Money makes the world go round, and making intelligent decisions when it comes to your financial wellbeing is crucial to impacting your overall happiness.
According to the CEO and founder of Saxo, Kim Fournais, ‘the benefits of long-term compounded growth can only be truly harnessed through investments’. You gain invaluable peace of mind regarding your future wealth by saving and investing your money, and there are numerous software options available to help you achieve your financial goals in modern times.
Fintech, new financial technology, has taken the world by storm. The name ‘fintech’ originates from the combination of the words ‘financial’ and ‘technology’, and it is just that. By definition, fintech is ‘any emerging technology that helps consumers or financial institutions deliver financial services in newer, faster ways than was traditionally available’.
Following a brief but noticeable decline during the COVID outbreak, fintech investment is soaring again. As a result, countries worldwide are seeing an influx of funding for fintech ventures, with both investment totals and deal counts in the field on the rise.
Although the United States and the United Kingdom receive the majority of fintech financing, smaller countries, particularly those in Asia, are making their influence felt. This is unsurprising, given that Asia has the highest rate of fintech adoption in the globe. Singapore is currently establishing a solid reputation as a leading fintech centre that attracts significant investment.
During the first half of 2021, global fintech funding attained $98 billion out of 2,456 deals. The U.S. was responsible for $42 billion of the total funds. During this time, Asian investment into fintech reached $7.5 billion.
Despite its small size, Singapore is catching up to countries much more significant than it. Singapore Monetary Authority’s chief fintech officer, Sopnendu Mohanty, expected ‘a strong surge in the second half of 2021, pushing Singapore’s total to $3 billion’. Canada’s revenue reached $4.8 billion in the first half of 2021, while France and Germany managed between $2 billion–$2.5 billion, and these countries are six to 10 times bigger than Singapore.
Fintech uses robo-advisors and artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver its financial services. According to an article written by the Investopedia Team, while the robo-advisor craze is well documented, the ‘proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) tools hitting the wealth management landscape has made a dramatic entrance into the financial trade press’. It is still too early to tell, but AI’s role in financial advisory has already been making waves since its introduction and will only continue to expand its capabilities. Industry research shows that in 2019, robo-advisers were valued at N$4.51 billion, and this number is predicted to climb to $41.07 billion by 2027.
In recent years, financial decision making overall has been made a lot easier by technology. There are now many ways to leverage technology to make better decisions regarding wealth management.
For instance, budgeting applications can be used to analyse, review, and set expenditure goals so that customers can plan for the future. Payment applications have also been increasing in popularity by making day to day transactions more straightforward and more centralised.
Recently, Singapore has also seen the launch of new software called Stripe tax, an automated tax solution. It aims to assist businesses in calculating and collecting goods and services tax (GST), sales tax, and value-added tax (VAT) in more than 35 countries, enabling cross border cooperation. This can alleviate additional stress for businesses looking to expand or go global while having little prior knowledge of local tax considerations and compliance requirements in their target countries.
There is no doubt that the use of technology in the financial industry has been on the rise. Not only can technology be leveraged to make more sound financial decisions, but it simplifies transacting too. With great strides made in making fintech accessible in both developed and developing nations, we can expect to see more people taking active charge of their personal finances and more businesses thriving regardless of borders.
Recent Comments