“Millenials do not like to go to banks. Everything they do – be it shopping or banking or insurance, they need it online. Ideally, workable from their phone. They want 24/7/365 customer support. This is where the future of fintech lies.”

Bikram is an expert in Product management & Strategy, Go to Market, Product Design & Architecture etc. He led product strategy & management for enterprise and SaaS products, conceptualized multiple products and led product rollout across Europe, Australia, Asia and Africa. Before his current role in C&D Labs, he handled strategic roles in Oracle, Yodlee, Innoviti Payment Solutions etc.

Here are the 5 key takeaways from the Webinar –

Value created by Fintech –

Fintech ensures economic growth through its financial  inclusion, transparency and borderless technology. Fintech innovation has the capability to transform the market and is highly sustainable. In addition, it leads to new revenue streams and cost savings.

Factors driving Fintech in India –

• Smartphone penetration – The availability of cheap smartphones and widespread usage makes fintech applications easily accessible.
• Unbanked and underserved population – A huge section of India’s population is still not active when it comes to banking and financial operations. Digital solutions offer an easy way out for this underserved population, as many traditional barriers are broken by fintech.
• Booming e-commerce market – India is going through a revolution when it comes to both retail and B2B commerce. Online transactions have opened up connections and broken geographical and information barriers. This is only going to  grow fintech by leaps and bounds.
• India Stack – This set of API’s provides a unique infrastructure that is accessible to both government and businesses for easy dissemination of various services to the masses.
• Jan Dhan Yojana – Government schemes like these further add impetus to financial inclusion effort.
• Aadhaar – This ensures security, transparency and democratic regulation of all transactions.
• UPI – This interface allows for easy, seamless inter-bank transactions, making the user journey supremely easy for a majorly millennial population and eradicating wait times and paper routes.

Key focus areas – The key industries and sectors for fintech are

• Payments and lending
• Retail banking
• Wealth management
• Insurance technology
• Regulations technology

Upskilling for Engineers –

Fintech opens up a wide array of industries and sectors that will offer lucrative positions in the near future. Some skills that engineers should definitely focus on building are –

• Application Development
• SaaS
• Artificial Intelligence – In this there is Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision
• Blockchain technology
• Robotic Process Automation
• Cybersecurity

Collaboration and not disruption

While initially fintech disrupted the market place and even induced stand offs between businesses, the awareness and potential of the technology has gradually led to acceptance and opened up avenues for collaboration.

Many startups are now looking to banks for scale and banking institutions on their part are willing and interested in investing in new technologies.