5 Fintech trends to look out for in 2021

Innovation has been steadily ramping up across the financial industry, with trends like the API economy, digitization and collaboration proving fundamental to brand preservation and growth. You’ve likely heard one or more of these buzzwords already, and with the advent of the pandemic, these trends have been further accelerated. TRIYO’s leading workplace collaboration toolkit is squarely based on the concept of the API economy – we believe the latter is core to sustainable growth. Here are 5 key fintech trends we believe will gain increasing traction under its construct: 1. A widespread shift to Digital 2. Remote workplace tools: here to stay 3. Communication and collaboration: quantifying the efficiencies 4. Harnessing AI 5. Multi-product fatigue Digital transformation is a term that has commanded increasing attention these past few years. We believe that by the end of 2021, a digital presence will be a necessity for virtually (see what we did there?) every business. If your product/service is not accessible online, your business is inevitably going to decline. The Economist shared an interesting graphic that details the growing market share grab of fintech entrants at the expense of incumbent banks and payment firms: As of 2019, 87% of companies have already begun their digital transformation journey, with finance and transportation companies most advanced in their strategies. To quote John Hagel III, Co-Chairman at Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, “Most of the executives I talk to are still very much focused on digital largely as a way to do “more of the same,” just more efficiently, quickly, cost-effectively.” However, there is still ground to cover. We believe that the financial services sector will continue to mandate and execute a strong digital presence, focusing on technologies that create operational efficiencies, and track, measure and respond to key shifts in consumer behavior. TRIYO digitizes hitherto manual or semi-manual processes, unlocking significant operational efficiencies. Covid-19 has accelerated the trend towards remote workplaces, with companies like Shopify embracing this path even past the pandemic. In a study done by Buffer.com, 99% of the interviewees reported that they would like, at least once in their career, to be able to work off-site. Flexible work programs are rapidly becoming an incentive to attract new employees. With so many workplace interactions now taking place remotely, it has forced the industry to reinvent the way business is done. Everything from internal collaboration to customer authentication, to payments, must now incorporate remote-friendly practices. This is a trend we believe is here to stay in the financial services sector regardless of remote, hybrid, or back-to-the-office work models. One of the biggest challenges however with remote/dispersed work models, and especially so for the highly regulated financial services sector, is security compliance. Enterprises must protect employee information, intellectual property, financial data, deal-specific, and other sensitive information. Simultaneously, and at odds with the above, there is the need for speed and convenience when sharing content. The most viable solution currently is to set up a virtual private network (VPN) where employees can sync their files in a central repository. However, if third-party vendors and VPN users have access to your network, it may not be as safe as it appears. Hackers have successfully exploited weak VPN protocols and non-secure internet connections to cause data breaches at behemoths like Target. Furthermore, VPNs typically provide little or no granular audit records, so you cannot monitor or record the actions of every third-party vendor using the VPN. TRIYO provides a secure, on-prem, or cloud-based solution for safely sharing files and information. Our solution combines the ease of on-prem collaboration with full security compliance and with the added benefits of keystroke level, granular data analytics, and digitized audit trails. As the financial services sector races to update their chatbots, video technologies, phone-based customer service, and internal communication tools, it is unlikely that one particular communication and collaboration tool will take pole position. Instead, we’ll see multiple winners based on the different preferences and priorities of the underlying businesses. With each of these solutions, there will be increased demand for performance metrics. Additionally, technology advancements have hitherto mostly occurred in back end processes and retail operations. Other businesses continue to use legacy toolkits such as email, MS Office Suite, and Skype for deal execution and project management. As a result: - 9.9% of every dollar invested is wasted because of poor project performance - Workflow is disjointed, with employees toggling between documents, email, and other applications to piece together information; and - There is a lack of reliable operational data and related analytics. We believe there will be a growing demand for efficiency tools in all sectors of the financial services ecosystem, coupled with robust operational metrics to measure performance. TRIYO creates an API interface for existing workplace tools, thereby creating a cutting edge communication tool. Use it to access channel history, post messages, view real-time changes, deploy workflows, incorporate builds, share and collaborate on documents, and more. TRIYO is also the only tool that performs true document collaboration: parse, assign, work in parallel, and monitor, all within the mother document. Our task management tool allows project/team leaders to create tasks, assign roles, and monitor deliverables and timelines through flexible and nested workflows. Finally, the TRIYO solution captures keystroke level data, collating these operational metrics into bespoke KPI dashboards, and digitized audit trails. AI is becoming increasingly key to all forms of marketing, advertising, and sales technology. AI-enabled tools such as virtual customer assistants (VCAs) are currently being employed to handle customer requests on websites, mobile apps, and social network sites. According to Gartner’s research, organizations report a reduction of up to 70% in call, chat, and email inquiries after implementing a VCA. This development is a move away from keyword search that has dominated the web since the beginning of search engines in the 1990s. Natural Language Processing (NLP), a key tenet of AI, is now faster than ever before, and more accurate at understanding searcher intent and more complex queries. Coupled with the improvements in NLP, machine learning, and intent-matching, we believe that AI is poised to expand into other areas of the financial services ecosystem as well, deployed to supplement the workforce, and provide greater levels of operational efficiency and insight. TRIYO can take advantage of NLP and machine learning components of AI to understand how projects/tasks are progressing. This can be facilitated by understanding sentiments within user comments for particular tasks and/or the edits users are making within documents. Our platform can then trigger NLP based early warning signals to help users assess how projects/tasks are progressing, allowing project managers the ability to adjust in real-time to any delays. Finally, let’s talk about the end-user of the trends listed above. Now that consumers of all ages are accessing products and services remotely, financial services companies have been inclined to fast-track digital transformation efforts and also create new initiatives to serve customers that are not digital natives. As technology rapidly advances, it has become customary to load products with a range of features. While end-users appreciate enhanced product capabilities, businesses should beware of overloading them with multiple products and ever-expanding, ever more complex features. For many users, multi-product fatigue has set in, compromising usage as well as data integrity for these product platforms. TRIYO’s simple but effective functionality is designed for ease of use. Rather than function as a replacement, TRIYO is designed to enhance incumbent toolkits. TRIYO sits atop of and integrates with, the APIs of existing tools such as MS Office Suite, JIRA, GitHub, etc., doing so in such a seamless manner that 80% of downstream workers are rarely if ever, required to click on the TRIYO platform. They can continue using their preferred platform and reap all the benefits that TRIYO offers, with minimal behavioral change.