The future’s so bright… not even wearing shades can prevent you from being blinded, at least a little bit.

The addressable market predicted to come from the bright and shiny metaverse is expected to be anywhere from $8 to $13 trillion by 2030. These are values so large it’s hard to even fathom what those numbers look like, but the understanding remains universal: the metaverse, AI, and all the exciting features they come with hold immense value, and everyone wants in. 

But are we racing blindly toward tomorrow before we’ve taken the time to truly invest in and master the technology and advancements of today?

Whether your organization is in banking or wealth management, mortgage or insurance, fintech and beyond… if you’re a player in the market of money management, you’ve likely spent some time drooling over (or worrying about) the technological advances that might be coming your way. Understanding and preparing for those things are great. Still, we’re here to proclaim there are also priorities in the here and now that demand attention and proactive investment—or you’ll never even be ready to truly implement the features of any great big beautiful tomorrow. 

The long-term future for financial institutions is exciting…

When finance business leaders are tasked with the request to “innovate,” it’s easy for the strategies and schemes to escape you, getting muddled in a wondrous web of all the what if’s. We all love a good predictions or “the future of…” type of article. We even write a few of them ourselves here at Simplus! Some of the big buzzwords for this exciting future, especially as it pertains to financial services, are AI and the metaverse. 

AI

AI is already, and rightfully so, in use for many financial institutions. The application of AI that’s not so widely in use (but widely discussed) is the potential for intelligent bots to listen in to conversations, whether over the phone or messaging, and then tell us what to do next. This has interesting potential implications for bolstering customer service efficiency, but it also opens up a regulatory nightmare with bots taking over human agency and not just suggesting the next steps but automatically putting them into action. AI could help with fraud detection and prevention, but it may also be the source of some of the most significant identity crises—and financial services need to be sufficiently prepared for handling that. 

Metaverse

Financial services in the metaverse leads to a whole slew of implications and things to develop: virtual bank lobbies, money transfers between virtual and real-life avatars, financing for a virtual home, insurance to protect virtual assets, functionality to transfer money between multiple metaverses… not to mention regulation and compliance for all of the above. It’s the next big thing, but it’s still largely unknown what it will really look like and mean for our day-to-day. 

But the trouble comes when business leaders and strategists get too caught up in high-minded but not fully realized technologies and ultimately… nothing happens. No investments are made, processes remain the same, and nothing changes. Because we got caught up in the excitement of things that could be, we forgot to be tactical about what can be done now to deliver value and prepare. 

…but there’s work to be done in the now. 

Long-term future predictions in the financial services market, like AI listening to customer service and transactions in the metaverse, are certainly an exciting realm of possibility to consider. But it’s easy to get stuck dreaming about future options instead of investing in tangible outcomes that both stabilize the present and prepare for those future advancements. 

Financial institutions would be better served considering their technology strategy for the coming months or next five years rather than worrying or fantasizing about the things that might not be fully realized for another decade or more.

Just consider some of the easy and foundation-laying wins financial institutions can be doing in the here and now to prepare their tech stacks:

Banking and Wealth Management

• Call center digitization 
• SSOT client data: branch, wealth, asset, and goal management
• Digital process automation for quick referrals
• Bank system integration
• Portfolio transformation
• Doc gen and eSignature

Mortgage

• SSOT client data
• Digital process automation for loans, refinancing, applications
• Data integration
• Application cycle time transformation
• Loan servicing
• Doc gen and eSignature

Insurance

• Call center digitization
• SSOT client data: agency, broker, policy management
• Digital process automation for claims, underwriting, renewals
• Rate and quote self-service
• Data integration
• Doc gen and eSignature

These are all examples of critical digital foundation solutions that financial institutions big and small ought to have mastered and laid the groundwork for before even beginning to strategize on long-term future technology predictions.

Partner up to get the best solutioning both now and later. 

May we suggest Simplus, an Infosys company, as an excellent choice for partnering up—both for the here and now and the long-term later aspirations. Simplus, combined with its parent company Infosys, is a powerhouse of hands-on experience and always-expanding innovations centered on making complex things simple. We’ve worked with financial institutions all over the globe to streamline their current processes, deliver noticeable cost-saving value immediately, and still prepare the overall technical landscape for future technologies and advancements in data use. The best part? We’re adept at long-term strategy and ongoing partnerships, so we’ll be ready for the demands of the future while still answering the needs you have right now.

We’d love to connect and learn more about your organization’s goals, roadmap and design a cloud-based solution, and ultimately deliver results that prove their worth—not decades from now, but right now. Reach out today.