The fintech industry is one that is constantly changing and evolving. With regular innovation and disruption of the financial sector, Fintech continues to grow globally.
Phillip Liu is General Manager of the Middle East and Africa for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, an AI platform providing solutions to complex business and social problems. It provides services to thousands of enterprises, developers, and governments organizations in more than 200 countries and regions. In January 2017, Alibaba Cloud became the official cloud services partner of the Olympics.
Here, Philip shares his thoughts on how Fintech companies should prepare for the future.
Fintech companies are shaking up the financial services market with the way in which they operate, challenging traditional products and services that are currently on offer. With cutting-edge digitalisation and the integration of smart devices becoming the norm, the Fintech industry is witnessing a period of rapid growth that has paved the way for a host of innovative e-lending and e-payment solutions. Millions of customers around the globe can now access these digital financial services in an instant. Such services are especially valuable in emerging markets, where traditional financial services companies are not growing quickly enough or providing the seamless efficiency that Fintech companies do, thanks to their impressive reach.
Yet, the Fintech market has many challenges to overcome – it often struggles to keep up with the ever-growing user demand and the changing regulations within the financial sector. That is why Fintech companies must design, deploy, and maintain an IT infrastructure that is both scalable, secure and cost-effective in order to compete within this dynamic market. To stay ahead of the game, Fintech companies should consider the following.
Customer Satisfaction through Low Latency
The key element behind the growth of successful Fintech companies is undeniably the customer-oriented services they provide. In today’s fast-paced world, customers are looking for quick (if not instant) response times online. This is especially true when it comes to consumer-facing Fintech businesses that only interact with their users online. As a result, to ensure that customers are completely satisfied, Fintech companies must be able to process transactions quickly, in addition to ensuring low-latency and a dependable infrastructure.
Resources for Your Core Business
Fintech companies often benefit from delegating their operations and management tasks to cloud computing providers such as Alibaba Cloud. This means they will only need to pay for what they use, and do not have to worry about maintaining and upgrading any hardware, as well as recruiting additional manpower.
By eliminating the heavy lifting of infrastructure maintenance, Fintech companies can focus on developing their core business and achieving better customer satisfaction.
Fast Go-to-Market and Cross-Regional Expansion
To keep attracting new customers and continuously drive business growth, Fintech companies must frequently release new products, upgrade the applications they already offer, and launch their marketing campaigns in a timely manner. Furthermore, Fintech companies have to make sure that business is functioning at maximum efficiency while complying with local regulations.
Cost-Efficiency
Fintech was initially created to ensure better outcomes while saving on time and costs and offering great value to clients. This was attributed to new technology, however, since every business model can be improved, so too can technology. Every business aims to be as cost-efficient as possible, especially SMBs. Thanks to the nature of the cloud, both the operational and the maintenance costs commonly associated with paying for an on-premise solution are instantly removed.
System Reliability
Top Fintech solutions provide high system reliability and ensure that all transactional, customer, and merchant information is processed accurately and protected safely with near-zero downtime, helping Fintech companies meet regulatory requirements at a low cost.
Through deploying a robust Fintech solution, companies can delegate infrastructure management to the cloud so that they can focus their efforts on business development. This helps to achieve better user satisfaction, faster go-to-market, and higher cost-efficiency.
