The digital banking revolution, reshuffles at Alibaba, cutting edge AI, chatbot and fintech solutions, the possible demise of PayPal due to high fees and new peer to peer lending solutions on the rise in China. These are just some of the major trends happening right now.
By watching what the leaders in the Fintech sector are doing, it helps every market analyst to anticipate what is coming next. We picked 5 of the best in the industry and evaluated their latest moves. Here is what you should know:
Simon Hu:
After replacing the renowned Eric Jing as the CEO of Ant Financial, industry experts worldwide can see that Alibaba is serious about its reshuffle: it wants more game-changing leaders to take its vision to the next level. According to Reuters, a string of top-level executives had followed the appointment of Daniel Zhang as Chairman of Alibaba. As a vote of confidence by investors, Alibaba shares peaked in January this year.
Luigi Wewege:
Heard of the man who foretold the Digital Banking Revolution in a book? Luigi Wewege who is the Senior Vice President and the Head of Private Banking for Caye International Bank headquartered in Belize, has been credited for releasing one of the most authoritative guides on digital banking. Since joining the bank his contribution has led Caye to being recognized by Global Finance Magazine in New York awarding it as the Best Private Bank in Belize for three years in a row.
Avi Benezra:
Launching one of the first “no-coding” chatbot solutions to enable credit card processing without humans is one of the many things Avi Benezra, the CTO of SnatchBot can be credited for. Beyond just creating great technological solutions to eradicate payment fraud in call centers: he succeeded at releasing affordable technology via the SnatchBot store, now a world leader in the form of open source chatbot solutions that reduces cost and speeds up adoption rates.
Rod Drury:
Founded in New Zealand, Xero is a premium global provider of accounting software. With cloud-based solutions that are ideal for SMEs, based on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model. Recently, Xero partnered with Square to enable much faster B2B payments – which is great news given the excessive rises in payment processing fees levied by PayPal. Since PayPal started charging for refunds – many retailers and service businesses are looking for ways to jailbreak from the ecosystem; solutions like that of Xero may just be the answer to ditch PayPal.
Greg Gibb:
Lufax is a peer to peer lending platform based in Shanghai. Of late, it has become a wealth management platform that is quite futuristic. Being one of the few American CEO’s in China, Greg Gibb is certainly bucking the trend – and showing how business growth through diversification and innovation is possible in even the most competitive of environments. He is considered as one of the leaders enabling a “dramatic reshuffle” in China among banks and fintech companies.
Final scoop:
Fintech innovation is moving quickly and is now at a point where AI, RPA and omnichannel technology are acting as its growth accelerators. The question which analysts are now wondering is: can global banking regulations move in tandem with this new financial technology to really let the financial services sector flourish with great innovation and leadership?