Technology has always been a key enabler for the financial services (FS) industry and has played an integral role in building internal efficiencies, enabling innovations in product design and significantly improving customer experience. The impact of technology on this industry, however, has seen a distinct shift—from enabler to positive disrupter.
The rate of change and evolution of technology have reached unprecedented levels. In 2016, PwC published the ‘Tech breakthroughs megatrend’ report that covered the eight breakthrough technologies that were set to redefine business models across industries.1 Eighteen months since then, five of these eight technologies have already embroidered themselves into the FS fabric.
The importance of matching this high speed of technology proliferation is becoming more apparent to organisation leaders across industries and geographies. Particularly in FS, CEOs of top players across the globe acknowledge the need for staying abreast with the speed of technological change, as well as investing sufficiently in technologies that safeguard the industry from the cyberthreats that come with such high-speed technology adoption:
Apart from designing new revenue streams, today, FS players are also expanding their core customer services. An integrated view of all these services will be the key differentiator to truly understand customers and meet their needs and desires in a contextual and timely manner. Designing the architecture to allow for seamless integrations and collaborations while simultaneously facilitating ease in data flow and analytical insights is what FS organisations are looking at.
The following sections explore ‘next in tech’ trends that are reshaping models and streams across the different FS sectors, and identify new opportunities for industry growth and customer delight.
1PwC. (2016). Tech breakthroughs megatrend. Retrieved from https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/technology/tech-breakthroughs-megatrend.html (last accessed on 9 May 2018)