Could 2017 be any more turbulent than 2016? Some would argue that because of last year’s unprecedented surprises, fluctuating markets and politics and real-world events, this year couldn’t possibly offer any more shocks.
In the midst of all of this, the technology world continues unabated, with the FinTech sector holding some exciting new developments for the year ahead. Here are four themes within the FinTech sector to keep an eye on in 2017:
A Future to Embrace
For too long, consumers have had to bear the “Your call is very important to us, please continue to hold” banality, but 2017 could be the year where this unintelligent automation disappears. The advances in artificial intelligence have caused a small explosion of sorts in the FinTech sector, but this small bang could expand with the mainstream introduction of chatbots and smartbots, with human help only required for the really tricky questions.
As consumers become more digitally savvy and open their minds to a smarter technological future, so too does their confidence in these intelligent robots. In 2016, UK banks have begun to adopt AI to speed up processes with organizations such as RBS implementing smart robots online to help customer interactions.
As consumers’ relationship with money evolves, and their trust in spying chatbots is for the most part long gone, we will see them wanting more interaction with technology. Cheques and phonecalls to your bank will soon become a thing of the past as banking moves into the next digital phase.
Machine Learning Will Make Us More Secure
2016 was certainly a year of security lapses and banking fines: Tesco Bank endured a huge security breach a few months ago and many financial service players who didn’t play by the rules found themselves on the end of multi-million and multi-billion dollar consequences.
