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The future of finance: perspectives from embedded finance enablers

In the future, financial products will not be sold separately. Companies are working to deliver direct-to-consumer finance innovation.

In brief
  • Embedded finance is transforming direct-to-consumer offerings, driven by an emphasis on a seamless customer experience.
  • To help stakeholders better understand where leaders in this industry see embedded finance trends heading, we surveyed global technology providers.
  • While the current focus is on consumer retail, payments and banking products, there is untapped opportunity in other financial verticals and industry sectors.

Embedded finance is revolutionizing the way financial services are brought to consumers — integrating financing directly to the products and services we use every day.

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Driven by a focus on creating seamless customer experiences, embedded finance makes transacting simpler and provides better access to financial products. It also ushers in new opportunities for innovation. To gain a more comprehensive understanding of this new financial experience and the possibilities it offers for customer check out our earlier publication.

 

The realization of embedded finance relies heavily on technological capabilities, as technology acts as the critical bridge connecting financial institutions with customer distribution channels. Powering the connects across the embedded finance landscape are numerous intermediate technology firms focused on building platform networks that link brands to traditional financial institution to create seamless customer experiences. To shed light on the expected growth of embedded finance, we interviewed 21 global companies with leading financial technology platforms. These industry leaders provide insights into the future direction of embedded finance trends, offering valuable perspective for stakeholders about the future of financial experiences.



Where does embedded finance present the most value for financial services providers?

Top three responses shown below.


Embedded finance opportunities beyond consumer retail

Consumer retail, telecommunications and health care are currently seen as the most attractive sectors for embedded finance. Most players are focused on the payments and banking verticals.


Consumer retail has been the faster sector to adopt this revolutionized financial distribution model, with 71% of survey respondents primarily supporting business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) models. However, respondents believe the current consumer focus will give way for a major opportunity with small- to medium-sized business merchants (in B2B2B transactions). Those who are watching this trend are targeting their unique financial needs in a more efficient manner.

Opportunities also include embedded insurance for automobiles and real estate and embedded wealth through savings apps and digital wallets. Our survey and insights also reveal payments and banking to be big focus areas. 

Where does embedded finance present the most value for intermediaries?

Top three responses shown below.


More than 85% of respondents noted that the goal of embedded finance is centered around enabling seamless financial offerings. To succeed, distributors need to focus on creating seamless integration of these non-financial experiences.

Additionally, technology leaders believe that the best-in-class distributors will focus on their depth of offering rather than a wide breadth of services. Creating highly vertical, specific and customized products will separate the winners in this space.


Tech-brand partnerships are revolutionizing value chains with embedded finance

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Emerging market for embedded finance

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Benefits of embedded finance offerings

Beyond the benefits for consumers and end users, embedded finance offers opportunities across the value chain, including additional data insights, adjacent services, increased trust, tailored products and customer loyalty.

Embedded finance presents a wave of opportunities, and momentum is building, as the way financial products are being offered is changing.

Companies that want to expand or develop embedded finance offerings are asking themselves:

  • What role do we play in the embedded finance ecosystem?
  • What does the competitor presence and market analysis look like?
  • What capabilities do we need to develop, and will we build, buy or partner?

Strategically planning and implementing embedded finance offerings begins with analysis of internal capabilities and ambitions, competitor analysis and commercial attractiveness. In the end, the customer wants one place to go for their transactions and partnering with other financial organizations and financial technology enablers will be essential.

Emerging market for embedded finance

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Tech-brand partnerships are revolutionizing value chains with embedded finance

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Summary 

Embedded finance presents opportunities for partnerships and innovation across financial institutions, technology companies and non-financial distributors. This change is not only here, but it also is accelerating, influenced by factors outside financial services, including tech innovation, non-financial services brand strength and experience-focused consumers. Players need to start thinking about the role they want to play in this new distribution model.

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