Where FinTech is heading — an Athlon thought series

Sam Bhatt — Growth Manager, Athlon
At the beginning of the year we decided as a team that we were going to investigate the hottest tech related trends and use our collective superpowers to offer insight and opinion on the implications on experience arising from technology revolutions occurring across different sectors.
Digital is changing our world, from how we bank and shop to how we communicate and do our jobs. At Athlon we have been keeping an eye on these trends, producing a regular insights and opinion series to help you keep abreast of how this next exciting revolution.
We began with an exploration of the most important financial services trends which resulted in 6 blog posts, a couple of slideshare presentations, FinTech/ UX talks, and one cool chatbot animation. This recreated a number of interesting conversations with some exciting organisations and thought leaders.
Did you happen to miss any of our FinTech related thought series?
Luckily this one article contains the links to all of the Financial Services thought series in one handy spot.
Read on for an overview of all of the areas we covered and links to the articles themselves. If you’d like to know what we’re going to be exploring next you might just get a hint at the end of the list.
Thanks for reading and please bookmark, share and follow us for all the latest insight and opinion!
Below are links to all of the great articles and extras that arose from our FinTech thought series:
7 UX FinTech predictions

We kicked off the year by having a discussion around what we all felt were going to be the most significant experience related trends affecting financial services in 2017.
It quickly became apparent that there were 7 dominant themes emerging and this was the basis of our predictions post. Looking back now it seems we were mostly on the money, what do you think?
Read on our website
Read on medium
View slideshare
Written by James Craig — Strategist
Chatbots

It’s no surprise that chatbots were an area we were keen to explore, the idea that not too long ago telephone banking was a huge step forward and soon you’ll be able to text your bank to get something done shows how quickly things have advanced.
However, for all of the opportunities that it will present there are also clearly going to be some hurdles to overcome if widespread adoption is achieved.
Here we look at what those are and whether we can be one step closer to having a full on robot companion (or at least a bot with benefits). Check out our animation for how we envisage conversations taking place.
Read on our website
Read on medium
Written by Laura Rebolo — UX Designer
How Good UX Design is Helping FinTech Startups Win

The financial services revolution was well overdue, probably halted by the crash of ’08 but definitely coming. That the change was driven by plucky startups and not through the vast resources of major banks was definitely a surprise to most.
It would never be enough that the challengers didn’t deliver services like the big boys, they also needed to make sure they didn’t look, walk, talk or act like them either.
In this post we look at what they’ve done differently experience wise. We also include a cheat sheet for those who are keen to follow in the challenger bank footsteps. What was that song from the Jungle Book again?
Read on our website
Read on medium
Written by Ranzie Anthony — Chief Creative Officer
What’s powering the insuretech revolution?

If before the FinTech revolution, Financial services was the old fashioned, slightly peculiar one in the corner then the Insurance sub-sector would be it’s less attractive cousin.
However, since FS received it’s glamourous tech makeover Insurance was surely due to follow in its footsteps.
Earlier this year we were fortunate enough to be within the audience or a Parliamentary committee hearing where the discussion was around setting up innovation incubators focused on the particular challenges for the InsureTech revolution. So this post combined an analysis of the trends driving change and the challenges faced by both startups and incumbents in achieving it.
Read on our website
Read on medium
Written by Daniel Henderson — Client Partner
Open Banking APIs — Who’s Going To Profit?

The more eagle eyed among you might look at this with a notion that something is amiss.
“Hang on”, you say, “this isn’t about UX or experience design, you’ve duped us into reading about boring data stuff”.
How wrong you are!
In what will cause the biggest shake up since ATM’s were introduced in 1967, banks are coming together to create a standardised method of securely sharing customer data between each other and third parties too.
What this means is a shaking off of the chains around who you get your financial services from, an increase in competition, and limitless possibilities — you’ll be able to bank with the provider which you enjoy interacting with the most, and it may not even be a bank, it might be *Domino’s Pizza we really can’t tell at this point! Read our post to understand why it’s such a crucial development.
(*other pizza providers are available)
Read on our website
Read on medium
P.S. Since writing this we have had the pleasure of partnering with The UK Government’s mandated Open Banking Group, helping them visualise and optimise what this new banking user experience will be. Keep an eye out for our upcoming post where Athlon meets Open Banking.
Written by Tom Bandy — Head of Technology
What is the ‘happy path’ for banking customer experience?

If we’ve learnt anything from Goldilocks and her encounters in the home of the three bears it is that porridge is a bit rubbish when it is too cold or too hot.
Similarly, the banking sector has it’s extremes of cold and lumpy vs. hot and intolerable experiences. So how can good customer experience be created without making a meal of it?
Within this post we take a look at the all-round banking experience and highlight the key points at which crucial changes can be made to ensure the optimum customer experience is delivered.
Read on our website
Read on medium
Written by Victor Woode — Design Director
Next we’ll be thinking about…
I also did promise to let you know what we’ll be thinking about next. After polling our whole team, the outright winner was (drumroll, please) HealthTech!
Expect lots more exciting content coming your way soon. Thanks for reading and don’t forget to bookmark, share and follow.
Contact Us
Athlon is an experience and innovation partner, working with startups and large enterprises to help accelerate success.
If you want to find out more about how we can accelerate success for you, contact us here: hello@weareathlon.com
