Till around a few years back, before we adopted digital technology on a mass scale, financial discussions were restricted to those who had a formal education. Financial institutions were extremely scared of connecting to the rest of the world. There were also days when we saw banks have a separate computer to access email, out of the local area network which had the ‘work’ computers.

But the world seems to be changing rapidly, and it is also having its impact on the financial industry, with Fintech companies encroaching into the space of Finserv.

For those who are not clear about the two terms, Finserv is an abbreviation for the traditional financial companies which offered us financial services. These would include our banks, NBFCs, insurance, stock/commodity/mutual fund traders, etc. FinTech, on the other hand, is an abbreviation for “financial technology”, used for companies that leverage technology to provide financial services. These are normally the new technology start-ups operating in the financial space.

While it seems deductive that Fintech companies will chalk the future of finance, I feel that Finserv will also transform itself through the adoption of new technology, helping the consumer with easy access to cost-effective services.

The second buzz that we find around us is Artificial Intelligence and personalization. In today’s world, we expect organizations to know us well, through our past behavioral patterns, and offer us solutions that suit needs specific to us. With the trend of shrinking available time, customers are hardly ready to wait. They seek real-time and proactive financial experiences from the financial institution they approach. Traditional approaches towards customer management will not be of much help for more days to come.

To get hyper-personalized services, even the customers are willing to share personal data, as long as they get the confidence that their specific details will not be misused or sold elsewhere.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based solutions are available to collect consumer interaction data, demographical information, and normal usage patterns to provide hyper-personalized experiences that go much beyond just seeking and answering questions. Nowadays customers need financial institutions to anticipate their needs and provide them with relevant and holistic guidance, even when their query is totally on a separate track. After all, finance is a matter that touches upon every aspect of our daily lives and our decisions should take them all into account.

Recently I came across an article that stated that IDC has predicted that, by 2026, 85% of organizations will use AI and ML in some capacity or other, to augment their foresight, resulting in a 25% increase in productivity. This space will be interesting to watch.

With all this happening around us, a traditional aspect that keeps constantly ramping up and getting modernized is that of information security. Without proper cyber and data security measures in place, consumer trust in such a rapid progression of technology may hit a major setback. Let us hope that we do not see such a day.

Another important topic that seems relevant here is that of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain. But let’s park that for another day.