What will the loan industry look like in 2017?

2016 was a busy year for the UK lending industry. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) continued to tighten regulation, while consumer credit grew at its fastest rate since before the financial crash. Sarah Jackson, Director, Equiniti Pancredit, looks ahead at the trends and technologies that will shape the sector in 2017

Outsourcing will get smarter

Deloitte’s Global Outsourcing Survey revealed that not only is the use of outsourcing increasing, but attitudes among banks about how they engage with outsourcers is also on the move. Once seen as merely a cost-cutting approach – and make no mistake, this remains a significant motivator – service providers have widened their offerings to provide end-to-end solutions that offer a far greater depth of service support than before. More than ever before, outsourcers are becoming key business enablers that actively promote innovation. This is a key trend that will continue to shape the industry in 2017.

Authentication by ‘selfie’ - will MasterCard bring a smile to the payments world?

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, MasterCard announced the launch of a new authentication solution: payment by ‘selfie’. This follows last summer’s announcement when it stated that it wanted to make passwords and payment codes superfluous.

Cardholders will soon be able to take a selfie at the supermarket cash register instead of entering a password in order to identify themselves as the genuine user. By the middle of 2016, MasterCard’s German customers should be able to prove their identity and authenticate payments in this way. Following this, it is set to be launched in Austria in 2017. Ajay Bhalla, the head of MasterCard's security department is convinced that the "selfie generation" will welcome and use the new feature.

Rising to the challengers

Challenger banks have been a black cloud looming over the “big four” for the past few years. The traditional High Street banks have been braced for these challengers to shake things up and create an entirely new environment, just as budget airlines did to the aviation industry in the nineties. And with the UK’s FCA keen to see consumers benefit from “effective competition” for regulated financial services, the time seems right.

While those working in the industry are tracking every move of the challengers and what they offer, this awareness has yet to filter down to customers. With the big four still holding over 90% of the UK market, and consumer awareness of challenger brands failing to gain momentum, is the impending shake-up going to happen, and if so, when?

The Biometric Banking Revolution

You only have to look through the newspapers of late to see that the biometrics revolution is well and truly entering the mainstream. From voice recognition, to fingerprint and retina scanning, many industries are poised to, and in some cases, already benefiting from new authentication technologies. 

No sector is experiencing this new wave of identity-defined authentication quite like the finance and retail banking sectors. High-profile banks and financial organisations such as RBS, Nationwide MasterCard and HSBC have taken significant measures to put their customers’ identity firmly at the centre of new security policies. It’s this approach, matched with the latest in technological innovations, that will and should be implemented across a variety of sectors.

2015 in review: the year that fintech hit form

What a difference 12 months can make. Industry conversations at 2014’s Mobey Day (Mobey Forum’s annual open conference for all mobile money stakeholders) told of an industry undergoing major disruption. Just 12 months later toward the end of 2015, the industry vibe had changed almost beyond recognition, particularly in the mobile payments arena.  Consternation, hesitancy and all-out frustration had given way to optimism. Last year’s disruptions have become this year’s tools of liberation, enabling banks, finally, to make progress.