DIY Investor Magazine
/
March 2016
21
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A move to investments that impact our own lives for
example local wind turbines, infrastructure projects
close to our home, investment in industries that
serve our interests and communities.
•
A move to dividend investing rather than capital
growth. As the economy adjusts to slower growth
companies may be forced to hand back more of
their unused reserves to shareholders in the form
of dividends. Tools such as Dividend Max (
www.
dividendmax.co.uk)
may prove popular to investors.
RETAIL BANKING
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A new pricing structure for credit cards and current
accounts based upon transactions rather than
interest paid, continuing the commoditisation of
money.
•
Growth of the peer to peer lending/investing market
where consumers take pricing out of the hands
of central bank and retail banks; these markets
continue to grow strongly.
•
Savings accounts which take a longer term view of
the market with fixed terms for 10+ years and which
sit alongside big events such as house purchase
and retirement.
•
Mortgages designed for life and inherited by
children and, potentially, grandchildren.
TECHNOLOGY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES
•
The disaggregation of service providers by banking
and infrastructure providers; by that I mean the
growth of new brands that can deliver payment
services through tablets, cloud technology etc,
i.e. fintech companies and infrastructure providers
replacing traditional banks in terms of capital,
liquidity, branches. This trajectory is already seen
with PayPal, Apple Pay, and challenger banks such
as Atom, Mondo and Starling.
•
Social media channels throwing open the ability to
support community forums which drive investment
decisions brokered through the P2P platforms;
witness the trend for rural pubs to be owned by the
local residents.
•
The connectivity between payments and rewards
such as Yoyo wallet.
•
The demise of plastic cards will hasten with the
ongoing speed of development of mobile devices
and bio-metrics to become the way we pay for
goods and services.
Both traditional businesses and start-ups need to
consider the long term picture and how it will change
the needs of customers and how this will impact the
design of financial services products.
In simple Darwinian terms those that ignore this face
extinction just as others have such as Kodak, Polaroid,
Nokia to name a few.
About the author: Mark Pearson is an independent
consultant who has extensive experience of product
management, proposition development, brand,
marketing campaigns and insight gained in a range of
blue chip financial services companies
.
