What's In Store For Fintech Sector In 2019?

Fintech is a hot topic these days. The sector is growing rapidly with startups gaining acceptance globally. A joint report from The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (ISCA) says that London and Singapore are excellent hubs for fintech activity. It further notes that these regions are interesting to explore because they have many of the same strengths, but also very different circumstances, providing a richer picture of fintech development around the world.

With the sector crawling into every segment of the financial services, it’s a good time to take a look at a few trends that will dominate the fintech market in 2019.

We asked Prajit Nanu, co-founder and chief executive officer of InstaReM,a cross-border payments company, what’s in store for the fintech sector in 2019.

Here’s what he had to say. Edited excerpts:

 Unlike the funding rush earlier in the decade, investors in 2018 turned more selective and invested in fintechs with scalable business models. This trend will get more pronounced in 2019, with fintech startups going mainstream with further acceptance.

With startups creating scale and developing new capabilities, consumers will continue to migrate to fintechs that offer superior customer experience and better value for their money and time. While newer fintechs will emerge, the existing ones will continue to scale up and start looking at profitability.

Only 27 percent of Southeast Asia’s 600 million population had a bank account in 2016, according to KPMG. This means that more than 160 million people are deprived of the opportunities that one gets due to banking access. Rising penetration of Internetenabled mobile devices offers a great opportunity for the unbanked to get access to formal banking. Fintechs are making the most of this opportunity with innovative digital platforms/solutions, thus, taking banking—lending, payments, remittances and more—to the underserved.