Just like in chemistry there are reactive chemicals that can accelerate or slow down a reaction, there are events in our life that stimulate phenomena, processes and technologies — or, on the contrary, kick them out. It is particularly true for innovative businesses that are extremely sensitive to change.
It has been written and said so many times that the first year of the pandemic catalyzed FinTech development. Our niche — financial marketplaces — experienced an actual turnaround. Following suit of their customers who switched online in great numbers, banks turned towards financial marketplaces thus completely revisiting the paradigm of cooperating with us. It is the second year of the pandemic and now it is not marketplaces that are eager to pitch their concepts to banks but banks that are lining up to get a place on the shelves of financial supermarkets.
And that’s hardly surprising. This year, we saw hundreds of thousands of new users turning to financial marketplaces rather than banks or banking apps for a loan, lease, insurance, guarantees and investment. People have warmed up to the format and became loyal customers of financial supermarkets.
It is only the beginning. We expect that 2022 will see a breakthrough of financial marketplaces and will be the first year when the industry will truly flourish. Consumers who already got used to consumer goods marketplaces will turn to service marketplaces, including those that offer financial services. We predict breakthrough development and exponential business growth. Such changes in consumer behavior will prompt banks to compete for representation in financial marketplaces. We expect new online products that offer more favorable terms and additional bonuses.
Banks will also search for new niches with low competition. Thus, in the B2B segment we predict a growing number of specialized products for businesses with regard to the sector, such as evergreen loans for agribusinesses or customs banking guarantees for importers, etc. Financial marketplaces are an ideal platform for selling field-specific products, because with this platform, AI algorithms can search for any target audience no matter how exotic it may seem.
By Semyon Tenyayev, CEO of Russian Business Center, founder of TenChat