This book demystifies the developments and defines the buzzwords in the wide open space of digitalization and finance, exploring the space of FinTech through the lens of the financial services professional and what they need to know to stay ahead. With chapters focusing on the customer interface, payments, smart contracts, workforce automation, robotics, crypto currencies and beyond, this book aims to be the go-to guide for professionals in financial services and banking on how to better understand the digitalization of their industry.​ The book provides an outlook of the impact digitalization will have in the daily work of a CFO/CRO and a structural influence to the financial management (including risk management) department of a bank.

This book presents a collection of state-of-the-art research findings on the digital transformation of financial services. Digitalization has fundamentally changed financial services and has a tendency to reshape the landscape of the financial industry in an unprecedented manner. Over the last ten years, the development of new financial technologies has contributed to the creation of new business and organizational models, along with new approaches to service delivery. By encompassing significant conceptual contributions, innovations in methods and techniques, and by delineating the main applications of digital transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the volume extends current knowledge on digital transformation in the financial industry. The book is divided into two parts. The first part provides a social-science perspective on digital transformation in the financial industry. The second part provides the most recent evidence on how financial technologies are transforming financial services on the markets, and how the adoption of modern information technologies fosters setting up new financial services. Further, this part outlines new approaches to digital transformation in the financial industry. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and researchers of finance, monetary economics, and business, as well as practitioners interested in a better understanding of the digital transformation of financial services, new financial technologies, and innovations in finance.

This note examines the implications of digital innovation for market structure and attendant policies, including financial and competition regulation. There have been several surveys of regulatory responses. This note takes a step back, to look at what the economic theory of banking and financial intermediation can tell us about how technology may drive industrial organization in the sector, and how that might inform further policy responses. The paper roots the impact of the digital transformation of finance in innovations that have enabled providers to address long-standing challenges of financial intermediation, including asymmetric information, uncertainty, incomplete markets, and fixed and variable costs of production. The paper describes how digital innovation affects these key economic frictions in finance and alters the financial services value chain and industrial organization. The forces driving these changes, and potential outcomes in terms of industry structure, lead to insights for policy makers on how to harness the benefits of fintech, while mitigating some of the risks, particularly around competition and market structure. The focus is on economic and technological forces that apply broadly across financial services. It recognizes that the sector encompasses a wide range of different products and services and is composed of numerous sub-markets that might use different technologies or have different economic structures. These may thus diverge in market structure and competition outcomes.

Fintech—the application of digital technology to financial services—is reshaping the future of finance. Digital technologies are revolutionizing payments, lending, investment, insurance, and other financial products and services—and the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this process. Digitalization of financial services and money is helping to bridge gaps in access to financial services for households and firms and is promoting economic development. Improved access to basic financial services translates into better firm productivity and growth for micro and small businesses, as well as higher incomes and resilience to improve the lives of the poor. Technology can lower transaction costs by overcoming geographical access barriers; increasing the speed, security, and transparency of transactions; and allowing for more tailored financial services that better serve consumers, including the poor. Women can especially benefit. Yet too many people and firms still lack access to essential financial services that could help them thrive. It is time for policy makers to embrace fintech opportunities and implement policies that enable and encourage safe financial innovation and adoption. Fintech and the Future of Finance: Market and Policy Implications explores the implications of fintech and the digital transformation of financial services for market outcomes, on the one hand, and regulation and supervision, on the other hand—and how these interact. The report, which provides a high-level perspective for senior policy makers, is accompanied by notes that focus on salient issues for a more technical audience. As the financial sector continues to transform itself, policy trade-offs will evolve, and regulators will need to ensure that market outcomes remain aligned with core policy objectives. Several policy implications emerge. 1. Manage risks, while fostering beneficial innovation and competition. 2. Broaden monitoring horizons and reassess regulatory perimeters. 3. Review regulatory, supervisory, and oversight frameworks. 4. Be mindful of evolving policy trade-offs as fintech adoption deepens. 5. Monitor market structure and conduct to maintain competition. 6. Modernize and open financial infrastructures. 7. Ensure public money remains fit for the digital world. 8. Pursue strong cross-border coordination and sharing of information and best practices.

This book, one of three volumes, showcases the effective transformation of companies providing banking and insurance services. This first volume gives a business-oriented introduction to the setting and the current challenges of fintech, regtech, and insurtech and provides an outlook on what will be needed in the future. Specific sub-departments in financial services are examined with a view to accounting, risk, and regulatory segments. The book also addresses the importance of cultural aspects of the coming digital transformation with an eye to requirements that will enable a digital bank or insurance company to thrive in 2025. The angle shifts over the volumes from a business-driven approach in “Disruption and DNA” to a strong technical focus in “Data Storage, Processing and Analysis”, leaving “Digitalization and Machine Learning Applications” with the business and technical aspects in-between.

Due to the emergence of innovative technologies, various professional fields are transforming their traditional business practices. Specifically, the financial and legal markets are experiencing this digital transformation as professionals and researchers are finding ways to improve efficiency, personalization, and security in these economic sectors. Significant research is needed to keep pace with the continuous advancements that are taking place in finance. Fostering Innovation and Competitiveness with FinTech, RegTech, and SupTech provides emerging research exploring the theoretical and practical aspects of technologically innovative mechanisms and applications within the financial, economic, and legal markets. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as crowdfunding platforms, crypto-assets, and blockchain technology, this book is ideally designed for researchers, economists, practitioners, policymakers, analysts, managers, executives, educators, and students seeking current research on the strategic role of technology in the future development of financial and economic activity.

This book analyzes the set of forces driving the global financial system toward a period of radical transformation and explores the transformational challenges that lie ahead for global and regional or local banks and other financial intermediaries. It is explained how these challenges derive from the newly emerging post-crisis structure of the market and from shadow and digital players across all banking operations. Detailed attention is focused on the impacts of digitalization on the main functions of the financial system, and particularly the banking sector. The author elaborates how an alternative model of banking will enable banks to predict, understand, navigate, and change the external ecosystem in which they compete. The five critical components of this model are data and information mastering; effective use of applied analytics; interconnectivity and “junction playing”; development of new business solutions; and trust and credibility assurance. The analysis is supported by a number of informative case studies. The book will be of interest especially to top and middle managers and employees of banks and financial institutions but also to FinTech players and their advisers and others.