Delta Data recently attended NICSA’s 2017 General Membership Meeting in Boston to gain a deeper understanding of what’s driving innovation in the financial services industry. The day passed quickly with keynotes, panel discussions, and roundtables with industry experts, and we gleaned some interesting insights into what the future of financial services may hold.

If you missed the conference but want more information on how to utilize technology to improve your business, we put together three major takeaways from our time in Boston.

Technology is disrupting financial services – it’s best to accept it

At one point or another, all of the panels touched upon the fear that generally accompanies technology’s disruption of the fintech space. The current changes occurring in financial services are ones that shake the entire industry, no matter what your position in the space may be. Rather than being afraid of the fintech revolution, it’s best to embrace the change and harness the disruption to your best advantage.

This topic was the focal point of the CTO roundtable, where all of the speakers agreed that, whether fintech was evolutionary or revolutionary, it was certainly something that was causing transformation. “Companies that are going to be successful are the ones that have momentum on their side,” said one panelist. “Momentum is the size of the change you’re willing to embrace in your organization multiplied by the rate at which you’re willing to embrace it.”

Whether that means your company begins building internally or hires a third-party vendor, using the advances in technology to your benefit is what forges the path to success.

Build a strategy

In the “Big Thinkers Share Insights on Fintech” panel, the moderator asked panelists, “It’s not about when disruption happens or when these things are coming down the line – it’s here already, so how do we respond?”

Panelists generally agreed that the best response to industry evolution is to build a strategy. Deciding whether to buy, build, or partner is an important step that will impact all of your decisions moving forward.

Should you decide to partner with a third-party vendor, it’s crucial to evaluate the partnership to make sure they’re the best fit for your company’s action plan (a topic we have covered recently). The “Best Practices in Vendor Oversight” panel discussed the need to reassess vendors to see if they’re keeping up with the industry’s evolving.

Above all, communication and consideration for the client is the best foundation for any strategy.

Efficient communication is a key area of improvement

We’ve been working to improve communication within the mutual fund industry, and statements from the speakers at the conference confirmed that we’re working towards the right target. One speaker said, “What becomes important is that the information within an organization is able to flow more quickly, and that the lines of communication and the collaboration technologies that you have internally are well designed such that – even in a hierarchical organization – it still feels extraordinarily flat.”

Efficient communication helps things run more smoothly, reducing friction and helping the business as well as the end-client. A panelist in the “Robotics Process Automation: Balancing Man and Machine” discussion said, “Any time you can get more consistent output, then you’re getting better client experiences and having better engagement.” We couldn’t agree with him more.

Moving forward, we’re going to keep in mind that in order to achieve success in our rapidly changing industry, it’s imperative to adapt, reorganize, and keep operations efficient. It’s difficult to predict the future of financial services, but being aware of trends and developments in the industry is the best way to remain competitive.

Contact us to help you stay ahead of the change.