The Career Opportunities That A FinTech Startup Offers

Fintech and Startup – two words that have caught the imagination of job seekers worldwide. Everyone wants to be in on a piece of the action. But before you jump headlong into either of these two sectors, it would be a good idea to understand the different roles in a fintech startup so that you can align your skillsets accordingly, or pick up new skills if required.
Also Read : Is There Any Future in FinTech?

Graphics Designer and UI/UX Specialist

The biggest factor that determines how successful a fintech startup would be is the kind of user interface (UI) it has, and the user experience (UX) it offers. So there are the lot of opportunities for skilled UX/UI experts who have exposure to UI prototyping, UX writing, visual communication, interaction design and of course the required coding. Graphics design is another important aspect and good web designers will always be in demand, especially those who have exposure to mobile-only applications.

Product Engineer

The products and offerings need to be developed in an agile environment so that more and more products and product variants can be rolled out in shorter sprints. Product engineers having experience and skills in this kind of product development approach would be highly regarded and always in demand.

Product Manager

This role would need someone with product engineering experience as well as the ability to productively interact with financial institutions as well as payment merchants with the help of use cases so that he can drive buy-ins and adoption of his offerings.

Cloud Management Specialists

More and more fintechs are moving away from heavy investments in infrastructure and instead they are opting to move their backend and most of their offerings to a cloud-based environment. A cloud manager would need not only the technical expertise but also have a strong grip on the essentials of cybersecurity and regulatory compliance.

Data Scientist

Like in every industry sector, fintechs also have begun to rely on the mining static as well as unstructured or dynamic data so that the offerings can be used by those outside the traditional channels. The data scientist would play a major role in this, and use his analytics to help the fintech provide more customized offerings according to the customer segment targeted.

Digital Marketing

The entire gamut of advertising channels on digital mediums would need to be harnessed so that the correct customer segments can be profitably targeted.

Content Specialists

Working in tandem with the digital marketing team would be a team of content writers who would design the content to be used in the digital marketing efforts. Fintech being a comparatively new and still evolving area, this team would need to come up with thought-provoking as well as curiosity-generating content on social media, blogs, and other public forum from where large-scale adoption of the offerings can be driven.
As you can see, there are a number of exciting career options in fintech, and the great thing about being part of a fintech startup is that you might also get the opportunity to don multiple hats and pick up additional skills.
Related Article: What are the Advantages of Learning Fintech

The Flaws of Finance – What You Should Know About

 
Financial services have become one of the most sought after career options for today’s business graduates. Over 31% of all graduates from Harvard Business school entered the field last year alone. The main reason for this influx of recent business graduates into the field is because of the high pay that it offers. One can expect to earn at least twice as much as people working other jobs when working in the financial services industry.
The functions served by the world’s financial sector today is four-fold. Number one is the smooth functioning of all payments systems, which are integral to any economy working properly. Number two is to ensure the smooth transfer of money from people who save it to those who need money either through loans or as part of pooled savings such as mutual funds. The third is stabilising the price of financial assets by investing in markets. And finally, the fourth is to use insurance policies and the like to help people manage financial and physical risk.
While the functions mentioned above are important, other services like power, water, security and disaster services are also at the very least, equally as important. In spite of this, people working in other sectors are paid less and receive fewer benefits than those working in the financial services sector.
The financial sector has had a history of treating its customers badly. We just need to consider the number of scams that have risen up in the industry in the last few decades to understand this. More often than not, we see financial establishments sell products with highly convoluted wording to gullible customers who usually don’t realise what they are getting themselves into. The main reason that instances like this keep happening is due to the fact that there is a huge disparity between those who work in the industry and the customer when it comes to information. As such, those that work within the industry, design any product that they sell to customers in such a way that it maximises profit for the financial institution.
Often, it is not easy to distinguish between a banker profiting due to good investments made at the right time using pure skill, and ones who just get lucky. As such this brings into question the capabilities of ex-financial sector professionals who now hold power within the country’s economy and are in charge of various facets of it. Financial institutions have been known to spend billions of dollars on lobbying various governments and the fact these people have the amount of power that they do almost purely due to them having a huge financial advantage which may have been gained either due to luck or taxpayer subsidies doesn’t really seem like the smartest idea.
As we have seen, the financial sector is rife with some pretty serious flaws. Serious regulation is required to make sure this industry works in a more transparent and customer-friendly manner. Governments and elected representatives must be able to look beyond the financial support they enjoy from such institutions and regulate them in a manner beneficial to all those involved and not just themselves.

How FinTech is Seeing a Major Growth in India

With a population of more than a billion, India is definitely a promising sector for the FinTech. Before we move ahead, let us first explain what is FinTech? In simple terms, FinTech is the industry that comprises of the companies that use the technology to offer financial services. These companies work in different areas of financial management, insurance, electronic payments etc.

In the past decade, FinTech has taken over globally and is expected to rise in future as well. India isn’t behind in this global trend. With over half a billion invested in the Indian FinTech over the last three years, the segment only shoes promising future of growth.

Also Read: Introduction to Fintech

In 2015, around 12,000 FinTech came up globally making up the total investment of $19 billion. It is expected that by 2020, the global investment by FinTech will be $45 billion, which is a steep rise of 7.1%. According to the NASSCOM reports, India has around 400 FinTech companies with the investment of around $420 million. Reports also suggest that by the year 2020, the investment of the FinTech companies in India will increase to $2.4 billion.
With the help of government regulations, banks and other financial companies, India has formed a favourable ecosystem for the growth of FinTech. FinTech is helping bring about the change in the personal financial management through e-payments and e-wallets, in the country that is predominantly cash- driven.

A number of contributes towards the growth of FinTech in India. The number of internet users in India reached to 465 million in June 2017. With more and more number of people depending on the internet for varied reasons, the digitalisation has taken a new turn. Government’s effort in bringing the digital revolution through ‘Digital India’ campaign is opening many opportunities for the existing FinTechs and start-ups.
Government Regulations:
The government has realised the potential of FinTech in India and is constantly making efforts to make the regulations friendlier. In 2014, the government relaxed the rule of KYC process for customers making online transactions and payments up to Rs 20,000 per month. It is expected that the government will lay out a new set of norms to revamp the P2P lending market.

To promote cashless transactions, the government is now offering tax rebates to the merchants for accepting at least 50% of electronic payment.
‘Jan Dhan Yojana’ aims at providing a bank account to every citizen of India. Since the launch of the scheme in 2014, 240 million bank accounts have been opened. FinTech start-ups can use the opportunities to provide easy and seamless transaction service.
Incubator and Accelerators:
The role of incubators and accelerators are not limited to funding but also strengthening the financial industry. The incubators provide the obligation-free environment for the start-ups. India is among the top five countries that show promising results for the start-ups. The initiatives ‘smart city’ and ‘digital India’ are set to strengthen the technological infrastructure of the country. To show the support to FinTech start-ups, banks and financial institutes have partnered with incubators and accelerators.

Related Article: Is There Any Future in FinTech?

Seven Recent Developments In Fintech You Must Know

Seven Recent Developments In Fintech You Must Know

Fintech is the automation of commercial work using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to change the way of our banking system. It mainly targets Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, Regtech, and Dash.  Fintech is undoubtedly one of the most thrilling places to be in the world of technologies.
Several products are released every year that can make paying, lending, saving, securing, investing or managing money easy for both business client and the individual.  These products have gained much trust of the investors and ordinary people. But there are some more exciting facts which you should be knowing.

  • Enormous Investments for digital development:

Fintech focuses on digitization. With the growth of fintech, your expectations from the non-banking industries, and online banking policies have increased.
With this increase in expectation, money investment of the financial firms has skyrocketed aggressively in the digital transformation projects. As there is more money, experimenting and applying with their ideas in real life has got more comfortable.

  • The borderline of Fintech technology:

Fintech revolves around AI and blockchain. Researchers say that in the upcoming years, Fintech will be able to make the whole world digital, like an online fintech. This evolution will make everyone move towards cognitive computing from advanced robotic technology.

  • Digital banks a necessity!

In the coming years, the whole world will be in your hand. From making a phone call to recognizing face over social media, everything happens with our phone. Coping up with digital dominance over human dramas is a challenging job, but Fintech is doing it well.
To do better each day, Fintech industry gets a higher amount of money from big industrial companies. This is how new applications are being made and reaching us to get modernized.

  • It starts in your head:

If you start designing your thoughts with creative engineering, your UX vision will come into reality. Branches of technology like Augmented Reality(AR) and Virtual Reality(VR) are getting benefited from the developers when they are aiming at customer experience improvement.  Using the benefit, the developers are creating gamified experiences, in the UX design technology with automata and AI.

  • Neobanks:

In recent years, digital neobanks have arisen a lot. Neobanks offer you user-friendly data interfacing without keeping their banking license. In comparison with traditional banks, neobanks provide faster transactions and better services, as per user experiences.
This significant data initiative pushes the industry towards more open-minded business with more sophisticated tools. To enlarge the market, standardization of data is necessary along with quick visualizations.

  • God-like invention to the newcomers in the industry:

Millions of business people are struggling even today to become a capitalist. But the struggle did not let new-comers to stop trying. Millions of small businesses either do not have a loan or have one but are constrained to its financing.
Fintech is like a heavenly innovation to them. Many business people are engaging themselves to supply chain marketing to identify MSMEs in need of money and to obtain existing data that can support credit decision making.

  • Clouding:

Cloud banking will increase to an excessive level in the future. Keeping this in mind, companies are making the connections more secured. Regulatory compliance is being the mainstream of Fintech even today.
Bank users will drag you to create more cloud-enabled business models, but the facilities with open APIs will hold your interest forever.

Conclusion:

Each of this recent Fintech development is providing new start-ups to the freshers of the industry and helping the seniors to evolve more with their current business. It’s says learning should be unstoppable, so learn about Fintech because, it is a very significant potential for innovators to innovate and explore their ideas.
Now, let’s gear up for the next learning and development!

Introduction To Fintech!

Introduction To Fintech!

Fintech is the popular abbreviation for the term, financial technology, which is currently considered as one of the trendiest fields to work for in today’s digital age. This is mainly because of the fact that financial technology has the potential to revolutionize and bring in massive changes in the lifestyles of people as well as in the ways that they conduct business.

Those companies which work in the arena of fintech are usually involved in the offering of products and services, which are usually offered by financial institutions. But they are doing so by offering these very services by leveraging technology and thereby making them much more innovative as well as affordable.

The main reason for the field of fintech to emerge was the colossal amounts of cash that were being pumped into the economy in the past few decades. The purchasing power of people and disposable cash at their hands was growing manifold, which was what made venture funding and capital investments increase so very much at the same time.

Related Article: Is a Career in Fintech Your Future?

Best Fintech course is basically referred to as a broad term that is mainly used to describe those companies that usually apply cloud-based tools, open-source software, and other various kinds of technologies in order to improve the field of banking and finance. This field is considered to have enough potential to bring in a revival of the current financial system. This is why many regulators have been working to strike a proper balance between protection and innovation.

This technology basically is aimed at as a competition to the traditional methods of finance and financial services. Various electronic devices like smartphones and technologies like mobile banking, investing services, and cryptocurrency is services that usually end up under the ambit of financial technology.

It also involves a number of start-ups as well as various companies which are involved with finance and technology companies all of which are trying to enhance the quality of services delivered in the present times.

The definition of fintech is, “it is a new financial industry that applies technology to improve financial activities.” The main medium of work here is the internet, where all the services produced and marketed are supposedly functional through the same. The various areas in which you would find here would be insurance trading and risk management. There has been an increased investment for both the development as well as the expansion of this field in recent times.

The various startups that happen to be working in this field are Lufax from China, Square, Stripe, Zenefits, Social Finance, and Credit Karma in the USA and POWA Technologies in the UK, Adyen in the Netherlands, Klarna in Sweden, One97 Communications in India and Coupa Software in America and Funding Circle in the United Kingdom again. These are just a few of the many start-ups striving in this field.

This diversity of start-ups is one of the main reasons why there are so many professionals seeking to get trained in this field and get certified for the same.

Related Article: How to Start a Career in FinTech?

Is There Any Future in FinTech?

Is There Any Future in FinTech?

The 21st century saw the absolute boom of technology, today our lives are both literally and figuratively driven by technology. So much, so that careers in technology today are no longer confined to the world of information technology, but have even branched out into various other exciting industries.

One surprising vertical’s presence here is more than just surprising. We are talking about the career of financial technology or fintech as it is popularly known. Touted as one of the most promising future careers in 2016, this career has seen a great amount of development and revolutionizing changes within and outside of its sphere of influence.

Related Article: How to Start a Career in FinTech?

The word fintech is a contraction of the two words ‘financial’ and ‘technology’ as can be simply defined as, ‘a line of business with its primary base on using the software in order to provide financial services. Many feel fintech technically is a field leaning towards a more disruptive nature, whereas there are others who feel this field is more augmentative in nature.

This field is usually full of start-ups, which is why the emphasis on disruptive innovation. The sub-industries herein span from everything from algorithmic asset management to peer-to-peer lending like in the (yet to be legalised) cryptocurrency genre.

Other industries in the field of fintech include thematic investing, payments, digital currency, credit scoring, education lending, cybersecurity, working capital management, and others. The most common theme in all of them is the use of technology to improve the efficiency of financial markets and systems.

So how does this highly lucrative field figure in your future? And does it really figure in? Let’s talk numbers, according to a report by Accenture, global investment in fintech rose close to $4.05 billion with America topping as the country where most investment has been made. But since then there has been a visible pan continent growth in this field.

Coming to the question of ‘why finance matters and how it can make a place as a career in your future. Historically, the finance sector was like a polar bear in technological hibernation for quite a while. This was owing to the banks which maintained absolute control over the manner in which digital financial products and services were introduced in the markets. Today our shared history is being revived and revamped by a set of sophisticated technologies which have delegated the power from the hands of the banks into a larger spectrum.

So the why of the question is answered, as the Fintech course is changing the ways of the financial world for the better. Today investment banks and companies have experienced lower costs, more options and have seen the explosive potential of data-driven lending in the market.

So if you happen to be someone on the lookout for a job that is a combination of security and good financial payoffs, then the field of fintech is the one for you. There are various ways to reach the same, either by gaining work experience or taking up professional training courses like the ones that institute like Imarticus Learning offer.