How Artificial Intelligence Makes Dollars and Sense for the Financial Services Industry From digital-only start-ups to traditional brick-and-mortar behemoths, it seems like every organization in every corner of the financial services industry is focused on launching new products and services for consumer lending, spending, investing, saving…the list goes on and on. And the smart enabling…
Buy Now, Pay Later – The Modern Way to Do Layaway The Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) industry is a booming business. If you are unfamiliar with the term, or don’t fully understand the concept, think of it as a modern take on the layaway model that rose to popularity during the Great Depression, but…
Today, financial services companies must build relationships with customers who may have never used traditional services before. Incumbents have the opportunity to reach out to a younger generation of consumers by merging with or acquiring dynamic fintech firms. The Online Bank To make these moves work, IT platforms must be robust enough to accommodate these…
Introduction Integration or consolidation is the key to success in a merger or acquisition (M&A) program. This is the process of physically bringing businesses together and IT represents an estimated 60% of synergies by value, the rest coming from areas like office space or workforce. While a great deal of work can be done to…
Introduction IT will be rightly focused on integration following any M&A program, but there are other considerations, notably regulation and what regulators demand of financial services companies. This falls into business resilience, including skills and security, and the management of fintechs – the likely takeover targets. Valuations One of the more surprising effects of the…
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has shown the benefits of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in detail, as large incumbents eye competitors, nimble entrants, and fintech companies as potential targets. Business synergies will presumably be clear, but the IT synergies that underly them need to be assessed in detail. Due diligence is the key to…
Takeovers, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) test companies to their limits. These stresses affect all companies but for financial services organizations they can be compounded. Not only do two businesses have to come together, but so do the systems offering their products and services. Part of the problem is that incumbent financial services companies tend to…
The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown has thrown business valuations into chaos and shown financial services organizations that the shift to digital products and services is not a nice-to-have, but a necessity. M&As were already anticipated in a crowded market, but the changing behavior of customers has made them a necessity. They make sense from…
One of the consequences of the COVID-19 lockdown was the sudden shift away from traditional modes of financial services, notably the branch, to internet-based services. Whether the end user is a trader, an analyst, an actuary, a business owner, or a consumer, they will have been affected by these changes. These changes are likely to…
Challenger banks have shown what’s possible in the Financial Services sector – new ways of banking, trading as well as modelling and managing risk. As financial services brands consider the next five years, hybrid IT offers the greatest flexibility for developing next generation products and services. As customers increasingly exchange physical for digital experiences, those…