Covid-19 pushed institutions to attempt remote working, forcing themselves to think strategically about infrastructures that can help their workers enhance productivity.

Schools favored online classes, mobile banking boomed, while customer service continued to interact with customers from home.

While many financial institutions may have survived the digital tsunami, it was clear that change is inevitable and the future, erratic.

Institutions are now exploring strategies and systems that might help overcome new challenges going forward. Here are five major trends that most people think will dominate the financial industry in the near future.

Modernized systems

In 2020, outdated core systems were unable to handle the high volume of traffic and transactions, while other companies struggled to keep track of their workforce’s progress.

This challenged the financial industry prompting many institutions to try and modernize their systems.

Institutions are expected to continue upgrading their systems to enhance their productivity and efficiency. Top trends expected in financial institutions include automated accounting, cloud-based accounting, and adopting blockchain.

Beyond Cash

Cash transactions were fluctuating before 2020, especially in Asia and Europe. In 2020, cashless transactions increased by 27% in the US only.

Having been accustomed to cashless transactions, many consumers claim they’ll continue using contactless transactions even after the pandemic.

Financial institutions are designing more complex apps to help their end-users conduct their businesses easier. It’s highly likely that they’ll continue to invest in artificial intelligence, data, and analytics tools, and modernize systems.

Personal Insurance

Faced with a major health crisis, economic distress, and an uncertain future, people were looking for more personalized insurance options to satisfy their needs.

Health insurance companies offered premiums to support reduced cost in non-essential strategies, auto insurance gave refunds and discounts, while others used analytics to provide more personalized services.

In the near future, personal insurance companies are set to divert offline marketing strategies to online to cut costs and offer more competitive pricing to meet the demand.

Increased Remote Worker innovations

Covid-19 has helped many companies to realize the power of remote workers. While they struggled to keep employees, engaged, connected, and productive, many devised drastic solutions to prevent them from dwindling.

However, although these solutions helped employees improve productivity to some extent, internet connectivity issues, security concerns, technology issues, and other limitations still hindered work progress.

Therefore, as companies seek work-from-home solutions, they should also consider the workers’ need for reliable high-speed connectivity, devices with high computing capacity, and responsive insights to better serve their customers.

Technological Innovations

The pandemic also introduced a new, certain atmosphere where only innovation could move us forward. There was a great need for technological advancements to propel the financial industry back to form.

One major sector that greatly improved is mobile banking. With more secure payment methods like blockchain, buying digital assets has become easier.

Companies are also looking to invest in technologies that could potentially determine the future of the internet of things, business, and trade.

An editor at Blogzine

View Articles

Louis Ferguson is a senior editor for the blogzine and also reports on breaking news based in London. He has written about government, criminal justice, and the role of money in politics since 2015.