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In spite of the COVID-19 pandemic slowing down the global economy, one particular industry has been making remarkable progress. This is the Fintech which is expanding exponentially and taking giant strides in the global market.
As nationwide lockdowns compelled people to stay at home, they had to rely on some online payments platform or another for sustenance. Similarly, banking operations were mostly restricted to mobile phones and laptops. And such instances gave an impetus for advanced technical innovations in the FinTech sector.
Quite naturally, the growth in demand for such financial services led to a record-breaking investment of $22.8 billion in Q1’21. This remains the biggest funding round for a single quarter in the FinTech industry.
In fact, if everything goes well, the FinTech market is expected to reach $161.2-$305.7 billion by 2026. The figures don’t look outlandish at all if one looks at the FinTech adoption rate. In a pre-pandemic world, an Ernst and Young survey put the global consumer adoption rate at 64%.
As these statistics suggest, businesses and institutions are increasingly adopting FinTech solutions to better serve their customers. The nature of this industry is such that you need skills in both finance and technologies to make your company successful.
As more and more organizations turn to FinTech, the management of these companies are looking out for FinTech Consulting. In this article, we will tell you all that you need to know about such consulting services.
But before that, let us first understand the problems that companies face due to this unprecedented infrastructure development.
Why A Company Suffers Due To Constant Innovation In Technologies?
The 2019 EY Survey showed that 56% of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) use FinTech banking and payments technologies. However, it's often difficult for these SMEs to continuously upgrade their technology for better services.
Why it is unviable for these companies to constantly lookout for innovations? Here are some reasons:
Dearth Of Technology Support
Many of the technology used in a FinTech company is extremely sophisticated and new even to the experts. Creating Artificial Intelligence software for easy fraud detection on online payment channels and gateways requires highly skilled technicians. And it is difficult to find technology experts with such a wide variety of skills.
Lack Of Business Expertise
The nature of a FinTech company is such that someone with a strong grasp over technology alone won’t do. They also need to have extensive experience in business models so that they can understand the business needs of these organizations. It is indeed difficult to find such people who have expertise in both technology and finance.
Expensive Recruitment Procedure
Although it is hard to find experts who can add value to your fintech company, it is not impossible. Getting the recruitment know-how is however time-consuming, and the process consumes budget, which in some cases will be inefficient. The time spent on hiring and finding out if the hires were the right ones, could be the time spent on building the project. And for most SMBs, the project is the priority.
What Should FinTech Companies And Businesses Do?
Due to the above-mentioned difficulties, the management of these companies needs to make some out-of-the-box decisions.
Here’s what startups and institutions dealing with finance technology can do:
No Requirement For In-House Experts
All startups begin with the idea of creating something new to add value to the market. They might have the right ideas to carry forward with their innovations, but don’t possess the necessary talent to do so. To avoid wasting resources on the recruitment process, reaching out to a reputable source of experienced talent is often the best decision.
Venture Outside
At this stage, the solutions to your problems lie in finding the right kind of Fintech consulting services. These agencies provide the necessary assistance in developing a robust business strategy and with technology-oriented companies like. Ulam Labs, you’ll also get solutions at the technology level.
What Does A FinTech Business Require At The Technical Level?
To ensure success, it is often better for financial institutions to seek professional help from a consulting firm. This is even more applicable in instances where one needs assistance to develop the infrastructure of a platform.
So how can FinTech consultants completely overhaul the technical design of a business platform?
Developer-friendly Language
You may have a brilliant idea about digital-only banking services or other kinds of FinTech products. However, in order to translate that idea into a workable solution, you might need the help of consulting firms. The tech consultants and advisory groups working with such firms will help you define the product in a developer-friendly language.
Organization Of Workshops
Institutions would not always have the necessary talent pool to design a product for end-users. This is where consultants come in to provide the right kind of FinTech solutions.
The advisory group not only helps with budget management but also helps in harnessing the disruptive power of technology. They organize discovery workshops that help the whole team understand product features, execution strategy, and user flows.
Read also: Why Better Software Development Demands a Discovery Workshop?
Effective And User-Friendly Test Solutions
Once you onboard the FinTech solutions experts, it is time to build a cost-effective MVP for the markets. The team will provide the input to develop a product with and advise on the necessary features to understand the response from the customers.
This will serve two purposes. First, it will help to get feedback on the product. Second, the platform can decide which features should stay and which ones should be pushed to later stages of development.
Designing Low-Fidelity UX Wireframes
The capital markets and FinTech business have certain specific requirements in terms of technology. Thus, before building these sophisticated solutions, it is always better to have Low-Fidelity (Low-fi) wireframes.
These Low-Fi UX wireframes act as a blueprint to convert high-tech concepts into workable designs. Only a handful of firms will be able to decide upon the best UX wireframes for your business.
Choosing The Right Programming Language
It’s important to predict how the development will affect the future growth of the product. A decision on choosing the programming language will impact the future hiring process and scaling capabilities.
At this moment, Python has the largest demand as a programming language and is the most popular right now and thus choosing it will give you access to the largest talent pool. Python is also considered as the safest language which makes it a great choice for dealing with banking services. On the other side, you might want to choose Node.js for faster and simpler development, or C++, Go, or Rust for low-level programming problems where speed is the key factor.
We have watered down the complexity of it, but you get the drift.
Crafting The SRS Document
FinTech Consulting agencies that specialize in software designing can also help plan the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document. This is an extremely crucial part of any kind of project. SRS ensures that everyone agrees on certain fundamental assumptions and provides a correct cost and development time estimate.
Things To Look For In A FinTech Consulting Firm
Now that you know the formal requirements of FinTech-based financial institutions, it is time to go looking for consultation agencies. But what should you look for in them?
Expert Software Developers
The demand for talented software engineers is always high since they are the ones to handle and process the network data. Only a few software designers with extensive knowledge in this field will be able to deliver a satisfactory result. Tip: look at their hiring process and team.
Implementation Strategies
The client must also see to it that the agency implements the solutions as per the requirements of the institutions. Sometimes banks have particular demands about data handling and network upgrades. Thus, strategizing plays a key role in understanding the insights of clients.
Background Checks
It is always better to run a thorough check on the agency’s track record. This will give some insights into their dealings with clients. Ask around in your network about the agency and learn how they handle the data of their clients. Banks often handle sensitive information so it is important to trust them.
Communication skills
The clients will need to regularly take updates about the stage of progress and provide insights periodically. Thus, financial institutions like banks need to be in sync with these consultation agencies to arrive at a desirable outcome. It is important for the management to explore the possibilities of forging long-term partnerships with the clients for best results.
Where To Find A Suitable FinTech Consulting Solution?
As we come to the concluding section, you must be wondering where to find the perfect FinTech consulting agency. After all, building FinTech software is more complex than it seems. Software developers need to be experts in the technology field and have experience with finances to design the perfect product. Additionally, specialists need to put extra emphasis on the security and overall performance of the product.
We, at Ulam Labs, believe that we fit into all the requirements to build advanced fintech solutions for you. We have vast experience in building fintech applications for SMBs and publicly traded companies.
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