Fintech Landscape and Customer Expectations

Highlight: The customer experience and “meet all need” mindset will be pivotal in the coming years for fintech.

Digital lending is emerging as a viable alternate for reaching those who have not been able to access financial services in the past. Geographical limitations can be overcome through innovative products, which in turn help in reducing transaction costs, enhancing transparency, and improving the overall accessibility of services. Factors such as diverse and varying customer needs, specific market structures, and regulations have to lead to the creation of a great variety of digital lending models, with each incorporating financial inclusion uniquely. 

Some catalysts that are pushing digital adoption in India are innovative product solutions that offer a better user experience, thanks to the rising number of fintech players. This is set to be extremely beneficial for both the industry and consumers in the forthcoming years.

The development of innovative products that specifically cater to the needs of low-income, semi-urban and rural customers in unorganized sectors at one end is the main focus of digital lenders. This, along with an emphasis on providing the best-in-class holistic experience to urban high-end consumers has helped the sector grow immensely. The financial landscape, can thus, seamlessly facilitate the launch, designing, implementation, and execution of customized products and services. This has also been fuelled by adopting business and operational models which run on cutting-edge technologies like open application programming interface (API), big data, and AI. Consumers stand to gain from this in more ways than one- a wide range of financial products at competitive prices and this, in turn, will also make financial institutions more efficient.

Previously, fintech’s primary objective was to provide a better experience in Credit cards, Cardless EMI, Instant cash, personal loans, SMB loans, etc. Over time, most players had to offer diversified and specialized products across customer needs. 

For e.g addressing a niche pain point by providing microcredits in consumers’ bank accounts into multi-products, multi segments to serve our customers who need credit anytime; from buying skill upgrade courses, school fees, mobile, online purchases or monthly purchases, cab payout, utilities 

Customer experience in lending is changing significantly and success in digital lending will empower and enable lenders to offer a plethora of services to customers with quality and highly customized products. It will be critical to convey that all their financial needs will be met here. In a nutshell, it can be best defined as ‘embedded finance’, with other services that ensure the best in class user experience. 

Companies need to be clear about the customer segment, what need that section has, and ensure that the customer does not need to think twice or doubt that solution.  Naturally, delivering such a speacialised experience needs unique readiness in the thinking, processes, risk management, partnership management. The universal acceptance of the limits for customers is extremely necessary. The merchant networks will play a key role in this journey: they will have to provide a highly intuitive, easy-to-understand interface for the customers. 

Fintech is transforming the way we live and function every day and is paving the way for financial accessibility and freedom for many. This is also making the lending sector more transparent, cost-effective, and time-saving. Technological innovations are key to revolutionizing the financial services industry and benefiting society. The customer experience and “meet all need” mindset will be pivotal in the coming years.

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