Finance is an ever-changing industry and one of the most lucrative businesses in the world. New regulations and new programs are being launched every year.
With a sudden acceleration in digitization, there has been a shift to remote trading, mobile banking transactions, and personal trading apps.
The landscape changes so often it can be hard to keep up. There are financial trends in various sectors that are predicted to understand the landscape of finance. The trends tell a lot about the future of these industries. It is often difficult to predict what will happen, but looking at the past helps understand the future better.
This blog post will discuss top finance trends for 2022:
1- Retirement and Pensions
Retirement and pensions are essential aspects of finance. They will continue to be in 2022, but the way people think about them might change drastically over the next few years.
People live longer now than they did half a century ago. People also have different ideas about retirement when it comes to how long they stay retired.
Retirement and pension may face shifts in the form of:
- Savings – The way people save for retirement has changed over the years. More and more companies have been offering 401ks so that employees can set aside a portion of their income to invest in stocks or other similar products.
- Housing – Downsizing homes are becoming popular as retirees look for ways to make money off old assets like homes.
- Healthcare – With longer lives comes more expensive healthcare. Retirement funds are likely to be used for medical expenses instead of purchasing homes or other assets in the future.
- Pension consolidation – People are also opting for pension consolidation to save on fees and get potentially better investment performance.
As people live longer and have different ideas about retirement, finance companies are looking to automation and technology to approach retirements. The shift has made a significant impact on the industry already, but it will continue into 2022 as well.
2- Finance Marketing
Marketing is a challenging field and there is a high demand for MBA in Finance in the coming years. Finance marketing will face shifts in the form of:
- Celebrity endorsements – In 2022, brands will continue using influencers to sell their products.
- SEO – Search engine optimization will remain one of the best ways to get started with brand marketing as this will help businesses to show on top of Google for several commercial keywords to generate relevant leads. Moreover, 93% of local searches display the local 3-pack search results, so local finance management companies will start taking the help of local SEO services to boost their online presence.
- Brand-to-brand collaborations – Brands have been collaborating on projects together. In 2022 more of these projects will come out, and it will be a go-to marketing tactic for many companies in various industries.
- Sponsorships with events/festivals – Big-name brands have been sponsoring events and festivals to gain exposure. In 2022 this will remain a popular tactic for brands in various industries.
- Content marketing – Brands have turned to content creation as another form of finance marketing to improve their brand presence. Text, images, and videos will continue to remain the top three channels of content marketing. Videos will play a crucial role in this regard with tools such as the online video maker from InVideo being used to create videos quickly.
- User Experience Marketing – In 2022, user experience marketing will also be a popular aspect of finance. It is because there are so many financial products that companies need to market. Marketing these products can become complicated quickly since each product has its target audience and goal. It makes it difficult for brands to focus on one particular group when they have multiple customer profiles.
3- Digital Engagement
Around 27% of US businesses noted an increase in contactless payment by customers. Globally, the market size of contactless payment methods is likely to grow to $18 billion by 2025.
This trend is also extending to the banking sector. In 2020, around 44% of retail banking customers used mobile apps to conduct business.
Since 2021, there has been an increase in consumers’ dependency on mobile payment and online banking solutions. Thus, the financial services industry continues to invest in modern tools for data analytics, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms.
Digital engagement in the banking sector can be increased by tapping into what customers need and delivering services through mobile.
Another way by which the banking industry can further expand its digital offering is by integrating its payments platforms into its services. For example, Apple Pay now accounts for three-quarters of all U.S Contactless Payments.
4- Live Assistance
Providing real-time support helps achieve greater customer satisfaction. As per a report by Gartner, 85% of banks will perform customer engagement with the help of AI chatbots in the coming years.
Implementing live assistance helps getting details of your customer’s banking journey and customer experience. It enables banks to provide greater customer services in the following ways:
- Discover common customer enquiries.
- Gain insights on improving the customer journey
- Identify the touchpoints between your bank and customers.
- Know what your customers expect from your bank.
In addition, a chatbot is a good choice banks can use to automate their simple tasks, such as knowing account balance, outstanding credit card amount, how to change the address, and more where human interactions are not needed.
Nowadays, customers demand faster support and 24×7 availability. Thus, chatbots can provide instant support to simpler queries and engage with customers round the clock.
For example, Swedbank built an AI assistant, Nina, to deliver an intuitive, automated experience for all the digital channels by engaging with customers in natural conversations using voice and text.
5- Big Data and Analytics
In the digital banking experience, truly understanding your customers is one of the best ways for sustainable competitive advantage. It includes leveraging the available data and taking a 360-degree view of your banking customer.
As per FIS Consumer Banking report, around 72% of all bank interactions happen digitally.
Thus, including big data analytics helps in enhancing financial services experience and making crucial business decisions.
With the help of big data analytics, banks can gain insights to segment customers, evaluate opportunities, and predict models to strengthen engagements and increase customer experience of digitized banking services.
For example, Personal Financial Management solutions were initially used to primitively classify account transactions into buckets. However, in the current scenario, it uses comparative insights based on consumer history, attitude, and behavior extensively to provide personalized financial advice.
Conclusion
The trends mentioned above are only a few of many that will continue into 2022. With the rise in technology and automation, finance companies have been able to focus on what customers want instead of changing their strategies around significant changes in society or culture.
They have also been able to focus on technology and automation thanks to the rise in cyber security concerns. With more threats, there is a need for finance companies to change their strategies around civil tax recovery reports because it helps people understand where they stand with various organizations.
