As another year draws to a close, the FinTech industry is undertaking its healthy annual review of where we are going, and what our customers want and expect going forward.
From my vantage point as Head of Product Strategy and Development at BetaNXT, the ongoing digital transformation across financial services has been driving several key trends, which will likely shape FinTech innovation and implementation in 2025:
Sharing Data Instead of Sending Data
Under the traditional model where data is transferred between independent systems or databases, both the senders and recipients must verify the success, and accuracy, of the transfer. This reconciliation process, while necessary to correct any data mismatches, consumes valuable human resources that could be better utilized elsewhere.
Looking ahead to the coming year, FinTech innovations are set to revolutionize this outdated method. Rather than sending data from point to point, we envision a future where a single instance of data is shared. Currently, when data is sent, it is placed on an empty server for the recipient to download and process, which introduces risks of distortions and inaccuracies. In contrast, sharing data allows both the sender and recipient to access the same version, ensuring its accuracy before any further access is granted-enhancing efficiency and data integrity.
Cloud Migration
Many FinTech customer organizations are migrating their technology stacks to the cloud, and many more will continue to do so next year. Financial services and wealth management organizations would rather not have to be in the business of owning and refreshing their hardware when they can have trusted experts in that area do so for them.
Shift to Near-Real-Time Processing
With the introduction of the T+1 settlement cycle earlier this year, and T+0 on the horizon, the stage is set for more timely information in client accounts. Consumers served by the financial services and wealth management sectors are helping to drive the FinTech industry toward its North Star goal of near-real-time resolution and data updates. After all, members of the iPhone generation expect not to have to wait long to see updates to their portfolio positions and records after they transact.
The idea of waiting one, two, or three days to see the result of a transaction on a portfolio is becoming obsolete. Batch processing, where data is grouped for processing, will eventually be eliminated. Instead, we can envision a world where near real-time insights into investors' financial statements will become the reality.
Embedding Data Governance at the Source
What we have noticed is that, usually, when financial services and wealth management organizations build out their infrastructure, they wrap data governance around their systems from scratch — which can make it difficult to track and record the sources and history of the data. Going forward, firms will have FinTech data governance tools, built into originating systems, at their disposal to provide a full picture of their data — not only sharing the data but sharing it in a way where pre-wrapped data governance allows them to send the metadata about that data, describing its formula and evolution since its beginnings at its source. In addition, this allows FinTech firms to spend more time building applications for customers, and less time preparing data for sharing — in fact, some of the data scientists we regularly speak with spend between 50% and 80% of their time cleaning, justifying, or even just collating data!
By embracing a share-not-send data infrastructure, taking applications to the cloud, and pushing data governance back into originating systems rather than creating them from scratch, FinTech suppliers and their customers can serve up user-ready, content rich, and reliable data in near real time.
While the issuance of data governance standards and common codes has been well-intentioned, it has resulted in various templates that may not be able to meet everyone's needs. Going forward, the above trends will drive innovation for creating a data framework that can receive any data, and flexibly convert it into user-ready content, regardless of different standards.
Source: Financial IT
