1. Can you describe your understanding and vision of what financial software is?
People have said that every company needs to be a software company to survive into the future; the financial world is no different. With a high entry barrier, there are few who get everything right, but when they do, they’re guaranteed unicorn status. Financial software is first and foremost heavily regulated. The priorities are, in order: compliance, security, features.
2. What do you see as the biggest challenges for implementing financial software at this time?
As with any established industry, you have the traditional players, read “banks” or “financial institutions,” and challengers – in this case “fintechs” and “challenger banks.” What is special about this industry vertical is the regulatory agencies and their specificities among continents/countries/even branches.
Launching a product worldwide is nearly impossible in this segment. You have to have a country-level tweaking of features – this is the greatest challenge.
3. What does the client journey look like in the financial software industry, and what’s the role of the tech partner in this?
As with most industry verticals, we’re seeing a lot of platforms, integrators, APIs, ecosystems. All a new player needs is to build a front. This allows newcomers to leverage the existing infrastructure and focus solely on the client journey.
Financial tools have traditionally been less accessible to the masses, but this is changing fast – the client journey is beginning to look like a rollercoaster, with easy access to investment tools, crypto, insurance, pension, etc.
As a tech partner we’re fortunate to work on cutting-edge technologies – there is no legacy code here – it’s all new. That is, until a century-old bank needs maintenance of their Cobol infrastructure; and then we need to rise to the occasion and keep our side of the partnership – build teams and deliver the software.
4. What competencies and mindset are needed to implement such projects?
As a software engineer, the process of writing financial software code is pretty much the same as any code – information is read, processed and then stored, just to be read again, and so on. I don’t see any particular competency as critical. What is important, though, is the mindset – most systems are real-time and high-risk, and this means security and up-time are critical. Security-by-design feels right at home with financial software development.
5. What trends do you see unfolding in the near future?
Embedded finance is all the rage now and it’s predicted to grow and extend its reach. We’ll soon find micro-loans embedded in your shopping and tailored to your profile.
What makes it tick? – APIs. APIs have become the norm – creating, maintaining, consuming, and scaling APIs is what fuels the financial software ecosystem and the growth of platforms.