So in the first part of this article series we talked about Financial Technology’s history and its evolution. Since that fateful release of Wells Fargo’s web banking so many years ago, we’ve seen a major acceleration of how our lives have gone digital. Everything from how we communicate to how we learn and how we keep track of our finances have all been completely changed.

For the uninitiated, the thing you have to understand about FinTech is this:

The underpinning of FinTech is that people should have power in their hands, their lives should be easier & companies should be an helpful part of their customers' lives.

I’m guessing that if you’re reading this LinkedIn Pulse article, you have at least 2 kinds of financial accounts and you’ve been able to modify your account without going into a branch. Almost every American bank that is in the >$10Billion asset range has released a mobile version of their website if not native mobile apps. Beyond a simple balance check, there are 3 memorable categories of FinTech offerings that have been seized through innovation happening today:

“Oh yea, I’ve heard of that before”



Personal Finance – Apps like Mint are really defining a golden standard right now. Mint is a tool that allows you to integrate your different bank/credit card/loan accounts to view purchases, expenses, payments, bills, etc.

All Digital banking – My American readership would remember Washington Mutual (WaMu). They were one of the first banks that went with a purely online presence without any branches. Similarly we’re seeing Allstate and other insurance company create their own all digital brand

“Oh wow, that’s neat”

Personal Finance (revisited) – Apps like Bank of America’s “Keep the Change” savings program don’t stop at analysis, they move the ball forward for you. When you make purchases debit card the bank rounds up your purchase to the next dollar amount and deposit it into your savings account.

Wearables – So I’ve been talking to a lot of my peers and people I meet and this seems to be one of the things people get pretty excited about and I can get it: we see where it’s at now and with a few tweaks, we know exactly what we can have in our hands. Imagine you send someone a check or you just set up a new direct deposit for work; wouldn’t it be great if you could get a quick notification on an Android or Apple watch? If you made a sizeable purchase of stock recently, a quick regression graph could tell you how you’re trending – very very quick info (that you wouldn’t want to linger anyway).

“Wait... Are you serious?”

Omnipresent Presence – We no longer have to be restricted to simple actions thanks to the improved cameras and processor speeds. Things like new account opening can be done with improved scanning of licenses or authentication using eyes. We saw it in laptops (thanks, Dell!) but it was super pixelated and more for novelty. With cameras we can be interacting with tellers, private bankers, everyone through video conference software. Eventually having to be somewhere (related to finances in this example) is an outdated concept.

3D Touch – All the consumer electronics junkies out there should know about the recent Apple announcements including the new OS and one feature in particular being rolled out to devices like the iPhone 6S Plus. 3D Touch lets you push with varying degrees of strength to allow different actions to take place. For example, you could use a strong thumb over transactions to view the last few posted or to quickly open a bill. What this means is that you will engage with your bank [account] more frequently and in a more spontaneous manner. You might be able to do a “quick transfer” to a favorite five family members or you could look at a receipt to see how your son forged your name for you when you were tired leaving that new Thai place.

What does the future hold?

I have a particular view of where I think banking is going to be and it’s partially a mixture of my wish list, analysis of current trends and assumptions on where the industry will be go because of disruptors.

To start off, the ubiquitous bank relationship becoming the norm. Any minute that I want to do something with finances it’ll be possible. I can FaceTime a private banking “team” – customer service group of 20 that service 400 customers. It will take a lot of time for everyone to learn all the customers in their assigned team but eventually the knowledge base will catch up and they will be what George Clooney’s Up In The Air called (tongue-in-cheek) Glocal – global and local. Also, we’ll see the slow death of the bank branch. Eventually services like ShareDesk will be used for one-off spaces that banks use and we’ll have mobile bankers traveling to customers (in a driverless car I hope!) for time-sensitive transactions/help.

In 95% of situations, everything will be done through artificially intelligent requests. Today you have to be knowledgeable about how your bank’s app works, features available, frequent missteps etc. In the future you can let your bank know “I need to save $150 by Christmas” and your bank should know enough about you to figure out how you’d most prefer it be done. Right now banks are talking about the "360 degree view of the customer", but that's still solving simple stuff like knowing what languages automated phone systems should use in talking to customers around the globe.



Stay tuned for the next part of my FinTech article series (witty title TBD)!



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