Last week we held Finovate’s first-ever fully digital event. And while the networking hall looked a little different this year, the quality of the discussions remained the same.

The event took place over the course of five days and focused on key trends within the fintech industry, including AI, lending, blockchain, and regtech. One overarching theme– COVID-19 and the shadow it casts over the entire industry– pulsed throughout each discussion.

Given this global turn of events, there is a lot to talk about in financial services. And while some of the themes appear to be the same as last year (customer experience, for example), we now have an entirely new way of looking at things.

With that in mind, below is my take on the top themes at FinovateAsia last week:

Digitization

COVID-19 has brought with it the need for many companies to move online. The financial services sector is no exception. Many discussions examined the do-or-die need for banks and fintechs to digitize their operations as much as possible.

The takeaway
Digitization is no longer an option. And in order to attract new customers, firms must not only fully digitize the user experience; they must humanize it.

New opportunities

New challenges always bring new opportunities, and the coronavirus is no exception. Many discussions at the event agreed that there will be clear winners and losers that result after this crisis.

The takeaway
Those who continue on with “business as usual” will not only lose customers, but will also miss out on potential new areas of expansion that will result from the public health crisis and economic downturn.

Customer centricity looks different but is still core

Last year everyone was talking about focusing on the customer experience. And while discussions are quite different this year, many speakers brought up the need for customer centricity. They pointed out that shifting the focus to the customer will help preserve the client relationship, which is always cheaper than acquiring new ones.

The takeaway
Even if you were previously an expert on customer centricity, it’s time to re-think your strategy. It’s more crucial than ever for banks and fintechs to meet clients’ needs, and much of that revolves around offering a digital-first approach.

One continent, many differences

One topic that arose multiple times throughout the conference was a reminder of diversity within the Asian continent. Not only does each country offer varying challenges and opportunities, but also regions within each country are equally diverse. Many of these differences are not only due to culture, but are also the result of governmental intervention and regulations.

The takeaway
Though it may be challenging to conduct business across borders because of the difficulty in dealing with a myriad of regulatory hurdles, each region offers a different opportunity.

Regardless of what the biggest trends of FinovateAsia were, one thing remained clear: there is work to be done.

Photo by Jordan Graff on Unsplash

How have customer expectations changed as financial services companies around the world rush to embrace digital transformation? How can technology be leveraged to provide more personalized financial solutions without violating privacy or adding unnecessary complexity? What is the role of digital identity technology in making the online and mobile worlds safer places for all of us to work and live?

On our final day of FinovateAsia Digital, these are some of the questions our fintech industry experts answered – often with surprising responses. From the rise of “the offer you can’t refuse” in customer experience to negotiating between the helping hand of government and its ever-present regulatory arms, our experts bring a wealth of experience and insight into fintech’s most urgent themes.

If you missed any of the conversation from FinovateAsia Digital this week, then you’re in luck. You can still register and gain access to an entire week worth of informed commentary and lively discussion on the biggest trends shaping fintech in Asia.

On the opportunities in digital and the rise of new customer expectations

I think if you look at what happened in the first few months of this year, I tend to call this the biggest digital training course the world has ever seen. We had to turn to digital for every aspect in our life. And we learned the benefits of digital, like working from home. Sometimes it’s really fun and sometimes it’s really challenging. But it’s part of our day-to-day life and it won’t disappear soon.

I think we’re at the beginning of a new phase of customer experience. Customer expectations will change. I think that in the last ten years, we mainly saw an evolution of digital convenience, and many companies understood that and became really big because of that. I think that situation has matured. In my opinion, we’re at the beginning of a new curve, of new customer expectations that will be formed thanks to new technologies like AI, IoT, 5G, quantum computing, robotics, the general purpose technologies … But it’s not going to just be technology that drives new customer expectations, it will also going to be personal dreams and wishes, and also the challenges the world will be facing.

–-Steven Van Belleghem, Author, Customers The Day After Tomorrow

On leveraging advanced technologies to deliver more personalized solutions

I’m a techie. And that’s true for the rest of our team. We love our algorithms, our data models. And one of the things we’ve learned is that sometimes (with) personalization, the best one (solution), the most engaging one, does not come from the most clever models that you come up with, but instead comes from fairly simple rules. So it should not be underestimated: you should not fall in love with your beautiful, artificial intelligence and data science models to the detriment of simplicity, because sometimes simplicity is what is bringing the most engaging content.

Another (lesson) we learned as well very early on is to make sure that customers and users are in control. And that whatever bite-sized, personalized piece of content you are delivering to them is going to give them them the option to say “stop” or “give me more” or “give me less often” … (to put them) in control of that feed of information they are receiving.

–Olivier Berthier, CEO and Co-founder, Moneythor

On the challenge of providing digital identity solutions in an increasingly globalized world

If I was to look at the way that digital identity is changing the landscape, I think actually what we’re seeing at the moment is really the proliferation of a lot of intermediating layers. So there is quite a number of different platforms that are evolving, platform players that are actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting for a lot of the companies in the fintech space. So whether you might be talking about somebody like Onfido or any of their competitors, there’s been this whole big wellspring of different types of companies that are actually doing that integration work.

And I think they have been carrying off the back of a lot of the actual governmental work that’s been happening to come up with different digital identity models. These are very complex problems, but I think given that the last decade or so, a lot of trade has been increasingly globalized, payments have been increasingly globalized, it’s become very difficult for people to keep pace with the change of all of these different governments coming up with different types of systems and experimenting.

–Danielle Szetho, Fintech Client Advisory, Standard Chartered Bank

Available On Demand for five days after the end of the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

Photo by Matthew Simmonds from Pexels

From the arrival of disruption to the shores of the wealth management industry to the eagerness of Asia’s large e-commerce platforms to bring credit to the region’s overlooked consumers and small businesses, Day Three of FinovateAsia Digital continues to provide some of the most insightful commentary on fintech trends in the Asia-Pacific region. Today we share some of the highlights from the third day of our online conference.

Our all-digital event, FinovateAsia Digital, continues all week. Join us live or On Demand and access hours of insightful commentary and conversation on the trends shaping fintech innovation in the Asia-Pacific region. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital hub and register today.

On fintech’s role in creating value at a time of change in the wealth management industry

Connectivity to fintechs is often a high priority when asked to create new and additional value to the client’s overall proposition. When I was a panelist at Finovate in Berlin back in February, I noticed there were few fintechs representing asset management – which is surprising given the tens of trillions of assets which impact every single one of us whether you are investing yourself or someone does it on your behalf.

Why was this sector late to the disruption party? Or was it happening without us noticing? Little did any of us know that, in the following months, asset management, like many other sectors, would experience an acceleration in embracing change and wonder about its relevance and role in the Now and the Next Normal.

— Simone Vroegop, Head of Strategic Partnerships for FinTech, Brown Brothers Harriman

On key insights from case studies in the optimization of fintech solutions in the cloud

You want to be very disciplined when you look at your online architecture, your solution, or any cloud provider’s platform. You don’t want to get distracted by a lot of existing native services, or third party services. That’s great. That’s the nature of the cloud. But you have to be very disciplined, and every time you introduce a component, you have to rationalize it, why you need it, and how to keep this new component that you’re going to introduce as reliable and as efficient as possible.

You also have to have a very rigorous test plan in place. You don’t exercise this plan toward the end, when you have built everything. That could be too late. You want to start doing some of these rigorous tests early on, using either a prototype or proof of concept, so you can mimic some of your market conditions plus your system conditions.

–Harry Tong, Senior Solutions Architect, InterSystems Corporation

On the importance of large e-commerce platforms in Asia’s digital lending landscape

Micro, small, and medium enterprises have traditionally struggled to access capital. Many lack an existing banking relationship or detailed financial record. And obviously incumbent banks in China favor corporate lending as smaller businesses fail to meet their credit check standards. Again, the larger e-commerce platforms have been enthusiastically filling the gap left by inadequate lending from incumbents. And by avoiding all those traditional evaluation processes that require substantial credit history, in favor of more data-based appraisals, platforms have demonstrated to incumbents that they must reform if they wish to compete across that sector of lending and to bring that experience to more businesses.

In rapidly growing countries with populations the size of China’s or India’s, the ability to lend vast sums of money to millions of SMEs places those platforms in a position of really significant power. How incumbents respond to this shift will determine the future of lending in this whole region.

–Louise Beaumont, Chair, Smart Data, Open Banking & Payments Working Groups, techUK

Available both live (Singapore time) and On Demand during the conference week, FinovateAsia Digital is a unique opportunity for those interested in learning more about fintech in the Asia-Pacific region. Browse our all-digital presentations, interviews, and discussions; network with fellow attendees; and gain key insights into the trends driving fintech innovation in critical, emerging markets. Visit our FinovateAsia Digital Hub and register today.

Photo by ALAMEEN A-DAE from Pexels