The impact of Covid-19 has been felt in every country and industry. The virus, declared a glo­bal pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), has spread rapidly and is highly transmissible. As the population practices social distancing in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, financial institutions need to emphasize their digital offerings. Fintech is certainly one of the hot sectors that could benefit as the financial sector continues to undergo disruption. Consumers’ desire for digital banking services will most likely increase, forcing many traditional financial institutions to fast-track digital innovation efforts. As a result, many traditional banks and financial institutions may look to fintech firms for assistance in bringing better digital banking solutions to the marketplace.

Here’s my seven predictions about the future of banking and fintech:

1. Insurance and wealth planning: Areas such as wealth management and insurance are next to be disrupted. One of the common features will be microinsurance.

2. Regulators: Weakening economies may force government organizations and regulators to stimulate the expansion of fintech solutions. One of the brightest examples is South Korea, planning to ease regulations on fintech and ten other industries to jumpstart its economy.

3. Cashless boom: Branch visits and cash payments will decrease dramatically, accelerating development of digital capabilities of banks and creating a seamless user experience. The WHO has also encouraged contactless payments.

4. Senior priority: The older generation holds the lions’ share of deposits in banks globally. This means that fintech companies and banks should be fully capable to onboard agetech and healthtech into fully integrated financial products for the ‘Silver Generation’ in order to seize the untapped and overwhelmingly neglected $15 trillion market opportunity of 1 billion people in retirement.

5. Contextual banking: Offering advice should be a diffe­rentiating factor for banks as it will become fully personalized, remote and real-time, as now is a perfect time to leverage both personalized strategies as well as the use of advanced analytics to deliver contextual solutions. Fintech companies will no longer be just a vault.

6. Health is the new wealth: It is quite clear that this global crisis will have long-lasting consequences. People and financial institutions will get a new understanding of their priorities, whereas health and longevity may get greater ­attention and start to be considered as the actual, ­tangible and most precious commodity. Apparently we can expect many oceans of new investments coming from investment banks will be redirected from other industries towards biotech, healthtech, preventive medicine and longevity.

7. Integration of healthtech and fintech: In the next few years we will see the rise of integra­ted fintech and health platforms that will use AI and data science to redesign financial and wellness marketplaces—where previously segmented and separated solutions and services will be integra­ted into a synergetic blend of health, insurtech, preventive medicine, longevity, agetech and financial wellbeing.

Sergey Balasanyan
... is the co-founder of Longevity Bank. With onboarding agetech, healthtech, data science and AI he wants to meet the needs of the senior generation and people of all ages by developing new financial products.

Author: Sergey Balasanyan

The article was featured in our March edition 2020 „KI“.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.