Keeper Solutions’ Key Learnings and Takeaways from Fintech South
In June, Keeper Solutions attended Fintech South in support of Enterprise Ireland USA. Fintech South 2021 is a world-class virtual summit with its nexus in Atlanta, Georgia. The 3-day event, which took place between the 22nd and the 24th, attracted more than 2,000 fintech leaders from around the world. There were over 300 speakers representing the top companies in fintech globally, providing insights on the most important industry trends.
Over the course of the three days there were some incredible discussions and keynote talks from top fintech executives including representatives from Blackrock, Cardlytics, Deluxe, Equifax, Fiserv, Invesco, Kabbage, Mastercard, NCR, Panoramic Ventures, PayPal, ArtisAI and Truist. Special guests also included recording artist and investor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Pindrop Security and Panoramic Ventures co-founder Dr. Paul Judge, and two-time NBA all-star Baron Davis.
Keeper Solutions joined the event as an active member of the Atlanta fintech community. Our objective in attending was to keep up-to-date with the latest fintech developments and to meet with community members.
The Growing Fintech Industry in Atlanta, Georgia
The Fintech sector in Atlanta is thriving as a global financial technology hub. The city is home to more than 170 fintech companies. In the wider state of Georgia, the top 15 public fintech companies alone generate more than $100 billion in revenues. With the burgeoning fintech industry, it is no wonder that Atlanta becomes the “centre of the fintech universe” for these three days in June!
Keeper Solutions is honoured to work with several incredible organisations in the region. Keeper has provided a number of leading Atlanta-based fintech start-ups and scaling tech firms with a platform for design and product development. This includes such companies as ArtisAI, LobbyCRE, Rivetlabs and AppVault.
5 Key Learnings from Fintech South
In 2021, Fintech South was transformed into a wholly online event. While we would have liked to attend in-person, we were delighted to partake in the event and learn more about the latest trends, insights and developments in the fintech industry.
Below are some of our key learnings and takeaways from the event.
1. Digital Transformation is Well Under Way in the Financial Services Industry
Digital transformation is well underway in the financial services industry. But, while there has been significant progress, there is still a long way to go. 78% of financial services firms are engaged in some form of digital transformation. This is no surprise as the financial sector has always been open to digital disruption.
However, currently only 17% of workflow in US financial services is fully digitally enabled. This discrepancy shows us that there is still a huge amount of work to be done to digitize the customer journey.
2. Build a Digital Brand That is Cloud-Native
Traditional financial services providers should create cloud-native brands for their customers to engage with. This was the point raised by Brian Lanehart of ArtisAi during one of the breakout sessions on ‘Cloud in Banking Platforms’.
“No bank is in a build or buy situation any more. It’s a straight partner situation; They must be native to the cloud or they won’t be able to deploy to the innovation fast enough”. Lanehart went on to suggest that by creating digital brands upfront, financial services firms can reap the rewards sooner rather than later.
3. Acceleration Towards the Cloud
Traditional financial services firms should engage with cloud-native partners to accelerate the delivery of digital services. Typically it is a faster, easier route to market to create greenfield capabilities via partnerships rather. This is in contrast to the often more drawn out change management initiatives that are used to modernize legacy technology silos.
Time-to-market is key to success. Companies within the fintech sector should evaluate strategic partnerships in terms of how they can reduce their time to market.
4. COVID-19 Driving Digital-Only Banking
Being a digital-first bank means that you’ve made a strategic commitment to deliver products and services across multiple channels with a primary focus on digital services. Channels here can include web, mobile, SMS, social media, and physical locations. Digital-only banks, on the other hand, operate without branches, offering financial services through mobile phones, tablets and other devices.
Most agree that the move to digital-only banking was inevitable but COVID-19 has accelerated the trend significantly. In fact, recent BAI Banking Outlook research shows that since the pandemic began, digital capabilities have been greatly demystified.
“Since the pandemic, 43% of consumers report doing all of their banking digitally and 24% have increased digital banking usage. Nearly all customers (84%) say they plan to maintain the same level of digital usage once in-person banking resumes.”
As this trend grows, customers will expect a certain standard of digital maturity from banks. Fintechs need to focus on the needs of the customer and design their services with customer behaviour and expectations in mind.
5. Millennials And Gen Z Are Key Drivers of Change in the Banking Industry
Millennials and Gen Z are now the largest generational demographics in the U.S, making up approximately 42.43% of the population. This is significant as individuals from this generation have grown up in an age of digital-first service delivery. For financial institutions that are already operating in a digital-as-default environment, millennials and Gen Z are further stoking the flames of digital transformation.
From a design perspective, the advice we kept hearing throughout the conference was to understand your customers and their needs and design your service accordingly. This was a sentiment shared by Michael Giorgio, CTO of Kraken Bank.
But one of the key takeaways of the entire event was to build for change. Solutions should create value but they should also be flexible and adaptable. The financial sector is going through a great period of transformation and upheaval. Services and solutions should be future-proofed with the flexibility and adaptability to react to the ever-evolving needs of a digital-first generation.
