The future of fintech is inevitably going to change the way that we live our daily lives and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the change. Nearly every business found themselves suddenly needing to adopt digital payment methods, embedded finance, and mobile-first experiences in order to satisfy their customers. Here are Yan Wu’s fintech predictions for 2022.‍

Data dominance

2022 is the year brands wake up to the power of their customers’ financial data and start to introduce their first embedded financial products.

More and more tech companies are using the power of data to embed financial products into their apps to give personalized experiences for their users. Tech companies know their customers extremely well through analyzing their user data. For example, Apple knows their customers’ spend habits intimately through analyzing data from the users’ iPhone. Through the power of data, Apple is able to offer a personalized Apple Card experience, with specialized rewards, benefits and spend limits to each user. The power of harnessing the data to embed financial products is the reason why embedded finance is expected to reach $7 trillion by 2030.‍

Increased financial inclusion

Nearly 25% of the U.S. population is underbanked (Morning Consult) and not everyone has the access nor financial education to obtain and improve their FICO score to qualify for credit. Bond believes in empowering tech companies willing to disrupt these outdated paradigms and provide banking services to underserved markets. The foundation of building these new and personalized experiences will be sharing of data.

Squire Technologies, an operating system for barbershops, partnered with Bond to launch the Squire Card which allows barbers to access wages, tips and commissions instantly instead of waiting weeks for a paycheck. Since Squire has access to both the historical earnings and future appointments of each barber, they are able to very confidently build an experience allowing their barbers to access funds earlier. This digital-first experience negates the need for barbers, which are traditionally underserved, to rely on predatory payday loans or costly cash advances. We’ll see this trend continuing into 2022 and beyond and Bond is motivated to do our part to help increase financial inclusion for all.‍

Culture and mission wins

The battle for talent is becoming more fierce and we believe that 2022 will continue to be competitive — particularly in technical recruiting. According to FT Partners, a fintech focused investment bank, private fintech companies raised more than $100 billion in the first three quarters of 2021, more than double the amount raised in the same period one year earlier.  With access to plentiful resources, huge compensation packages seem like the norm.

As candidates are presented with multiple competitive offers, company culture and mission will win. At Bond, our remote-oriented and collaborative environment was recently recognized as one of the top 100 Best Places to Work for Remote-First companies. Our perks, benefits, and overall company culture are geared towards a mission-driven company adjusted for the pandemic-induced remote environment. Our most important investment is our people and we believe that ensuring our team is well taken care of ensures they do their best work for our customers.

Having been at the helm of analytics and data science within both the finance and technology sectors, Yan knows a thing or two about trends. If you want to chat about these three callouts, drop him a line on LinkedIn or contact the Bond team to see what you could build.