Summer is in full swing. But the growth of fintech is not slowing down, even during the vacation season 🏖

Here are some attention-worthy trends from Bernard Marr, futurist, board advisor, and author of over 20 books 👇

Present: what is the financial technology sector living in 2024?

1. Generative AI becomes our best friend

From financial advice and fraud detection to prevention and portfolio optimization, generative AI is like a smart personal assistant on hand 24/7.

Thanks to generating new data from existing datasets and feedback loops, this solution is a real-time saver and can be used for enhanced automation, predictive analytics, automated financial reporting, or natural language generation in customer relations.

2. Phygital Convergence - blurring lines between physical and digital realities

After the pandemic of 2020, we no longer want to get everything done in the physical world. Being used to remote work and online shopping, we expect the same from banking, having the ability to access banking services anytime, anywhere.

Financial institutions are now blending brick-and-mortar locations with cutting-edge digital solutions, offering clients seamless banking access around the clock. From smartphone apps to web-based interfaces and in-branch smart terminals, customers can easily manage accounts, conduct transactions, and get support. This fusion of physical and digital banking enhances convenience and provides banks with crucial insights into customer behaviour.

3. Sustainable Technology - go green or go home

Net-zero commitments became crucial to countries' and corporations' commitments in 2024.

The economic rationale for eco-friendly banking is compelling. With the surge in climate change and social equity concerns worldwide, clients are increasingly seeking out financial institutions that offer services with broader positive impacts. According to a survey by Mambu, 49% of clients are prepared to switch from their current banks to more sustainable alternatives.

Moreover, sustainable banking makes financial sense, as changing the course to a green direction will open up an estimated $43 trillion in market opportunities by 2070 (according to ecolytiq).

One thing is certain—in the dynamic landscape of tech, change is the only certain thing. The recent Microsoft global outage due to CrowdStrike software failure only confirms that.

Hundreds of thousands of computers running on Windows were knocked offline or stuck on the blue screen because of a bug, showing the fragility of many systems.

Future: What can the tech landscape look like in 10 years?

Now, let's time travel and look at how the fintech industry might look by 2034. Although this is an eternity for the tech sector, and a lot can happen, we can still predict some trends by extrapolating current trends.

In the article prepared for Forbes Research & Insights, Bernard Marr distinguished several tech trends the next decade holds for the sector. Let's take a look at three of them:

1. Autonomous Financial Ecosystems

In the next ten years, AI may progress from its current function of supporting financial businesses to independently overseeing complete financial frameworks.

This means integrated services, with advanced, centralised AI predicting and reacting to real-time market movements, customer behaviour and regulatory changes.

Human involvement will decrease significantly as these self-governing systems take charge of both back and front-office tasks.

2. Universal Digital Currencies

By 2034, the current cryptocurrencies and ongoing trials on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in numerous nations may result in the widespread acceptance of universal digital currencies.

Apart from empowering individuals to conduct direct digital transactions without middleman services such as banks or payment processors, digital currencies might pave the way for "programmable money" controlled by smart contracts that automatically execute upon meeting specific conditions.

3. Quantum-Safe Finance

Within the next 10 years, the sector will have to focus on ensuring the resilience of security measures against immensely potent quantum computer systems.

As quantum computers carry out some calculations millions of times more quickly than conventional computers, there will be a massive risk that our current encryption systems, such as RSA encryption, will become outdated.

Although quantum computers are expensive and limited in capability today, this might change over the years, creating an increasing need for developing methods to secure transactions and protect private information.

Whether 2024 or 2034, one thing remains stable - fintech aims towards security, automation, and sustainability. And we definitely support that direction!