In the 3rd quarter of 2020, there were 2.87 million apps available in Google Play Store and 1.96 million apps in Apple App Store according to Statista. That's quite a lot, right? But at the same time data indicates that the average mobile app retention rate is only 29 percent after three months.

By now, many of us are aware of how everyday purchases can affect the planet, but what about our choice of bank account? Should we make an effort to choose more sustainable banking options?

In recent years, the insurance industry has finally started to embrace digital technology, as insurtech startups have forced the traditional players to adapt if they want to survive. Wefox, a digital insurance marketplace, is at the forefront of the changes. Having successfully moved what has historically been a face-to-face business online, the company is looking into the future, a world where the Internet of Things, data science and artificial intelligence will play major roles in our lives, including how we insure what is valuable to us.

As Barclays becomes the latest bank to launch a robo-advisor offering, we look at how these AI-powered advice platforms are changing the field of wealth management and ask, “could robo-advisors replace human representatives?” 

AI is evolving at an incredible rate. Consumers are starting to encounter AI-powered products on a regular basis as we go about our increasingly digital lives, and yet the industry is still in its infancy, with lots of room to innovate. Hour One is one of the companies proving that AI can go further than we ever dreamed of. The New York-based start-up uses AI to generate digital characters based on real people which businesses can hire for educational, professional, and commercial use.

“We’re too big to fail”, said no banker after 2008. The last couple of years has brought another huge change in the industry and another statement to forget about: “We’re too big to worry about fintech”.

Artificial Intelligence is quickly becoming an integral part of banking technology. That should come as no surprise for an industry where extracting relevant information from a wealth of available data is especially important. But AI does much more than that and is being deployed for a variety of purposes, including analysis and fraud detection, trading, and customer service.

We’re excited to announce that on 13th April Netguru is organizing another Disruption Forum, this time we will focus on Fintech. If you care about the future of the financial industry as much as we do, then this free-to-attend event is something you can’t miss.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on every industry, and fintech is no exception. With many non-essential businesses unable to operate their brick-and-mortar outlets for months, an unprecedented number of consumers started going online for everything from grocery shopping and paying their bills to visiting museums and attending concerts.  In order to survive, businesses of all types had no choice but to meet their customers’ needs online, which is where fintech comes into play. With increasing competition, fintech companies must constantly evolve and innovate to stay competitive.  So what challenges and trends do fintech industry leaders expect to see this year? We decided to ask them. Read the answers below.

It’s estimated that financial consumers transfer more than $10 trillion around the world every year—and pay roughly $200 billion in bank fees for the privilege of doing so.

As one of the first startups to challenge the dominance of Britain’s high-street banks, Monzo bet big on mobile banking.

Fintech has become an indispensable part of almost any customer-related process in the financial industry. And the subsequent wave of transformation that it has sparked shows no signs of stopping.

Solarisbank is a Berlin-based fintech company that provides a Banking-as-a-Service platform, enabling companies to offer financial services without having to go through the process of obtaining their own banking license. Netguru has been working with Solarisbank on backend development.

3 out of 4 consumers worldwide use at least one fintech platform for payments and money transfers. Almost half of consumers worldwide use an insurance fintech platform. And 88% of global finance leaders are afraid of losing business as a result of technological change. 

Nowadays, with limited movement and a possible extension of the pandemic, people tend to search for remote solutions such as ordering groceries or online medical consultations. In the banking industry, some basic actions have been known for quite some time. We have been able to make transfers or check our account balance for many years now. Nevertheless, convenient online loans were and still are limited and they still require extensive paperwork.

The use of machine learning in fintech is growing. You’ve likely noticed an increasing number of companies using it to provide personalized services, transform customer experience, or improve fraud detection.

Even if you’re just a casual follower of the fintech space, you’ve probably noticed that, historically, most fintech startups don’t go public.

The fragmentation of the industry, dealing with legacy systems, and rethinking risk management – these are but a few of the issues that the banking industry needs to confront if it wants to go through a successful digital transformation. The consequences of a rapidly changing financial landscape impact banking entities of all kinds. Traditional banks need to innovate more dynamically to compete with fintech startups. Meanwhile, startups encounter hurdles to their further development, such as regulations that don’t allow for the implementation of the most innovative solutions, especially the ones involving AI and big data.

The COVID-19 economic storm hit all industries, and fintech was no exception. Yet the impact on financial companies differed by the segment of the market they operated in and the solutions they offered.

The data-driven approach is an inseparable part of every successful business. Companies operating in the fintech industry are no different. What's more, a few organizations from this sector have mastered the art of continuously validating and improving all business-related ideas. All their decisions are based on a solid analytical approach instead of trusting guesswork.