Start-ups (and even large banking institutions) are investing huge amounts to find ways to use IT to rethink financial services. Is the future for IT specialists to be found in FinTechs?
The idea of replacing conventional financial consultants with robot-consultants (explainer: a computer algorithm that can manage a portfolio of shares corresponding to an investor profile) is appealing, because you can save the 2% commission of a real consultant.
This is what the WealthSimple online investment platform offers. It’s also what the large banking institutions are working on, which will soon have to offer the same type of online digital services if they don’t want to lose their clients. For example, BMO has already launched its online Smart Portfolio.
Technology is making strong headway into the financial and banking sectors. It is now a specific sector called “FinTech” (for “financial technology”). And it has the wind in its sails – according to a report from KPMG, American FinTech investments have recently doubled, from $3.6 billion USD in the first quarter of 2017 to $8.4 billion in the second quarter of the same year.
This sector has 100,000 jobs in over 3,000 companies in the Montreal region alone, says Les Affaires. Here are some examples. The Hardbacon start-up by former journalist Julien Brault, who designed an app that lets independent investors manage their portfolio from their phone. Or the Mylo start-up, by the young entrepreneur Philip Barrar, who proposes rounding up all a client’s electronic transactions in order to invest the money thus recovered.
These are projects where there are many crucial technological choices: what platform, what computer language to choose? These companies need good programmers, good developers for mobile platforms… The message is out, to those who seek adventure and challenges!