Fintech Trends For 2022: Building For Resiliency and Security
Fintech Trends For 2022: Building For Resiliency and Security
Fintech Trends For 2022: Building For Resiliency and Security
for 2022
Fifty or so years ago, the world did not rely on computers. A small
number were emerging from companies such as IBM, DEC, HP,
Olivetti and others, but very few compared to today — although
already more than IBM President Thomas J. Watson’s famous
prediction that “there is a world market for about five computers”.
It was not until the 1970s that an IBM mainframe was first used
for air traffic control — one of the first ‘mission-critical’ uses of a
computer where if the system failed, then disaster would almost
certainly follow. Philip Harrison
CCO for Fintech
We now rely on computers for many things which we take for Trifork Group
granted, including banking, payments, commerce, communications
and messaging — 100 billion messages are sent via WhatsApp
daily. For services in these areas, we have become conditioned to
expect always-on availability. So when something fails — as with
WhatsApp for 6 hours back in October — there are major negative
headlines.
The world today depends upon systems that are reliable, high
performance and crash-proof, and Erlang Solutions has been
building these types of systems for clients for more than 20 years
in fintech and other industries. Here we bring you a report that
describes some of the technologies needed to be competitive,
agile and innovative in this new age of human-centric technology.
Table of Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1
INTRODUCTION 2
CONCLUSION 32
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 35
Executive Summary
When it comes to financial technology, or fintech, the the pandemic has shown that using technologies that
pace of change continues to accelerate. Financial are proven and built to cope with the unpredictability
services institutions are looking to their tech teams of the modern world is vitally important.
to drive innovation to protect market share and
explore new opportunities. Against a background of Successful financial services firms display a new
disruptive macroeconomic trends and potentially way of working that is multi-disciplinary and mission-
revolutionary emerging technology, business focused, pulling in the same direction to achieve value
leaders must ensure they make the right strategic for end-users. Customer-centricity is becoming a key
decisions for future success. focus, and millennials and Generation Z will play a
big part in the shape of things to come. To be part of
The issue of modernising legacy systems remains this exciting future, business leaders in the industry
of foremost concern for incumbents and is an must prioritise their tech strategy and place software
area where using outsourced resources needs to engineering at the heart of business planning.
be especially well managed. The stress placed on
systems caused by spikes in online commerce since
Key Takeaways
We see these as the five strategic must-haves for fintech success for 2022 and beyond:
1 2 3
Leaders with a greater Software System security, fault
understanding of technology engineering tolerance and resilience as
at the core of priorities
business strategy
4 5
Choice of technologies that are battle- Access to the talent and skills necessary
tested and, if open source, supported by to execute and win
a strong community and robust ecosystem
First, we look at the state of play in global financial services and the macro factors driving change. Next, we
consider some of the main technology trends that impact organisations in the sector. Finally, we look at the
immediate and long-term tech challenges being faced and the principles of software engineering being used
to achieve success.
Government (-40,-19)
-35
Source: a16z: How to Win the Future UNETHICAL
For many, this lack of trust has been simmering In a world advancing at such a pace from a
since the 2008 financial crisis. The end result is that technological perspective, politically and culturally,
individuals are seeking more from traditional power there is paradoxical movement in reverse gear in
structures, including the financial services industry. some areas. If this reversal came to be applied to
For most millennials and members of Gen Z, the technology and financial services, what might things
traditional paths to life’s primary goals have become look like?
obfuscated, and they are looking for something
more dynamic when it comes to how they manage We spoke to the author and speaker, Chris Skinner,
their money. one of the most knowledgeable minds in the industry
and someone not afraid to offer a contrarian view of
These influential groups are demanding significantly things. He warned of a “Big Regression” to possibly
more from banks and financial products. Following come over the next few years: “my prediction is that
the behavioural changes brought on by the pandemic, there will be a major shift away from things people
they are not alone in this regard. don’t know and understand and a reversal to things
they do know and understand.” He points to this
as apparent in China and now happening in Europe
and the US, citing stalling peer-to-peer lending and
crowdfunding underperformance as evidence.
$6.773
$6.169
$5.545
$4.921
$4.213
$3.351 25.7%
24.5%
23.4%
22.3%
20.5% 21.0%
19.6%
17.8%
16.8%
13.8%
12.7%
11.2%
9.8% 9.0%
“A blockchain is a distributed
database that is shared among the
nodes of a computer network. As
a database, a blockchain stores
information electronically in digital
format. The innovation with a
blockchain is that it guarantees the
fidelity and security of a record of
data and generates trust without the
need for a trusted third party.”
Investopedia
Keith Bear
Fellow at University of Cambridge’s
Centre for Alternative Finance
We spoke with Eran Stiller, Lead Software Architect In the age of the machine, Zillow serves as an example
at badook, about how the massive flows of valuable of where human critical thinking still has the edge.
data work in organisations. He explained that the Jim Marous, global speaker, podcast host and co-
area has some serious potential pitfalls: “These publisher at The Financial Brand describes how people
algorithms rely on data. If the data is good, they are still needed even around advanced automation:
can build a usable model. But unfortunately, our “data, intelligence and analytics will be used to identify
data changes over time, and its quality decreases. opportunities, facilitate innovation, refine decisions
Errors in data collection occur, data pipelines can and support contextual communications. This will not
inadvertently wreak havoc, and assumptions that be done devoid of humans, but will be enhanced by
we previously had change over time and might no humans and will enhance humans.”
longer be valid, causing potentially catastrophic
business results.” He highlighted the story of Zillow, Marous continues on how AI is ultimately a tool that
the US real-estate company that wrote down 38% is linked to improving the quality of people’s lives: “AI
or $10 billion in a week. The problem was caused by and applied analytics will facilitate customer access
flawed automated investments into property based to financial tools, advice, and embedded solutions
on algorithms that did not consider changes in the that can improve trust and differentiate a brand by
real world environment. empowering the customer to partner on their financial
wellness journey. This level of sharing will also assist
in protecting the customers’ privacy and security.”
“There has never been a time when the use of data, AI and applied
analytics has been more important. They will illustrate what’s
happening across the organisation, why it happened and what
will happen next. This will enable employees actions to improve
back-office operations, reduce costs, save time, improve customer
Jim Marous
service, loyalty and profits.”
Global Speaker
Co-Publisher
The Financial Brand
“Ultimately, it is the
opportunity to eliminate
the friction in user
interactions that makes
banking contextualised
Paolo Sironi to become embedded
Banking at IBM Consulting and unlock ‘new’ value.”
and Bestselling Author
Time and again, we witness similar issues cropping test when dealing with the spike in online activity at
up in clients’ businesses, from system design right the outset of the pandemic, as the backends are still
through to testing, deployment, infrastructure, scaling running on legacy infrastructure.
and reliability. Of course, no two projects are the same
and we adopt a bespoke approach depending on
the problems to be solved, but in this section, we will “Every company is now
cover some guiding principles that will help you and
a software company”
your team make better technology decisions.
Watts S. Humphrey
Telecommunications
spend heavily on
Education and social services
IT
Professional Services
Healthcare
Insurance
Government
Industrial products
Retail trade
Wholesale trade
0 2 4 6
John Samuel
Head of Middleware Technologies
Erlang Solutions
Francesco Cesarini
Founder and Technical Director
Erlang Solutions
Part of this is deciding how to create an engineering The financial industry has adopted agile working
mindset at your organisation to foster technology- methods in order to innovate and iterate faster, be
driven thinking. This means adopting a solutions more responsive to changing market dynamics,
focused and scientific approach to problems and regulatory reform and advancing technology.
encouraging the agile mentality of trial and error, and Márton Veres is a Technical Project Manager at
understanding that failure is actually progress. When Erlang Solutions and has substantial experience in
it comes to shipping new products and features the areas of project management and consultancy
in this dynamic market fear of failure needs to be in telecoms and financial services, and says that the
eliminated throughout the organisation. agile approach is: “essential for building trust within
the organisation.”
Márton Veres
Technical Project
Manager
Erlang Solutions
Genevieve Leveille
Principal Founder
and CEO AgriLedger
Lloyd Wahed
CEO and founder
Mana Search
Partnering with an extended team to work on your is the separation of tasks and the efficiency gains
architecture and backend services while your in- we derive from it. By focussing on what you’re good
house team does the frontend and UI/UX can improve at and getting someone else to do the other bits,
your working capacity. This can achieve faster time everybody can play to their strengths and bring new
to market by developing and launching products propositions to life or launch a new product faster
quickly. As Nucoro’s Nikolai Hack explains: “Faster than otherwise possible.”
innovation. A core principle of the modern economy
With a lot more business activity online, the threat of a potential cyberattack causing
worldwide panic and loss of confidence in the financial system is at the top of any business
leader or CTO’s agenda. The next grey swan event (predictable but unlikely) might be such
an attack. Such an event would cause grievous losses and severely harm public trust in
financial institutions.
Jim Hart
Chief Security Officer
Pollinate
56%
% of open Technology (software or IT) 57%
source 48%
Telecom, communications or media 48%
technology
38%
sometimes Transportation and automotive
35%
or frequently 38%
Education 24%
contributing
30%
upstream Retail
44%
29%
Financial services 47%
26%
Manufactiuring and raw materials
27%
24%
Government
40%
23%
Healthcare 42%
Open source projects are a great option that is growing It found that the main advantages are: higher-
in use for financial services and offer the chance to quality software and reduced cost of ownership
benefit from existing communities and battle-proven vs proprietary software options, no vendor lock-in,
technologies. A recent study was commissioned by access to knowledgeable, active communities to
the European Commission to analyse the economic innovate and share and enhanced security.
impact of Open Source Software and Hardware.
We spoke with Valentin Rothberg Principal Engineer at Red Hat: “Building on top of open source has proven to
allow focusing on the real business value without having to deal with the entire complexity of today’s operating
systems stack.” We also grabbed a word with Daniel Pilon, Engineering Manager at the fast-growing fintech
SumUp, who highlighted: “The speed that companies are now able to deliver new technologies without the
burden of having to reinvent the wheel or pay a huge amount for proprietary software is one of the foundations
for such a transformation.”
The Fintech Open Source Foundation’s “2021 State using open source tech, you should engage with
of Open Source in Financial Services Survey”, specialist partners experienced in the area.
found that: “despite open source adoption in
financial services being widespread, there is a huge The Erlang and Elixir ecosystem is especially strong and
opportunity to leverage it to make gains in efficiency well established, with the technologies found in some
and innovation.” There are also some shortcomings of the biggest systems in the world from WhatsApp
of which to be aware, such as implementation and to Cisco. As Daniel Pilon from the fintech firm SumUp
usability issues where, for example, software may says: “the power and synergy of the Elixir community
not be personalised for the specific use case. To are impressive as there’s always somewhere one can
mitigate this and other general concerns about reach out in order to seek help or contribute.”
Jens Lundberg
Head of Development Kivra
The pandemic has shown that disruptions can happen at any time,
and even the best-prepared institutions are unable to predict them.
Preparation does, however, yield greater resilience, and we see this
along with security, flexibility and faster speed-to-market as the
gateway to greater innovation and improved scale and growth. It
is clear that system design and technical infrastructure are vital as
the foundations to succeed in the space.
As a programming language originally designed for If you have a fintech project you think we could help
the telecoms industry where fault-tolerance and with, please do not hesitate to get in touch to speak
reliability are essential, Erlang and Elixir are the right with one of our expert consultants.
Contact Us
London | Stockholm | Krakow | Budapest | US remote
www.erlang-solutions.com general@erlang-solutions.com
Michael Jaiyeola
Fintech Marketing Lead
at Erlang Solutions
Disclaimer
This document is intended for general informational purposes only and does not take into account the reader’s specific
circumstances. Erlang Solutions disclaims, to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any and all liability for the
accuracy and completeness of the information in this document and for any acts or omissions made based on such
information.