the businesses to reconfigure the manual controls to automate their internal SOX controls / ITGC Controls and test and monitor continuously that will streamline the internal and external audit review process. iCCM further enables more timely oversight of compliance across the enterprise and provides improved efficiency through automation. This will in turn help the management to operationalize the overall risk management.

Cybersecurity 

Covid-19 is certainly accelerating the digital transformation in fintech space, completely changing the consumer and business behavior. But all these rapid, digitalization across all the business processes brings in the inevitable risk of increased cyberattacks. Cybercrime has increased during these tough times and cyber attackers have successfully breached major entities, including top government agencies like The World Health Organization (WHO) and US defense agency. According to the third global threat report by VMware Carbon, there is an enormous spike in cyberattacks like phishing attacks, Malspams, and ransomware attacks during the coronavirus period. This study also found that 85% of chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers (CTOs), and chief information security officers (CISOs) felt that their workforce had not been properly equipped to work from home, with 28% citing “severe and significant gaps” insecurity. This is why it is important to protect an organization’s entire value chain from the inside out. Global cybersecurity leaders like Intone Networks collaborate with businesses to deliver a focused, risk-based security strategy that delivers the best defense system that helps them face this digital future. 

High-grade risk management, enhanced security, improved customer service & business efficiency would be the focus of fintech industries post-COVID-19. Only those fintech start-ups and established organizations that readily embrace these innovations and technologies will rise to the occasion to become market leaders in the post-COVID-19 economy.