In the face of instability, economic turmoil, and low rates, people are increasingly turning to applications that allow them to invest and monitor their financial situation. Interest in online banking and investment apps significantly grew in 2019. The growth was as much as 42.1%, according to the annual report of the analytical agency App Annie. Teams of people entering data, dealing with banks, conducting a review from distributed platforms, and physically processing financial information are all costs that growing businesses cannot afford. You could put the time saved by automating these operations toward infrastructure initiatives that help the company develop even more.
The second is the general popularization of investing and the ease of working with it. Suppose earlier, not everyone could work with trading tools. In that case, many large brokers and banks now offer their clients convenient mobile applications and semi-automated trading solutions that work with little or no client participation. Further, we will learn about the current patterns, functionality, and interface of popular online banking and investment applications to understand what a fintech application should be like in the future. Fintech applications are software applications that make it easier for consumers to live within their means through technology. Some popular finance programs are PayPal, Shopify, and Union. People can use these apps to transfer conveniently and benefit financially, track their expenditures, and manage their income.
Banking Applications
Currently, all banking applications in the US work according to three business models – daily banking, digital office, and ecosystem core.
- Daily Banking – performing standard transactions and managing a debit card.
- Digital Office – is an Internet banking service that, in terms of its functionality, can replace a visit to a physical outlet for a client.
- Ecosystem core – introducing third-party services into banking applications by banks and providing non-financial products to customers.
The primary trend of the previous year can be called the transformation of super-app banking applications and the creation of ecosystems. Most financial experts agree that in 15 to 20 years, no traditional banks will be left. Due to the heated competition in the market for each client, banks are forced to look for other ways to increase loyalty. Other valuable functions include document recognition, subscription to traffic police fines, registration as a self-employed person, pension transfer, tax payment, and income and expenses analytics.
Interface
At the end of 2018, many banks updated the design of their mobile application. The main elements of the interface will adapt to the user based on behavioral analysis and preferences. On the dashboard, the user sees the total balance and purchasing securities. The portfolio also has an Expert Advisor who estimates how much you can earn if you buy certain shares.
Functional
The application has all the functions necessary for the investor. Novice investors can start trading based on the investment ideas of other investors and ready-made portfolios from the bank. The application has a section with up-to-date forecasts and analytics. Interestingly, you can customize it by adding securities to your favorites and thus follow the news about issuers in the My section. Beginners and professionals also have access to the strategies of the best market players. In the application, they publish their ideas about buying securities. For each author, statistics of successful ideas and income data are available, based on which his rating is formed.
The application generally has a standard interface allowing beginners and experienced traders to trade. Inside the portfolio, the overview of assets is detailed and has analytics on ownership history and price. The client sees portfolio purchases, active orders, and transaction history graphs. Conveniently, users can set up Alerts, for example, when the price of a particular security or financial instrument is broken through, followed by a push notification.
Conclusion
To summarize, what are the essential functions and interface details that a fintech application have in the future? Regarding functionality, Internet banking should have a simple registration with a low entry threshold for non-customers and many integrations with government agencies, such as interest, tax, and fund flow analytics. You should note that enormous players have marketplaces with non-banking services. Whether this will become a general trend, time will tell. As for the interface, the main trends are personalization and simplification. This means customizable onboarding, extended transaction history, detailed filters, and good analytics visualization for banks. Given the large influx of novice investors, investment applications should have assistants, ready-made portfolios, an intuitive interface with action analytics, and a learning component.
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