New Report – Distributed Technologies Means Changes for Finance and the Internet

Changes take time, until they just happen. Financial services are at the cusp of a remarkable change that few bankers realize. The decentralization of technology, new regulation increasing competitiveness and ecosystem strategies - all these trends will mark the rise of a new era of financial services. This era will be fundamental to end user value and those who provide it will thrive.

Grow VC Group has prepared a report to cover the main changes and drivers in the finance services. This means especially FinTech services, but they have impact on the whole finance industry and also on the Internet services and business models.
This report covers much more than only the most predominant trends in financial services, in it we discuss analogies of data to the oil business, how new models have to truly spawn the rise of new ecosystems. We discuss the rise of financial institutions as safeguards of your money, as opposed to hiding money under your mattress as well as their failings when instead of a mattress, you have an offline wallet in a decentralized ledger system.
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1. Are blockchain and crypto finance real things, or a bad bubble?
2. Why cloud-based solutions make banking IT obsolete?
3. Why there are so many misleading ideas about AI and robotics in finance?
4. Can banks survive through the finance sector disruption?
5. Data is the new black gold, but what are the right models to utilize it?

Those are examples of questions that are considered in this report. No one has explicit answers, but this report gives new insight and angles to find answers. Finance services are a complex combination of finance services, instruments and technology, and it needs a lot of competence to develop new services, but it also requires to challenge the old models and thinking.

The disruption of the finance services is not driven by technology; it is driven by customer needs, and enabled by FinTech. Financial services as they stand today, cannot truly meet customer expectations of today’s and especially tomorrows global Internet and mobile era. Financial services firms are also competing in a breadth of services, where they cannot expect to be key contenders in all in the future. As startups and technology companies start to offer better services and really compete, the whole financial services industry must react.

The three key technology drivers are:

1. Cloud based open API solutions,
2. Better data utilization including AI,
3. Distributed solutions including different forms of blockchain.

Currently the real influence of these components is in the order above, although if you were to look at the public discussion the order would seem to be the opposite. In reality cloud-based services have already started significantly changing finance services development and costs. Data analytics is already very important, whereas AI is more like a nice key word.
Key transformations to be seen:

1. Customer centricity in offering design,
2. Cultural change in financial services firms,
3. Specialization of financial services functions and long-term positions.

The report is prepared by the Grow VC Group, together with two group companies, Difitek and Prifina. It has the foreword from Oracle's Financial Services and the media partner to distribute it is Disruptive.Asia.

The report covers many aspects of the disruption in finance and Internet services. It cannot cover all aspects, but it is one of the most comprehensive summary of FinTech, distributed finance models, and finance data services. The report helps everyone to identify the key drivers and changes that will impact on digital finance services and Internet services during the coming years.

​You can read the report here, and download all Grow VC Group reports here.