The fintech market has been, and continues to be, highly competitive and dynamic. For companies in this space, success hinges on the critical balance between people, product or service, and customers. Assembling a team of talented and driven individuals that bring a diverse range of skills and experiences to the table fosters an environment that emphasizes creativity, problem-solving, and innovation. Whether they’re founders, engineers, or marketers, each member plays an important role in steering the startup towards its goals. Cultivating a culture of collaboration and adaptability empowers these individuals to collectively navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities that come their way.

Equally as important is developing a product or service that resonates deeply with a company’s target audience. This requires a thorough understanding of customer preferences, behaviors, and trends in the fintech space. This knowledge is often attained through market research, user testing, and iteration. By continuously refining their offerings based on customer feedback and market insights, companies can ensure that their products or services remain relevant and competitive in an ever-changing landscape.

Companies must also pinpoint and cultivate the right customers by identifying the ideal customer profile using more than just demographic data. Companies must understand what motivates their customers—understand their pain points and purchasing behaviors on a deeper level. By tailoring marketing strategies and messaging, and the customer experiences to resonate with these target segments, companies can forge meaningful connections and foster long-term relationships that drive sustained growth and success.

In this article, we will delve into these factors that catalyze the growth of a fintech company. From using the EIEIO hiring method, to strategic decision-making to operational excellence, and from customer acquisition to product innovation, we will explore the multifaceted dynamics that underpin a company’s journey from inception to expansion.

The Right People

The people are the lifeblood of any company—they’re the driving force behind the company’s success. When a company has the right people in place, it fosters a culture of excellence and collaboration and employees are motivated to perform at their best while also supporting each other.

When it comes to building teams, hiring managers should use the acronym EIEIO.

The first E stands for Energy. Does the person you are meeting have the energy to do the job? The I stands for IQ (or EQ). Does the person listen and can the person ask really good questions and engage? That’s really important when you are considering someone for an outward-facing role (such as sales or customer success). The E stands for experience. From an academic standpoint, does the person have relevant education and training, as for a CPA for example. And then, what is their “life experience”—this could be more important and relevant than their formal training background.

The first three letters—EIE— are all negotiable. For example, sometimes you meet someone that you like and they have very little, relevant experience, but you may want to take a chance on them.

The last two letters are I and O. I stands for integrity. HR managers should ask themselves, will the person be accountable to meet specific deadlines and deliver on a certain project when it’s needed? The final O for organizational fit. Do we connect and can we have a conversation? An example of this is the airport test. If the plane is delayed, is the person going to want to go to the lounge, grab a cup of coffee and start talking about a project and engage with me for a couple of hours or are they going to disappear and read a book. This can give a hiring manager a good gut-feel for how this person will fit culturally and organizationally, how they’ll respond to situations.

EIEIO is a really good and simple method for employers looking to hire and invest in someone.

The Right Product or Service

The concept of offering the right product or service cannot be overstated for any company as it directly impacts the company’s competitive edge in the fintech space. Companies must clearly state what the business problem is that they are trying to solve, and they do their due diligence to ensure there IS a problem to be solved with this product (product market fit). Sometimes the ideal solution may take a while to get there, but companies should first try to solve something today and get on a journey, because not everything can be done at once. Companies need to pick and choose what to get started on and the rest will take care of itself.

Companies can then begin to foster loyalty with early adopters/early customers and attract new customers through positive word-of-mouth. Conversely, a mismatched offering can lead to customer dissatisfaction and erosion of market share. Understanding and delivering what customers really want or need ensures longevity and sustainability in a competitive marketplace.

The right product or service must also align with the company’s core values and business objectives. When customers associate the product or service with positive attributes such as quality, reliability, or innovation, it enhances brand reputation and credibility. This alignment also facilitates strategic growth and expansion, as the company can confidently leverage its brand equity to explore new markets or diversify its offerings.

Choosing the right product or service will also maximize profitability and operational efficiency. By focusing resources on developing and delivering offerings that resonate with the target market, companies can optimize their return on investment. This includes streamlining production processes, minimizing waste, and effectively allocating marketing resources. A well-received product or service often commands premium pricing, increasing profit margins, which leads to investments and prosperity for the company in the long term.

The Right Customers

Identifying and targeting the right customers is paramount for the success of a fintech business. Understanding the demographics, psychographics, and behavior patterns of the target audience allows companies to tailor their products or services to meet specific needs and preferences. In order to do this, companies need to make it personal for the customers. The customer must be able to answer why it is a problem and why your solution is unique and more different than anyone else and ultimately going to make the customer’s life better.

By focusing on the right customers, businesses can allocate resources more efficiently, whether it be marketing efforts, product development, or customer service. A loyal customer base tends to generate repeat business and referrals, reducing the cost of customer acquisition and increasing customer lifetime value. Satisfied customers are more likely to provide valuable feedback and insights, enabling continuous improvement and innovation.

Having customers serve as brand ambassadors will also amplify the company’s reach and influence within their networks. Peer recommendations and online reviews can significantly impact purchasing decisions, especially in today’s interconnected digital landscape. This organic growth not only expands the customer base but also enhances brand reputation and credibility, further reinforcing the company’s position in the market.

By addressing this critical balance between people, product or service, and customers, companies will be able to provide valuable insights and actionable strategies to help both start-up and incumbent fintech organizations.

Stay Ahead of the Financial Curve with Our Latest Fintech News Updates!

The digitization of the financial services industry has enabled better fraud protection, rapid transactions, and tailored customer experiences. While digital transformation benefits customers by making their engagements with services much easier, it can have an adverse effect if the company doesn’t pay as much attention to the digital employee experience (or DEX).
Think about it. We’ve all heard that refrain of customer service agents: “I’m sorry; my computer is slow today.” Frustrating. Indeed, the digital experience of customers is inextricable from the digital experience of employees.
It is therefore imperative to empower IT teams with visibility across the IT estate so they can proactively detect and address tech-related issues before they have an impact on business operations and customer interactions.
The digital employee experience, however, often is overlooked, causing significant frustration. In fact, a recent Compucom survey found that “half of employed Americans have been so frustrated with their workplace tech that they’ve switched jobs — or are actively applying.” Think of the impact of this on customers. If people are quitting that means fewer people to help with customers, amplifying customer frustration and the likelihood that they will take their business to the competition.

Also keep in mind that the employee experience often is very different from executives’ perception of DEX. Of executives and IT leaders surveyed in 2022, just 20% of surveyed executive leaders saw the need for major improvement in digital employee experience, yet 52% of employees believed that DEX is not only important but should be a top priority for management. This disconnect is somewhat understandable, however, as IT is highly focused on executives and typically has a team dedicated to executives, so their experience often is much better — with better equipment and more attention. Regardless, it’s important to level up DEX for all employees.

When employees struggle to connect to a network, face issues powering up devices, or lose access to applications, they not only become frustrated; many often take matters into their own hands or ignore issues altogether. That’s because these scenarios increase user frustration with IT because IT doesn’t have the visibility to fix their problems, prompting employees to give up and stop reporting other problems, creating a snowball effect. Accordingly, these IT issues don’t affect just individual employees. A seemingly minor inconvenience, especially one that’s not reported, can escalate into a more significant company-wide problem.
This lack of visibility occurs in what I call the “dark estate,” where IT teams grapple with the challenge of comprehending the broader IT landscape. In this hidden realm are costly inefficiencies, subpar employee experiences, shadow IT, software bloat, compliance concerns, and unresolved issues.
Yet, despite the value of gaining complete IT visibility, many organizations operate with known blind spots that can cost millions of dollars in operational expenses. Fortunately, real-time insights garnered from endpoint device data can eliminate these historical gaps in visibility, even as companies are moving toward cloud or hybrid environments.

Benefits of Compete IT Visibility
Issues such as poor performances across devices, networks, or applications often happen in the dark estate, which encompasses areas of a complex IT environment that are not visible to IT teams. This lack of visibility creates the perfect storm of costly inefficiencies, sub-par digital employee experience, and unresolved problems. Hybrid and remote work environments exacerbate the problem, often leaving employees to navigate issues themselves.
Greater visibility across their IT estate empowers IT teams to realize three main benefits:

1. Optimize Hardware to Prolong Its Life
Many firms traditionally follow a time-based approach to hardware management, refreshing devices every three years or so. Updating or replacing hardware too frequently, however, can add unnecessary expenses if the devices still have strong performance life left in them. IT can leverage endpoint data to conduct audits, prolonging the life of hardware that still has high-performance life left in it. Or they can use data to identify batteries that need replacement, even before the warranty expires.
Greater visibility of the IT estate enabled one New York City-based bank to discover that of a planned 7,000 laptops per year refresh cycle, only 600 actually needed replacing. Data insights gave the IT team greater awareness of usage patterns and machine stresses, allowing them to uncover this significant capital cost deferment opportunity.

2. Rationalize Software to Uncover Cost Saving Opportunities
In terms of software, data captured at the endpoint can reveal unused software licenses that add up to a hefty cost. What’s more, maintaining multiple versions of software also adds to support costs and can contribute to potential security risks for unpatched software.
By leveraging data insights to uncover unused licenses across the enterprise, financial services organizations have saved costs ranging from $60,000 to more than $4 million. IT visibility also empowers firms to avoid of license non-compliance fines.

3. Improve Overall IT Health through Proactive IT
Are systems lagging? Can users login without issue? When was the device last updated? It is also imperative to create a work environment that is as error-free as possible. For IT, making sure that devices function properly at the precise moments the employees need them is one thing; ensuring that employees have the confidence that their device works is another. Otherwise, an employee may put off a task or project until another day when their devices or applications are not acting up or rendered unreliable. Having their tech act up during a customer-facing interaction is not just bad for the employee; it is bad for the business. For example, think about traders on the floor when their device is acting up and they miss a trade—at what cost to the business? Large financial firms look for solutions to ensure proactive IT so as not to miss any trades.
Fortunately, endpoint data about device health and usage can generate insights that enable IT teams to adopt a proactive and pre-emptive approach to IT. With the rise of generative AI models, more data means better AI models finetuned to IT use cases to detect and prioritize issues before they disrupt the business or the end-user experience.

Gaining a Competitive Edge with Greater IT Visibility
With increased remote and hybrid work environments, IT teams must prioritize the digital employee experience by staying several steps ahead of brewing IT issues before they have a negative effect on the user. This commitment requires an “always-on” approach to IT support. In addition to data insights, automations and self-help remediations can facilitate proactive IT.
As financial institutions lean into digitalization, IT visibility is required not only to remain competitive but also to enhance DEX and, by extension, the customer experience. With visibility across an IT estate, organizations can leverage technology to shine a light on issues, enable proactive IT, accelerate digital transformations, and manage costs.

Stay Ahead of the Financial Curve with Our Latest Fintech News Updates!

The idea of “enhancing digital agility” is a broad ranging topic that could span from adopting new technologies and business process optimization to a complete transformation of an institution’s business model. From my practical perspective and that of my digital transformation consultancy, Zennify, our financial services clients continue to seek out agility initiatives based on furthering cloud adoption and defining long term data strategies. Cloud platforms remain the most significant enabler for digital agility and banking institutions are looking to fast track adoption under intense competition. 

Digital Agility Helps Banks Compete for New Consumer Loyalty

Feedback from our banking sector clients highlights continued uncertainty around future growth. They are faced with agile competition that is going to market with an increasing set of digital banking capabilities. This creates a chasm effect that is challenging to cross for traditional banking clients’ solutions. While these traditional banks have been focused on loyalty, brick and mortar relationships, many haven’t evolved their products in a way that matches the technology driven pace of self-servicing and frictionless fintech products; something that the next generation of consumers is demanding. 

Traditional product offerings around checking accounts and loans with compartmentalized consumer experiences seem undifferentiated in the market today. Consumers remain frustrated with banking business fragmentation that imposes challenges for consumer processes and digital engagements. New consumers are offered an increasing amount of self-serving and technology enabled options that provide superior customer engagements. AI will continue to stretch this gap with hyper personalized digital experiences. It is not unrealistic to foresee Banking Digital Assistants powered by AI to provide uniquely tailored and individualized banking advice. Banks need to identify and engage with these next generation cloud capabilities to compete.

Defining a Cloud Adoption Strategy is Key to Digital Agility for Banks

Digital Agility for Banks correlates directly with cloud adoption strategies. The importance of a cloud strategy for banks lies in its ability to provide scalability, efficiency, real-time insights, and enhanced customer experiences. Cloud platform advances have significantly enabled both fintech and digital banking modernization efforts. Cloud technology capabilities like Identity Management,  Serverless Computing, No-Code Application options, Data Management and Integration services enable banks to string together products and services quickly to provide enhanced and fully digitized customer experiences with far greater agility than their AS-IS approach. Cloud technology allows banks to scale their operations efficiently and swiftly, which is crucial for growth and adapting to changing customer needs. Those evolving customer expectations represent one of the largest factors in driving agility.

One critical challenge for our banking clients in increasing digital agility is migrating  from legacy solutions to the cloud. From our experience a right sized plan requires a practical perspective on the challenges and opportunities. A challenge might include transferring existing data to the cloud, which may be stored in a variety of formats. A practical plan may include a process to address groupings of data to ensure it complies with regulatory requirements. From there, you can work one group at a time to reduce complexities and ensure data readiness for your agility initiatives. Mitigating these challenges should include investing in a sound change management plan focused on preparing, equipping, and supporting individuals to successfully adopt changes for both business process and technology.

Managing these changes and ensuring that all stakeholders are on board is a key challenge. Organizations might lack the necessary skills and knowledge to manage and operate cloud technologies effectively. These challenges can be mitigated through careful planning, use of proper tools and collaboration with skilled cloud consultants. Our clients that have migrated banking cores to the cloud and leveraged iPaaS cloud integration platforms have benefited greatly from training and education and achieved measurable success in the journey, including increases in both customer and employee satisfaction. 

Banks Are Crossing the Fintech Chasm with Cloud and AI

Many clients that are migrating to the cloud are also exploring ways to engage AI in internal initiatives to continue to close the gap between the differentiated product offerings in the market. Recently we have seen a significant uptick in consulting with advisory services related to the advancement of AI architectures provided by cloud platforms. We are regularly advising on use cases and initiatives to provide secure and private “Chat GPT-like” capabilities with internal data sources without the need for hosting hard to find GPUs. 

Unifying AI and digital capabilities for both front and back office operations has the dual benefit of potential cost savings and streamlining the customer experience.

Deriving Value from Your Transformation Initiatives

Working with these clients we focus on forecasting and providing transformational advisory to turn the corner on digital enablement. Once clients settle into their cloud platform of choice, they begin deriving value from three key areas:

• The pay-as-you-go technology cost provides greater visibility and granularity to cost control measures. 
• Banks that have migrated to the cloud continue to see cloud providers invest in products and services to enable cloud experiences and value add. 
• Banks are able to bring to market solutions at an expedited rate. 

We find that digital agility and cloud strategy go hand-in-hand. We find that to navigate this journey it is good to have a sound partner that brings experience to the table; including amongst other disciplines cloud architecture and data strategy experience for your specific sector of business.  For those that are ready to embark on this journey, a few recommendations include:

• Address common concerns about AI, such as data security and accuracy, to build trust in your AI initiatives. 
• Protect your data and work only with services that demonstrate trust. 
• Leverage tools and services from cloud platforms as they can be helpful in managing your digital agility and AI projects. 
• Identify the areas within your organization where you see the most impact. This could be anything from automating routine tasks, to enhancing decision-making, to improving customer experience.

With a sound plan and the options provided by a growing cloud market, banks are able to close the gap in this highly competitive market of digital banking by forging ahead with the next generation of digital agility cloud product and service offerings.

Stay Ahead of the Financial Curve with Our Latest Fintech News Updates!