2016 is the year you need to stop saying,“How did we miss that?!” and instead begin taking part of the merger between digital tech and finance. To do this successfully, I think you have to pay greater attention to human behavior.
After identifying what clients truly want from their mobile experience, the advancements in technology will be able to finally deliver it. Most importantly, it will bring those new ways of investing with security and privacy – and on mobile. One of the biggest challenges finance companies have right now, however, is keeping up within regulations set forth by the governments. These regulations have a lot to do with security and privacy within the country and internationally. This is one reason many finance companies are considering blockchain technology. With this, they are able to create infrastructures that will be much less susceptible to hackers and other issues that can hurt customers financially.
All in all, blockchain is a sort of distributed consensus system, where no one person controls all the data. Its the technology behind Bitcoin, but everyone agrees that Bitcoin probably isn’t the blockchain’s killer app. The cryptography team at Blockstream recently launched its first prototype “sidechain,” which functions as a separate ledger with its own code. Sidechains allow for easier authentication. Blockstream and the sidechain projects that follow will turn the blockchain into a universal platform that can be used for anything requiring signatures or authentication. This alone will disrupt entire industries.
As a consequence, RegTech arrived. While the term is new, the marriage of technology and regulation has been created in order to address these regulatory challenges. Increasing levels of regulation and a greater focus on data and reporting has brought the RegTech offering into greater focus, thereby creating more value for the companies that invest in them.
While the challenges are there, there’s no doubt they will be able overcome them as more and more financial institutions partner to bring fintech to everyone. They need to come up with the infrastructure and processes needed to make technological changes successful. Connectivity, simplification and personalization need to be the forefront of the innovations that affects people’s finances, and that can only be achieved with the help of many organizations working together.
A surge in consumer-appetite for online investment research information and interactive tools, will be the biggest driver. The combined passions consumers have for finances and technology is clearly undeniable. They demand to be better informed and are manifesting this desire by engaging directly with online tools and indeed with social media as well.
Finance has become a realtime environment at any level. As a consequence, this will ultimately also influence large institutional investors in the coming years.
It will be an exciting year!
