Capital Markets innovation and the FinTech landscape

Digital future
Fueled by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud and Big Data,
and the growing demand for access to information anytime and
anywhere, technology is disrupting all areas of the enterprise
across industries and in every geography.
Investment banks were early adopters of digital technology,
and the technological advances they made in the front office
arguably outpaced the developments in many other industries.
Unfortunately, the pace of innovation has not been maintained –
least of all in other areas of the bank, such as the back office.
The digital revolution brings expectations of a superior user
experience. Added to which, many of the human personas behind
investment banks’ counterparties are millennials – digital natives
who have grown up with mobile technology. Investment banks
have a lot of catching up to do.
However, there is a silver lining. Some of the technology
developments that we cover later in this paper play right into the
hands of capital markets firms. Why? Because they typically have
powerful compute facilities, deep technology expertise and the
robust commercial mindset needed to understand and harness
the benefits these developments could bring.
50%
By 2020, 50% of the
workforce will be
Generation Y and
Z members – and
they have grown up
connected, collaborative
and mobile 9
7
9
Jakob Morgan, “Five Trends Shaping the Future of Work,” Forbes website, 20 June 2013, www.forbes.com/sites/
jacobmorgan/2013/06/20/five-trends-shaping-the-future-of-work/#43e2ef0e2161, accessed 7 January 2015.
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