Back to blog 
Fintech focuses on managing financial operations and processes via special software and computer-based instructions on either computers or smartphones with latter being more popular.
Fintech has seen major growth in the past few years, and the trend continues to grow in 2020. More and more businesses and individuals switch to running their daily routine remotely, involving less assistance.
Money transfers, fundraising, loans, and investments to name a few have become fintech services that can be managed without assistance.
Fintech trends keep changing year by year. 2019 featured the following financial trends: Lending (marketplace lending), blockchain/crypto (blockchain technologies for financial services), regtech (regulatory compliance software), personal finance (managing bills and personal credit accounts), payments/billing (payments processing and billing software tools), insurance (digital insurance and data analysis), capital markets (sales and trading, infrastructure tools), wealth management (investment and wealth management platforms), money transfers (international money transfers and tracking software), mortgage/estate (mortgage lending and financial platforms).
Partially, some of fintech trends from 2019 rolled into 2020. Here we collected the key fintech trends 2020 that are worth looking into.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial intelligence is one of the areas that has seen major investments in 2018 with a view to continue the tendency for development. While chatbots have been in use for quite some time, 2020 introduces more sophisticated AI voice-operated chatbots that are able to recognise languages, analyse customer activity and predict questions. This has shown huge progress in the customer service, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and reduced labour costs.
AI chatbots are able to solve multiple questions and tasks – from receiving market updates and calculating loan interest to detecting fraudulent actions or redirecting customers to relevant staff members.
Digital Banks and Cryptocurrency
Digital banks gain popularity among younger generation of customers and are likely to take over traditional bank visits by 2022. The customers value the comfort of solving their banking needs from home or on the go without paying a visit to their bank branch. All transactions can be now performed from digital banks websites and mobile applications.
Revolut and Facebook’s cryptocurrency payments system are great examples of this trend. Trading software development is another area many companies have shown their interest.
Cashless Payments
The trend of choosing digital payments over cash keeps expanding. Extensive use of smartphones and internet encourages customers to go cashless. Within the framework of reducing fraud, governments of several countries have implemented programmes that seized circulation of big denomination bills. These measures have additionally stimulated wider use of cashless payments.
Open Banking
Open banking is a practice that provides access to financial data from banks and financial institutions to third-party financial service providers. Using API (application programming interface), the financial service providers get access and control of consumer banking and financial accounts. While open banking offers room for innovation and development of the banking sector, it, at the same time, increases security risks incurred due to sharing of sensitive data.
Insurtech
Insurtech is another fintech trend that seeks to reshape the approach the insurance industry works. As one of the oldest financial services, insurance industry is subject to rigid regulations and is predominantly in the hands of big players that have been in the market for a long time. Insurtech, however, is the technology that increases efficiency to the existing insurance model. Using artificial intelligence and data analysis, it can offer more competitive and accurate rates to customers based on each individual case.
Blockchain Technology
Distributed ledger technology is the system that lies behind blockchain. It offers stronger data protection, real-time data updating, and reduced paperwork. Going a few years back, blockchain was predominantly used in the financial sector. Blockchain is the system that controls cryptocurrency. While we have all witnessed Bitcoin frenzy in the last years, blockchain technology has significantly expanded onto many other industries like technology, media, telecom, energy and resources, manufacturing, life sciences and heath care, consumer products etc.
Regulatory Technology (Regtech)
Regulatory technology is a widely discussed fintech trend of 2020. Regtech is the technology that helps financial companies comply with the regulatory requirements. Since financial sector is one of the most rigidly controlled industries, financial firms face the need to identify whether their development strategies will be possible to implement considering the existing and the upcoming regulations.
Robo-Advisors
Robo-advisors are digital platforms that provide automated, algorithm-driven investment services with very little to no human supervision. Robo-advisors process data obtained from client surveys to offer investment opportunities or financial advice. Robo-advisors is a cost effective solution, which explains why so many people can benefit from it.
Cybersecurity
With increased digitalisation, financial services face incrementally increased risks and threats. Therefore, security processes continue undergoing serious improvements to withstand the cyber attacks. Among the most common cyber treats of 2020 are ransomware, data protection, phishing attacks and mobile malware attacks.
It is hard to underestimate the importance of financial sector development. These days it has huge impact on corporations as well as individual customers. Therefore, staying tuned with the fintech trends will help you improve, develop, attract new customers to your business, and stay competitive in the market. We are experiencing great shift in financial services ecosystem. Technology has never been so close and so exciting.
Back to blog