“The really big changes have to be top-down. They have to be strategic. They have to be something that leadership, the board, and the executives are closely involved in and have decided the organisation needs to pursue.”

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How to position your firm for success

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• Digital advances have the potential to revolutionise capabilities and open up new markets. Robo-advice, for instance, highlights the evolving customer offer because it paves the way for customised investment solutions for mass-market consumers that used to be available only to high-net-worth clients.
• Capitalising on these and other fintech-enabled commercial openings requires the ability to leverage technology in new, personalised and real-time offers.
• Success also demands a clear understanding of customer expectations. Customers need to trust the technology, think that it offers better value for their money than current products and services, and believe that the institution will use their data responsibly.

• The workforce is as important as technology in staying relevant. People, not systems, drive innovation. As industry boundaries disappear, it’s important to reach beyond traditional sources of recruitment when filling roles. For FS, this includes gaining access to agile, digital-ready employees within TMT and fintech organisations. Almost three-quarters of FS executives in our survey said they are looking to the technology industry to access engineering, data analytics and other key skills they need to develop and implement fintech.
• Just as important as finding the right external employees is upskilling within your business. Organisations that pull ahead of the competition will be those that foster a fintech mind-set within their business, for instance by pushing for data-driven decision making.
• Incorporation of fintech also presents an opportunity to take down siloes and facilitate the flow of data throughout the organisation. This is critical in today ́s data-enabled world.

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• For FS, access to fintech talent, tech and innovative potential through collaboration or full acquisition could be especially important in improving the stickiness of customer relationships, especially when coming into direct competition with the digitally intuitive capabilities of TMT.
• For fintech firms, joint venture or sale is an opportunity to apply their innovations on a much bigger scale and gain access to the openings created by an established brand.
• For TMT, the benefits of converging include access to customers, infrastructure, markets, operating licences and regulatory expertise.
• The most significant development could be a megadeal initiated by a big tech group looking to compete with potentially slower and less innovative traditional businesses in FS markets that it sees as ripe for disruption.

Risk and regulation Priorities:

• When asked about the impact of regulation, TMT executives said their biggest concern was how it would affect their ability to develop and capitalise on new business models. The clear priority, therefore, is meeting regulatory expectations while sustaining innovation, personalisation and customer appeal.