It is hard to believe that its been 10 years since the FinTech 100 was launched with the intention of providing a consistent and orderly way to look at the providers to the constantly evolving financial services technology space.
With our publishing partner SourceMedia (publisher of American Banker and Bank Technology News), event partner BAI, and public relations partner William Mills Agency, the FinTech 100 has become the Whos Who documenting technology vendors to the financial services industry around the world. It is these vendors that provide the technological backbone of the financial services industry.
And the fintech market is not insignificant IDC Financial Insights predicts that worldwide IT spending for financial services will reach $500 billion before the end of the decade thats half a trillion dollars.
A glance back at challenges that were facing the industry 10 years ago shows a list that included risk management, cost containment, managing multiple retail channels, direct banking, reaching underserved markets, payment supply chain, and the threat of non-traditional institution competition.
Today the list is not dissimilar. However, the difference between then and now is in the way that the solutions to these issues are met with significant advances in technology, including cloud computing, big data and analytics, mobile computing, and social media what IDC calls the four pillars of emerging intelligent solutions.
Indeed all areas of financial services technology today are impacted by at least one of these pillars.
As with the challenges facing the institutions, the technology providers themselves have evolved.
Throughout these 10 years, 28 companies have been continuously ranked on the FinTech 100 and 12 on the Enterprise 25. While these 40 providers demonstrate consistency and stability, there is also ample room for movement in this continually consolidating industry.
Some names are fading Checkfree, Corillian, Metavante, Open Solutions, S1, Sybase, Symitar. Some require more long-term memory Bearing Point, Bisys, Carreker, Financial Fusion, Sanchez, Siebel Systems. Ten years is even long enough to see the name Digital Insights vanish and then reappear.
In keeping with tradition, wed like to welcome the newcomers to the FinTech 100 ranking. CRIF of Atlanta, number 46; AurionPro Solutions of India, number 88; BancVue of Texas, number 89; Indecomm Corporation of New Jersey, number 94; EFT Source of New York, number 95; Scivantage of New Jersey, number 97; eMason of Florida, number 99; IND Group of Germany, number 100.
New to the Enterprise 25 list this year: NTT Data Corp of Japan, number 12; and Infor (US) of New York, number 24.
You have entered an elite group that run the business of financial services across the globe.
What will the next 10 years bring in financial services technology? For certain, just as it was 10 years ago, institutions will still be focused on the right combination of meeting customer needs while containing costs to improve financial performance, all while managing regulatory mandates and economic cycles.
What technologies will be called upon for these initiatives, we can only speculate.
