EXCLUSIVE: FintechOS Leap 2021 – Leading The Future Of Digital Banking and Insurance

FintechOS Leap is the annual digital banking and insurance summit for those on the forefront of the industry. ‘Leap’ truly defines their mission of helping organizations into the next generation, and with several perceptive talks held regarding the future of financial services, the event generated some big talking points. With over 45 speakers, 30 sessions and sponsors including Microsoft, Mastercard, EY and other global leaders, let’s discuss some exciting news from the event!

What Does The Future Of Financial Services Look Like? – The opening talk of the summit, led by CEO of FintechOS, Teodor Blidarus, evaluated the changing rules of the financial game. Out of $1.3 trillion invested into digital transformation programmes in 2019, $900 billion was wasted due. How far have we actually come? The pandemic has increased both pressure and spending on the digitization of financial services, which has accelerated improvements. With this, a new financial services trend has emerged; ambient financial services.

Solutions that are faded into the background of individuals’ lives is the future. From Amazon with Alexa, to Paypal rumoured to buying Pinterest, embedded finance only strengthens with super apps, De-Fi, parametric insurance, robo advisors and so on. Stronger neo players emerge and with this, co-opetition and coexistence are now becoming mainstream, as smart incumbent organisations are shifting towards ancillary services stream in their quest to stay relevant. Reshaping customer experiences, building new innovative business lines and building better core processes are at the heart of the struggle for financial services right now.

A Community of Makers – Vitor Barros, Head of Platform Evangelism at FintechOS, analysed how a highly productive financial infrastructure with a co-innovation mindset would pave the way for further progress.

Barros commented that ‘it’s not about the technology, It’s about the people and how they use it. A community is stronger than the individual, and so a community of communities will be stronger than a single one.’ By employing this valuable mindset, Fintech OS and their marketplace hopes to achieve financial solutions much more efficiently and harmoniously than ever before. Powerfully, Barros concluded; ‘Most of the financial innovation to be stellar already exists. It’s how you access it which is the key.’ Thus, collaboration, interdependence and genuine community building can create meaningful financial change.

Success stories – FintechOS also offered impressive examples of their work in action. These included:

• Gathered $80million in its Series B Funding this April, typifying the prospects of global expansion.
• The launch of Lighthouse and NorthStar, core insurance offerings which allow partners to build industry solutions very effectively.
• Rapid company growth to a 375+ people operation, encouraging internal innovation
• 1 in 2 customers choosing to deploy FintechOS or a FintechOS cloud, powered by Microsoft Azure.

Partnering with FintechOS is filled with exciting opportunities; product innovation stands as one of the clear motivators. Alongside this, more than 50 banks and insurance customers put their trust in FintechOS despite only being 4 years old. The customer momentum is clearly strong, and the partner-aligned business model shows active, sound commitment to partner success in the future.

The success of BRD Group Société Générale, a Romanian based European leader in financial services for over 150 years, in partnership with FintechOS was also highlighted. Maja Mikic, Executive Director for Digital Transformation, and Florin Boldescu, Chief Digital Officer, shared their experiences here. Mikic noted that there was a clear opportunity in the market facilitated by COVID to digitise easy processes for the customer that were also minimally burdensome for banks. With FintechOS, BRD was able to deliver their projects from no platform for digital lending to a fully operational one in only 26 weeks, a remarkable achievement. Not only this, the duration of the customer experience to open their relation with BRD only takes between 15-20 minutes which is something rather exceptional for a traditional bank given the numerous identification processes that are required. Boldescu commented more philosophically on the partnership, highlighting how it is powerful for creating ‘a new generation of builders.’

What Are The Top Technology Trends For Retail Banking In 2022? – Everybody is diversifying their transformative technology toolkit, but how will retail banks predominantly look to shape up next year? Zilvinas Bareisis, Head of Retail Banking at Celent, led this concluding discussion of the summit.

5 key themes emerged in this area of thinking:

Optimizing Customer Engagement and Delivery; this involves continuing with improvements in digital account opening and servicing. Despite some progress, banks still struggle to complement digital channels with human assistance, according to 51% of surveyors in recent Celent Findings.

Embracing Disruptive Imperatives in Payments and Lending; this involves differentiating through card experiences and deciding on whether BNPL is a hype or hope.

Taking an Ecosystem Approach to Growth; this involves deciding how to commercialise Open Banking and considering the threats that come with this, embedded finance and other open ecosystem strategies. This path depends on key operational efficiency, customer engagement and, eventually, direct monetization.

Driving Product Innovation and Differentiation; this involves deciding what ‘purpose’ means to individuals and their representative firms, as well as finding the ‘white spaces’ to develop offerings tailored to specific communities. Risks in cryptocurrency emerge here, which were previously seen as a threat, but now seen as an opportunity alongside revolutionary blockchain advancements.

Diversifying Technology Transformation Toolkit; this involves considering the use of low/no-code platforms and building on top of increasingly verticalised cloud services. This has been exemplified as a successful path already by the likes of Goldman Sachs with Amazon Web Services. Banks will look to provide services less inclined to that of a bank, and in doing so will become a better bank.

With such fascinating insights delivered through the entirety of the day, it will be exciting to watch how the banking and insurance space unfolds in the coming year, and how accurate the forecasts and predictions for the space made during this fascinating summit will reveal to be.