2022 Fintech Lessons Learned With Plaid, Integral, Cassini, Liberis

This month at Fintech Times our focus turns to reflection as we look back at developments over the past 12 months. 2022 has certainly been a challenging year for anyone with global economic activity experiencing a severe slowdown, with inflation higher than in decades.

What lessons have you learned from 2022? That was the question we asked The Fintech Times community. Let’s hear from Integral, Cassini, Liberis and Plaid.

Vikas Srivastava, Integral

Vikas Srivastava is head of revenue at Integral, a fintech that delivers SaaS FX solutions to banks, brokers and fund managers. He looks back on his experiences from software-as-a-service.

“SaaS has become mainstream and the preferred way for financial services firms to acquire technology. Our 2021 research showed that nearly 70 percent of respondents expected their forex trading flow to be either entirely in the cloud or a hybrid of cloud and on-premises, and we have see this trend accelerate further in 2022.

“The underlying reasons for this are obvious: flexibility and ease of integration, improvements in technology infrastructure and cost. The essential configurability of cloud-based SaaS systems means it is becoming the industry’s technology solution of choice for FX workflows.

“Another key trend we’ve seen is greater industry collaboration around cloud technology, for example London Stock Exchangeits recently confirmed collaboration with Microsoftwho will move their infrastructure to the cloud.

“Third, the return of meaningful volatility to the currency markets, perhaps for the first time in over a decade, has made it much more difficult for firms to achieve optimal pricing. While this will have been problematic for some, those with access to SaaS solutions have which provides broad connectivity to liquidity sources and automated workflows found that volatility is quite manageable.”

Ripsy Bandourian, Plaid

Ripsy Bandourian, leader of Europe for Plaidsays 2022 has not only challenged people, but companies as a whole.

“Business leaders from startup founders to Fortune 500 CEOs are looking for new ways to navigate the environment and increase efficiency,” she says.

“As a result, more customers are asking Plaid to solve a wider range of needs through our platform, network and partner ecosystem, including identity verification, onboarding and conversion; money movement; fraud prevention; and deeper insights to help build even better decisions and connected experiences.

“Next year, we’re doubling down on providing integrated solutions that enable our customers to deepen customer relationships, improve operations, and reduce risk and spend.”

Liam Huxley, Cassini

Cassini systemsa provider of pre- and post-trade margin analysis for derivatives market participants, says there are three takeaways from 2022.

Volatility does not disappear. Long-term and short-term strategic planning is the key to sustainable growth. Companies need to look outside their existing internal structures and begin to cultivate a larger ecosystem that supports both their growth and the needs of their customers.

Liam Huxleyfounder and CEO of Cassini, says: “We’ve seen time and time again that proper planning is the biggest difference between firms that fail and those that succeed. As the financial market transitions to 2023, companies cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes from the past.

“The reality is that if you haven’t adopted a data-driven strategy now that focuses on alpha-generating strategies despite market volatility and continuous regulation, you’re already behind.”

Rob Straathof, Liberis

Liberis is a global embedded finance platform that provides small businesses with accessible and responsible finance. Rob Straathof, CEO of Liberis, shares his lessons from 2022.

He says: “Just because there is a lot of funding going into a sector does not mean it is a long-term viable market with sustainable margins. Or maybe, because there is so much funding going into these markets, margins quickly turn negative because of the large amount of VC money looking for growth, not margins. Examples are BNPL for consumers, embedded insurance, income financing for ecomm.

“High growth is not success. Growth with sustainable long-term unit economics is success. The fallacy of “growing to profitability” only works when you are a price setter, or when you have a sustainable competitive advantage with customer loyalty, not just transactional engagement like lending or insurance. Many industries are not suitable for this strategy, and lending is certainly one of them.”