India’s tryst with mobile wallets or online payment began when PM Narendra Modi announced demonetisation and encouraged the use of online payments nationwide. Besides, affordable smartphones and cheaper data plans the adoption of fintech payments in India is largely driven by the tech-savviness of the country’s younger population consisting of GenZ and millennials of the age group 18-34 yrs and not to forget the pandemic for contactless payments that has further catapulted its growth. A recent report from Boston Consulting Group revealed that India’s financial technology companies are poised to become three times as valuable in the next five years, reaching a valuation of $150-$160 billion by 2025. India’s fintech universe has currently more than 2100 fintech,out of which 67 percent have come up in the last five years. The total valuation of the industry is estimated at $50 -$60 billion. Despite the Covid-19 chaos the investors found the fintech sector lucrative enough to invest. As per a report from KPMG, 2020 witnessed fintech sector receive funds worth $2.7 billion. Thus, the high levels of fund infusion and technology know-how are driving this meteoric rise of fintech companies and startups which in turn is creating demand for several job roles and skills. Below are some of the fintech trends that will be transforming the job market in 2021.
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A recent report from Boston Consulting Group revealed that India’s financial technology companies are poised to become three times as valuable in the next five years, reaching a valuation of $150-$160 billion by 2025.
Fintech Trends That Will Shape The Job Market in 2021
Blockchain technology
Blockchain technology in the fintech industry, with its characteristic distributed ledger system, can provide faster payments, brings more real-time transactions between financial institutions and lowers operational costs. Its transparent and secured tech infrastructure has eliminated the need for intermediaries to keep any records. Blockchain technology in fintech trends is pushing the demand for blockchain experts for various job roles such as blockchain-developers, solution architects, UX designers, quality engineers, and legal consultants. Blockchain developers need to have an in-depth knowledge of languages such asC++, Python, and Javascript.
Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning
As per the findings of the IBM Security report, India was the second most attacked country in Asia Pacific with the finance and insurance sector being targeted with 60 percent of attacks. A cyberattack on any bank or fintech app is a blow as it erodes customer trust, brand image, and loss of revenue and income. Therefore companies are constantly hunting to search for the best cybersecurity experts to detect frauds and deviations. Here the expert will create algorithms to analyse data across a set of parameters and find out user behaviour and discern patterns to detect potential frauds. Over time AI learns and adapts to flush out fraud cases. With machine learning, risk assessment systems are updated to insulate consumers and businesses from ransomware and malware attacks. Students aspiring to a career in cybersecurity need to have pre-requisites of advanced cybersecurity concepts, extensive cybersecurity work experience, industry certifications, knowledge of regulatory policies, apart from a degree in technology.
Robotics Processing Automation
Fintech companies decide to eliminate redundancy by automating manual tasks such as customer relationship management, procurement, or insurance using robotic process automation (RPA) tools. The RPA tool mimics a human’s actions in a graphical user interface and then performs those actions in the same user interface and communicates with other software systems. RPA has in-built Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities that will remove many back-office and middle job roles .However, the AI automation in RPA in fintech trends will help in the creation of new job roles as RPA developers and engineers to develop RPA frameworks or customising the frameworks.
Mobile Wallets
According to Assocham, the usage of mobile wallet transactions in India is estimated to be worth 260 Billion by 2022. The spike in mobile wallets can be attributed to the usage of smartphones, cheaper 4G data plans, growth of the e-commerce sector, increasing disposable income, and government initiatives like ‘Digital India’ etc. The massive adoption of mobile wallets among Indians will be opening new career avenues for IT-professionals, like software and mobile app developers, experience designers, and big data analysts. . Fintech companies will also demand MBA with a sales background who will join the functions for marketing, product, strategy, sales, and operations roles. Finance and economics graduates will be required for regulatory compliance and graduates with data science can join in risk, information management.
Various fintech trends will help educational institutions to include subjects like data science, artificial technology, machine learning, etc. in their courses to equip the undergraduates to be industry-ready for the fintech space. For fintech startups, various technologies will help them analyse what kind of talent they should attract for building their workforce.
