Recent trends in digital transformation

Laksh Gangwani, APAC Managing Director for our partner ViewTrade, reflects on the recent trends in digital transformation across the financial services industry including markets businesses and fintech firms. The original video can be found here.

OCG introduces ViewTrade to its wholesale brokerage, wealth management and platform provider clients to address the inefficiencies they experience, powering cross-border investing for financial services firms throughout the world.

Oceanic Consulting Group - Financial services digital transformation trends

Today I'm going to walk you through trends across APAC, in the fintech investment area and the broader wealth technology world. We’re going to look at it from two different lenses; Firstly, there are the legacy financial institutions including banks, brokers, etc. and secondly there is the fintech dimension. Both sectors are trying to achieve the same thing, but their challenges and opportunities are unique.

Let me first deep dive into the financial institutions. Within the financial institutions there are three trends that are playing out successfully. The first trend is there is a huge push towards efficiency, such as efficient structure processes. Furthermore, the second trend includes a big push for investment in the back office and middle office. Secondly, I think on a notable scale, the financial institutions have caught up with the impactful UI game. User experience cannot exist without the back office and middle office, which we will talk more about. Finally, the third trend is the need or the appetite for a larger product catalogue of products including reinvestment in instruments like equities, fixed income, etc. Let’s go further into each one of these and how they relate.

1. The Drive Towards Efficiency

If you look at a legacy financial institution or any bank broker, they were started many years ago when a lot of them had these phone systems where you could just pick up the phone and call somebody. However, what has happened is technology has moved so fast and their target persona has changed significantly. Everybody wants a technology first and efficient solution. Customers want to create an account and start trading immediately, and that is making every financial institution think about how they drive efficiency, make onboarding faster, streamline transactions and enable cross-border transactions all instantly without taking too much risk. There is a whole revamp of process systems happening right now towards driving efficiency. I believe this constitutes a major trend that will really help deliver a lot of great experiences not only to the end customer, but also to the advisors who are dealing with these end customers.

2. The UI Game

Delving a little deeper, we are also seeing that financial institutions have caught up in the UI game. A great user interface is no longer the edge that it used to be. But what they also understood is that UI alone cannot help you, you need a great user experience which, in my view, doesn't start with the user interface, but with the middle office and back-office system. If you can build an impressive UI and invite people in, the back-end system must keep up with the real time experiences otherwise it's an incredible operational challenge. I think the second trend that we are seeing here is a very significant amount of investment in the middle and back office so they can not only keep up with the FinTech’s but also innovate at FinTech speed and enable popular workflows including fractional stocks. In addition to this investment in the middle and back-office systems, we predict to see a lot of it move to the cloud as well, which is very encouraging to see because it assists everybody to move faster.

3. Expanded Product Catalogue

As we talk about moving faster, the third trend we’ve observed is an appetite for a larger product catalogue. This ties into both the trends that we have been talking about here, drive for efficiency and investment into back-office system. Once both are addressed and complete, the banks can expand their product catalogue because their systems are capable and efficient. They can consequently offer not only their own home equities, but expanded options in foreign equities like US, UK, including fractionalisation and fixed income. For sophisticated investors, these developments open doors for structured products, option trading and much more.

All the above challenges and opportunities are driving towards a very near future where the industry will see several great offerings coming to the market within the financial institution realm. At ViewTrade we are really looking forward to these possibilities for our products and clients.

Who are ViewTrade?

ViewTrade is the force that powers fintech and cross-border investing for financial services firms throughout the world. We provide the technology, support and brokerage services that business innovators need to quickly launch or enhance a retail investing experience. Now in our third decade, our approach has helped 300+ firms – from technology startups to large banks, brokers and advisors – create the differentiating investment experiences their customer’s demand. With clients in over 20 countries and a team that brings decades of experience and understanding of brokerage technology and services, we help our business clients deliver the investment access and financial solutions they require.

For more information, visit https://viewtrade.com/ and follow the company on LinkedIn.

Securities and brokerage services provided by ViewTrade Securities Inc. ("ViewTrade Securities") a broker-dealer registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and SIPC. Technology and business solutions provided by Orbis Systems Inc. ("Orbis"). Orbis and ViewTrade Securities Inc. are affiliated and collectively referred to (with other affiliates) as "ViewTrade". This communication is not an offer to buy or sell securities and is not a recommendation regarding any investment or investment strategy. Investing involves risks and past performance is no guarantee of future results.

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