FinTech Update: 2022 Year in Review

This episode of "News from the Fintech Front" is giving you the latest headlines from Europe and beyond. Joining us today are Florian Graillot of astoryaVC who is connecting from Paris and Alex Jimenez who is coming to us live from Vegas. Don Ginsel, your resident host, will be guiding us through this inaugural episode. 2022 was a successful year, with a large amount of capital still needing to be allocated. The emergence of cryptocurrency is an interesting new development that has come to the forefront. Although it is characterized by inflation, the overall amount of investment in fintech activities parallels the prior years. Investment in insurtech dropped by 40% in the last year, yet the number of deals transpiring in this area increased, thus making it hard to gauge the extent of the year's success; the divergence in opinion is evidence of that. Moreover, it is noteworthy to emphasize that landing and insurtech are both burgeoning sectors. In the US, near banks are facing difficulties as they are having to compete with big banks and models that bear close resemblance to the traditional model. In comparison, a different picture is observed in Europe; a negligible amount of people switch banks in the US, which creates complications for near banks. Over the past year, profitability has become increasingly important in the fintech industry, surpassing even the value proposition and growth. This needs to be taken into account, as many start-ups without funding may collapse or become victims of M&A due to a lack of profitability. In the US, M&A have a chance to occur with the decreased valuation of start-ups, as can be seen through the move of banks to acquire fintech companies such as RoboAdvisory. The consolidation stage is particularly crucial for start-ups and fintech businesses. The US, for instance has vast potential for "buy now and pay later" (#BNPL) initiatives. Moreover, newer markets like Latin America and Africa offer attractive opportunities to emerging banks due to the sluggish and antiquated operations of the established institutions present. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activities in the start-up sector of the insurtech market may present a hazard for more traditional companies. When start-ups stop their growth trajectory, M&A could be a viable option, as the valuation of companies drops with the progress of their status. At the conclusion of 2022, two phrases which have been getting a lot of attention are the Crypto market and OpenAI. The crypto market has recently had a challenging time, with the U.S. remaining uncertain about the regulatory side of things following the #FTX crash. By default, many cryptocurrencies are anarchist and hard to regulate, meaning there is still much to explore for startups in the realm of insurtech. A key challenge for tech and digital companies alike is to obtain enough reliable data to help reduce risk and cause rapid growth. AI could be an amazing thing but, considering the current lack of regulation, it could pose a risk. We need to understand the implications of data sharing with AI services, and become knowledgeable about AI so that we don't find ourselves replaced by bots or AI down the road. Hear the full episode at this link: https://provoke.fm/episode-156-news-from-the-fintech-front-december-edition/ Check out the entire episode here: https://provoke.fm/episode-156-news-from-the-fintech-front-december-edition/ Tune in to the entire episode here: https://provoke.fm/episode-156-news-from-the-fintech-front-december-edition/ Giovanni Scandroglio wrote this article. This article was penned by Giovanni Scandroglio.

Source: https://medium.com/@breakingbankseurope/news-from-the-fintech-front-2022-wrapup-005589de54f0?source=rss------fintech-5